HP Envy Sleekbook 6-1010us Pro Reviews

HP has positioned its AMD-powered Envy Sleekbook 6-1010us as a lower-priced alternative to Intel-certified ultrabooks. Unfortunately, the axiom that "you get what you pay for" applies here. It's underpowered, has a mediocre screen, and may feel slow even when brand new.

The ultrabook-like HP Envy Sleekbook 6 is the sharpest-looking $599 laptop you're likely to find, although you'll pay a performance premium.

For those who care about light gaming but still want a slim, low-cost machine for everyday computing tasks, the Envy Sleekbook's AMD chip gives it an edge. However, that chip does cut both ways; its performance lags well behind pricier Intel-based options when it comes to productivity and media-conversion performance. We think that's a fair trade-off if you value graphics performance but don't need the fastest processor speed on the market. We would certainly have appreciated it had HP paired a 32GB mSATA SSD with the hard drive for faster bootups and program launches. (We saw this arrangement on the Editors' Choice-winning Sony VAIO T Series.) Note, however, this SSD-caching technology employs support that has been incorporated into recent Intel chipsets, so it's probably not likely to be implemented anytime soon on an AMD-based system.