If your laptop budget is under $500, chances are you'll do better with a Chromebook than a Windows PC. Take the $449 HP Chromebook x360 13b: It's not a status symbol, not that you'll find one at this price, but it's a capable online productivity partner with a 13.3-inch convertible touch screen that flips and folds from laptop into presentation and tablet modes. It also packs a peppy 128GB NVMe solid-state drive instead of slow, cramped eMMC flash storage. The 13b misses Editors' Choice consideration for being a bit short on memory and ports, but it's a likable consumer contender—even more likable on sale for $349.99 at this writing.

Another ARM Alternative

You can upgrade the Chromebook x360 13b with a 256GB drive for an extra $30 or a backlit keyboard for the same amount, but the $449.99 base model we tested is basically all the HP sells currently. The 1,920-by-1,080-pixel display has an old-school 16:9 aspect ratio instead of a taller 16:10 or 3:2, surrounded by medium-thick bezels. (HP cites an 80.3% screen-to-body ratio.) The 128GB SSD is ample for ChromeOS, though the 4GB instead of 8GB of RAM is a little skimpy.

The CPU is a MediaTek Kompanio 1200, a 6-nanometer ARM chip matching the Acer Chromebook Spin 513's Kompanio 1380, except that its four Cortex-A78 performance cores peak at 2.6GHz instead of 3.0GHz with the Acer. The processor also has four Cortex-A55 efficient cores and five-core Mali-G57 integrated graphics.

Combining a metal lid and plastic body, the HP measures 0.66 by 12.1 by 8.2 inches, compared with 0.64 by 11.8 by 9.3 inches for the 3:2-aspect-ratio Acer Spin 513 and 0.68 by 12.7 by 8.8 inches for the 14-inch Acer Chromebook Spin 514. The HP Chromebook's weight lands between the two Acer convertibles, at 2.95 pounds.

The x360 13b feels sturdy with hardly any flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck, though the display wobbles when tapped in laptop mode. A slight trench or groove cut out of the front edge makes it easier to get a fingertip grip to lift the lid, and a tiny sliding shutter provides webcam privacy. Sadly, albeit expected at this price, you'll find no fingerprint reader.

You won't find an HDMI port here, either, so if you want to connect an external monitor you'll need a DisplayPort adapter for one of the two USB 3.2 Type-C ports. Those 5Gbps ports, suitable for the AC adapter, are located on either side. The one on the left is accompanied by a USB 3.2 Type-A port, a power button, and a volume rocker; the one on the right by a microSD card slot and an audio jack.

The Display: Not the Brightest, But Not Bad

The 13.3-inch full HD touch screen has me tapping the top-row backlight-up key in hopes of getting just a little more brightness (HP rates it at 250 nits), but except for that it's fairly handsome. Colors are rich and well saturated, and viewing angles are broad. Fine details are reasonably sharp—as with other Chromebooks, you can choose from a handful of "looks like" or scaled resolutions, the default being 1,536 by 864, to avoid squinty-small icons or screen elements.

Contrast is fairly decent, though the minimal brightness means similar shades in dark areas blur into each other. White backgrounds are clean instead of grayish or dingy, helped by the 2-in-1 hinges letting you tilt the screen back as far as you like.

HP's B&O (Bang & Olufsen) logo on the palm rest is a bit of an exaggeration, but sound from the bottom-mounted speakers is better than you'd expect from a low-cost Chromebook; not too harsh or tinny even at high volume. You won't hear much bass, but you can make out overlapping tracks. On the other hand, the webcam is indeed cheap. Its images are tolerably well-lit and colorful without much static, but their low 720p (instead of 1080p) resolution makes them blurry and blotchy.

I am surprised at how much I miss the backlighting, but the x360 13b's keyboard provides a passable typing experience. It's shallow, so your fingers seem to be hitting a hard surface that would prove tiring after a few hours, but it also has a snappy feel. The cursor-arrow keys are in HP's usual awkward row, with half-height up and down arrows stacked between full-size left and right, instead of the preferable inverted T. A decently sized, buttonless touchpad clicks and glides smoothly.

Like other Chromebooks, the 13b comes with 100GB of Google One cloud storage for a year plus three-month trials of YouTube Premium and Canva Pro. HP throws in its QuickDrop utility for transferring files between your laptop and phone, and the company includes a trial of the $29.99-per-year Concepts sketching app.

Testing the HP Chromebook x360 13b: Half a Step Off Pace

For our benchmark charts, we compared the HP x360 13b with three other Chromebooks in the same price ballpark. The non-convertible Acer Chromebook 514 uses an older MediaTek Kompanio CPU, while the 16-inch Lenovo 5i Chromebook has an Intel Core i3 chip.

The third is another 13.3-inch 2-in-1, albeit a detachable rather than a convertible—the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook, which flaunts a spiffy OLED screen. The Acer Chromebook Spin 514, which costs $250 more than the HP despite settling for eMMC storage, pulled ahead with its potent AMD Ryzen 5 processor to become our latest Editors' Choice winner.

We test Chromebooks with three overall performance benchmark suites—one ChromeOS, one Android, and one online. The first, CrXPRT 2 by Principled Technologies, measures how quickly a system performs everyday tasks in six workloads such as applying photo effects, graphing a stock portfolio, analyzing DNA sequences, and generating 3D shapes using WebGL.

The second, UL's PCMark for Android Work 3.0, performs assorted productivity operations in a smartphone-style window. Finally, Basemark Web 3.0 runs in a browser tab to combine low-level JavaScript calculations with CSS and WebGL content. All three yield numeric scores; higher numbers are better.

Years of testing have taught us that Chromebooks with ARM processors have only tepid performance compared with rivals with x86 chips from Intel and AMD. The latest Kompanio CPUs close the gap a bit, so the HP topped the older Acer 514 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Duet in CrXPRT 2 and Basemark Web. However, the HP trailed them in PCMark for Android, and it was spanked by the Lenovo 5i and Spin 514. The HP 13b should be fine for Google Workspace documents and everyday browsing, but likely isn't a smart choice for Android gaming.

We also run an Android CPU benchmark, the multi-core Geekbench test by Primate Labs. An Android GPU test, GFXBench 5.0, stress-tests both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering that exercises graphics and compute shaders, reporting results in frames per second (fps).

Finally, to test every Chromebook's battery, we loop a 720p video file with screen brightness set at 50%, volume at 100%, and Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting disabled until the system quits. If we can't find enough onboard storage for the 69GB video, we use an external SSD plugged into a USB port.

The HP didn't impress in Geekbench, or in the one GFXBench subtest it completed. (It oddly failed to run the Car Chase module.) HP's 2-in-1 Chromebook redeemed itself with almost 15 hours of stamina in our battery rundown, second only to the IdeaPad tablet. So, a full day of office or schoolwork, plus some streaming entertainment, should be no problem on this Chromebook.

Verdict: A Reachable Convertible

With just 4GB of RAM, no HDMI port, and no bundled stylus for handwriting, sketching, or annotating, the HP Chromebook x360 13b clearly lands on the budget rather than premium side of the scale. Regardless, this Chromebook does its job easily, with satisfactory if not barn-burning performance, a decent screen and keyboard, and a handy 2-in-1 design. It's not one of our top three Chromebooks, but—especially when on sale for less than $350—it earns a spot in the top 10.