What does the modern laptop need? More wood, according to HP, which today announced the world’s first 2-in-1 convertible PCs to deploy authentic wood panelling.
At Computex, the PC maker is further shedding its old reputation for functional but ugly laptops with new wood options for the Envy 13, Envy x360 13, Envy x360 15 and Envy 17 notebooks.
HP is offering dark brown walnut with a black keyboard and other accents, while the white and silver variants feature different shades of birch wood. The company says each of the wooden editions are one-of-a-kind because, you know, the panelling used to be part of actual trees.
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Beyond the finish, they come with the choice of new, next-gen Intel Core processors or 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics.
They also include built-in Amazon Alexa support, Wake on Voice and Wake on Fingerprint functionality, as well as the Modern Standby feature, which keeps some apps and features running in the background even when you put the laptop to sleep.
The HP Envy Wood Series will be available this autumn, with prices to be unveiled closer to the time. They will arrive with the new Microsoft Precision trackpad drivers the company confirmed will be part of new Envy laptops.
The launch comes after HP rolled out the leather-coated Spectre Folio last autumn. The durable chrome-tanned leather 2-in-1 changed many people’s opinions of HPs design ambitions, and there’s a good chance the new Word Series Envys will do the same.
In our review of the HP Spectre Folio, Thomas Newton wrote: “The show-off value of the HP Spectre Folio is undeniable. Whenever I broke this out in work meetings, colleagues cooed and joked this was the kind of laptop Patrick Bateman would be proud to show off.”
However, it did leave him wishing there was a more animal-friendly option available too! No such worries with the wood edition.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
