Tech Advisor – October 2019

OCTOBER 2019 • TECH ADVISOR 53

BUYING GUIDE

full aluminium shell, MacBook Pro style power and even

somelow-levelgamingskills.This 2019 versiontweaks

a fewpartswithoutalteringthe original appeal, that

of a lower-cost laptop with the same visual impact as a

muchmoreexpensiveone.Soit rivalsthelikesofDell’s

XPS 13 (page 64 ), Asus’sZenBookS13 (page 88) and

the Huawei MateBook 13 (page 96).

What’s new? HP has switched to the new Nvidia

MX250 GPU. The bad news: it makes virtually no

difference. The trackpad experience is hugely improved

in some ways, but its surface is now plastic rather than

glass. Display quality has been bumped-up, with much

better colour reproduction, brightness and contrast.

We hoped for a little more dynamism, and the

trackpaddowngradestings.Butyoustillgeta

laptopwithpowertomatcha £1,750MacBookPro,

forlessthanthecostoftheancient£949MacBook

Airfrom 2017. As ever, the HP Envy 13 is a great deal.

The HP Envy
13’s design is
similar to Apple’s
MacBook