Hands On With HP's Motion Sensing Laptop and More

The holidays are just around the corner, and HP is teasing several cool new products to come. At a New York event held last night, the PC maker had plenty of new toys to show off, from desktops that recline to laptops with motion control. At the event, we had a few moments with three new products: the new HP Chromebook 14, the HP Envy Recline All-in-One desktops, and the HP Envy 17 Leap Motion SE TouchSmart notebook with built-in motion control.

A Laptop that Leaps
The newest member of HP's premium Envy line of laptops has an unusual feature - 3D motion control. In addition to regular features like a keyboard, touchpad, and webcam, the 17-inch HP Envy special edition laptop has a miniaturized Leap Motion Controller built into the palm rest. The new embedded microsensor is a smaller version of the Leap Motion Controller that went on sale earlier this year, and brings 3D gesture control to the PC.

The new sensor allows for 3D motion sensing, letting you gesture in the air above the sensor to interact with an array of apps and usability tools on the PC. Using the sensor is fairly intuitive, and can be turned on and off with a simple keystroke combination. Leap Motion's app store, Airspace, is filled with free and paid apps that take advantage of the sensor's unique capabilities, so it's not just hardware for hardware's sake.

The HP Envy 17 Leap Motion SE TouchSmart notebook will sell for $1,049.99, but the release date has not been specified.

Desktops that Recline
HP's also trying something new with its all-in-one PCs, with new designs featuring an adjustable stand with a distinctive recline mode, where the display lowers to an angle below the edge of a desk or table. The low-hanging position is ideal for extended touch-screen use, putting the display nearer your lap for a more comfortable experience when typing on the screen or using both hands for applications like painting or games.

The HP Envy Recline 27 TouchSmart All-in-One offers more than just a broad, adjustable touch screen. The 27-inch PC is outfitted with up to an Intel Core i7 fourth-generation quad-core processor, up to 16GB of RAM, a 1TB hybrid drive, and Nvidia graphics. The Envy Recline 27 TouchSmart All-in-One starts at $1,399.99, and is available to order now.

The HP Envy Recline 23 TouchSmart All-in-One Beats Special Edition boasts many of the same features as the larger Envy Recline 27, but adds to it a distinctive red and black color scheme and potent Beats Audio speakers and headphone amplification. Offering an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a two-year warranty, the HP Envy Recline 23 TouchSmart All-in-One Beats Special Edition starts at $1,099.

Colorful Chromebooks
There's a new colorful Chromebook on the way. First seen at IDF, the new HP Chromebook 14 gets a slight redesign from the previous Pavilion Chromebook 14, with molded plastic construction, swooping curves similar to those seen on the HP Envy, and available in three colors: coral peach, snow white, ocean turquoise. The new Chromebook is equipped with an as-yet-unspecified Intel Haswell processor, a 16GB solid-state drive (SSD), features a 14-inch display, an estimated battery life of up to 9.5 hours, and comes with 100GB of free Google Drive storage for two years.

In the few minutes we got to spend with the new Chromebook 14, the design feels surprisingly solid. This is in spite of the fact that the new Chromebook 14 is (to borrow a phrase from Apple) "unapologetically plastic" and inexpensive. The new laptop features the unique Chrome keyboard, which swaps out basic functions for more wWb-friendly options, for example replacing the Caps Lock key with a dedicated Google Search button. It also has a fairly large clickpad, which will support one- and two-fingered gestures in Chrome OS.

The new HP Chromebook 14 will go on sale later this year, starting at $299.99.