My first impressions of the HP Envy 2024 with Linux

Hardware:

HP Envy x360 2-in-1 PC 14-fa0649nz

AMD Ryzen™ 7 8840HS

Radeon™ 780M Graphics

14" (35.6 cm), 2K (1920 x 1200), touchscreen

OS:

Tumbleweed (snapshot 20241202)

gnome 47

The device without Linux in focus:

The laptop cost me under 1k and I have to say I am extremely impressed, the cpu has one of AMD's best and latest igpu's and it just runs smooth and great. The keyboard and touchpad feel pretty good. The screen is bright and has pretty good colours. It feels good and works perfectly with the stylus. The camera and microphone are nothing to complain about, they just work.

What really impressed me were the speakers, because they're not massive, they're just 2 little things on the bottom left and right, but they sound extremely impressive. I really like the touchscreen, but a small detail that makes it really great is the magnets that ensure the laptop stays in tablet mode without accidentally opening. There are also magnets on the right for the stylus. These are generally small details that make the experience outstanding for this price range.

Personally, I also like the design, I have the Meteor Silver Aluminium version and it looks great.

Linux support:

i have only tested opensuse tumbleweed so far and there have been no major device specific issues. wifi, bluetooth, speaker mic just work perfectly. the stylus and touch screen recognise everything and its just great.

The only two "problems"

- The print button doesn't work: why? it's just a shortcut for win+shift+s instead of the regular print key. Just go to your desktop environment settings and change the shortcut from print to this one, it's no big deal.

- Keyboard backlighting is not controllable via GNOME, not sure why, but I don't care, I have a button for it on the keyboard.

Comparison to the Linux community's beloved ThinkPads:

i have seen "hate" against hp before, but i must say that i am positively surprised, i had 2 lenovo devices before this one, a thinkpad and a yoga. Both had typical Lenovo problems, these were linux independent, but still bad experiences.

- much too expensive

- Hard to find products with amd in my country.

- Screen broke

- SSD had wobbly contact

- bad / cheap workmanship

Of course I cannot compare the durability of the HP Envy with the Thinkpad, since I only own it for 24 hours, but I have to say that my first impression is better than the Thinkpad's, the workmanship feels more comfortable and better, there are these little details like the magnets, I like the touchpad and the keyboard more, I like the MPP2 stylus protocol more. I just have a better feeling about this one.

Ultimately, I can say that this machine is at least as good, but I personally like it a lot better, especially for the price.

Note that these are just my personal experiences.

Conclusion:

I am really impressed and can't understand the hp hate at all, the device is just great and I have no problems with the linux support, I am excited to see how it goes the next few years and let you know if I see any more problems.