HP Envy Move review: An all-in-one you can take anywhere – around the home

The HP Envy Move is a bit of a mixed bag in that it is a great PC, but not necessarily something you would think of as a work machine. It's an all-in-one with a handle on the top and a kangaroo-style pouch on the back for a wireless keyboard and trackpad unit. The idea is that you can move it from room to room, office to kitchen, for example, where it will be used in different ways. 

However, it feels like a hard sell for IT decision-makers and the likelihood is that dedicated home workers will have to make their own purchases as it appears to have more appeal as a lifestyle device than a work one. 

HP Envy Move: Design

Home working during the pandemic played a big role in the design of the Envy Move with HP taking feedback from customers as inspiration. That is the reason the machine has a kangaroo-style pouch on the back of the monitor for the keyboard and a rubber handle at the top of its 23.8in all-white monitor. The retractable feet make it easy to just sit down on any flat surface. However, the machine isn't completely 'portable'. To clarify, it's for moving around the home or office – you can't carry this on your commute, it's too heavy and conspicuous, and there is no protection on that display, so you'll break it. 

At 4.1kg, you might even end up with some muscle gains if you move it about quite regularly – this is a desktop PC, after all – and it isn't compact enough to fit everywhere, but it slots in most spaces like a small desk, a kitchen counter, the floor in your workout space. The monitor is 14.4in tall and 21.7in wide, so it is slightly more compact than a standard desktop monitor. The downside though is that it isn't adjustable, and there's no tilt or slider to lift the screen up or down – very much a one-size-fits-all affair. 

The overall look, however, is very smart, with minimalist bezels, a nice mesh bar at the bottom, a snazzy HP logo in italics on the back, and buttons hidden on either side of the monitor. There is also a webcam slider right at the top. Bear in mind that the retractable feet stick out more at the rear – by about 3in – so it won't sit right at the back of your desk. 

There are ports galore on either side of the monitor, with a USB Type-C, USB Type-A, an HDMI slot, plus a nifty security slide for the webcam. You also have support for WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 and it has Windows 11 Home preinstalled. The webcam itself is worth noting; it records video at 1440p and this means its detail and color accuracy are far better than the standard offered by 1080p – so you'll look better in your virtual meetings. 

As the main idea is to give home workers a multi-faceted PC that can go anywhere in the house, from a design perspective the Envy has nailed that part. We found it easy to use in all its intended guises.

HP Envy Move: Display, Keyboard, and trackpad

The monitor on the Envy Move is strikingly beautiful. Its 23.8in display is packed with color and also offers a very responsive touchscreen experience. And, that QHD panel with the 2560 x 1440 resolution, makes working across multiple windows a lot more comfortable. An extra benefit here is that the Envy Move also makes a good second screen for your laptop.

In our colorimeter tests, the Envy Move offered up 96% sRGB color gamut coverage and around 70 DCI-P3. That was higher than the vastly more expensive Apple Studio Display for coverage (94.7%). 

Photo editing – professionally – is a stretch too far, but the color representation is good enough for some graphic design. Everything from a streaming site to a social media feed looks bright and beautiful. More pertinent to us here at ITPro is the white balance which helps you read your spreadsheets without straining your eyes. We measured peak brightness at 311cd/m2, which also helps. 

The trackpad and the keyboard are one, with the former making up the right-hand side of the keyboard. It makes sense when you realize there isn't any extra room in the pouch for a mouse – you can't even fit the power cable in there. However, the small space allocated to the trackpad is somewhat annoying, especially given the size of the screen – you literally can't scroll up from top to bottom with one swipe. 

Thankfully the keys are nice and punchy, with a good amount of travel. Typing is comfortable and you can pick up a decent speed. We found we had gotten used to the trackpad position after a day or two, with the left click action easy enough. Right-click and long scrolls are a little more cumbersome though and a wireless mouse would be a lot easier. 

HP Envy Move: Specs and performance

The Envy Move is powered by a modest 13th Gen Intel i5 chip (i5-1335U) with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. There are no other configurations here, but that shouldn't put you off because it is, from our experience, still quite nippy. 

With the main point of the Envy Move being adaptability, its speed is a key factor and we found no lag when it came to switching modes, or multiple tabs and applications. Its GeekBench 6 CPU scores also backed this up: 2,123 for single-core and 6,005 for multi-core. While that is nothing on a M2 Mac Mini or even a MacBook, it is still very quick. 

Our only concern here is battery life, which isn't great. Off the mains, the Envy can last for a round 4, depending on the tasks. That will no doubt decrease with age, but it isn't a big issue as you'll largely use it in places near a power socket. 

HP Envy Move: Is it worth it?

The answer here is complicated. As a device with many different use cases, the HP Envy Move is very much worth $899.99. The display is great, the design is innovative and the processor is snappy. It's hard to find fault in the build. For those who work from home, and families that want an adaptable PC – presumably those in smaller premises – the HP Envy Move is more than enough. 

However, we can't recommend this specifically for work purposes. There aren't enough real standout business functions and the idea that a business would sanction such a purchase is laughable. A business machine with so much to offer your home life feels very low on the priorities of an IT manager. Reliability and durability are the main concerns for most businesses, so if you have bosses who see this as a must-have work device then you're super lucky. 

HP Envy Move 23.8in specifications