So let’s dive into it. What was this terrible device? And was it truly terrible?

The easy part: the 2-in-1 was an HP x2 10-p020nr. It came equipped with a 10" HD IPS display powered by a quad-core Intel Atom processor and 2GB of RAM. While it only came with 32GB of onboard eMMC storage you had the option of augmenting it with a microSD card. The tablet sported a small smattering of port options as well with one USB Type A, one USB Type C, and one micro-HDMI port. All of which were sensibly included in the body of the tablet portion of the machine which meant that I didn’t need to sacrifice connectivity options when I chose to detach the keyboard. Speaking of the keyboard, the tablet docked into the keyboard with strong and secure magnets which were much more reassuring in person than they were on paper. As an added perk that I wasn’t aware of at the time that I accepted the x2 it also came bundled with an HP active stylus with support for Windows Ink.

I thought that the days of netbooks were over and that I could finally nab an affordable second PC to get me through the mundane grind of the day. On paper the only think I didn’t look forward to was the magnetic locking mechanism, but ironically it would end up being one of the few things I actually liked about the x2 in practice. As it turned out netbooks had evolved, they’d taken on a new name, but they still weren’t going to work for me.

Upon unboxing the x2 I was met with a healthy dose of creaky plastic. That’s not to say that it felt entirely cheap, but the overall construction definitely belied the promise of an inexpensive, quality computer. Boot up was reasonably fast the first time around, but shortly thereafter I ran into the first couple of hurdles. To start things off the setup process for Windows 10 has become fairly streamlined as far as desktop operating systems go, almost mimicking the process by which you might setup an iPhone or an Android phone in 2017, but it still felt long. Long enough that I ran into my second problem with the x2: the portion of the battery that had been pre-charged had reached it’s end before the setup had. This did not bode well for battery life. So I plugged in the USB Type C charger (a first for me) and continued to chug along.

With Windows 10 finally setup, I needed to go about my usual retrofitting of the operating system with my requisite Google services and the applications I’ve become accustomed to on various mobile platforms. That process also took quite awhile and not because I was unsure of how to do it all. The next two major problems began to rear their ugly heads: the continued lack of developer support for the Windows App Store and the fact that Windows 10 still doesn’t run very effectively on a low power chipset with only 2GB of RAM.

I was able to get the basics downloaded. Your Hulus and Instagrams and Facebooks. It wasn’t terrible, you won’t typically find yourself left wanting one of your core applications, but the Windows App Store still feel pretty barren stacked up against contemporaries. You won’t be finding the next ‘it’ app on the Windows App Store, you’ll simply be getting by. As far as memory was concerned it really couldn’t handle more than a handful of light applications running at the same time without noticeable stutter bogging down the experience. Even sticking to strictly browsing the web on my browser of choice (can you guess which?) I was only able to juggle about 6 or 7 tabs, less if I started to introduce tabs of YouTube into the mix.

The active stylus admittedly worked pretty well and if I’d been in the market for a very basic setup that was only intended to be used for 1 or 2 things at a time of which note-taking was a primary use I may have been more forgiving, but it simply wasn’t cutting it for me. The marketing hype around the product over promised and under delivered. After struggling to reset and wipe the x2 (there wasn’t enough available memory after updating Windows so it had to be restored to a previous point first) I started to shop it around.