At first glance, the HP Envy X2 resembles a netbook, with a keyboard base and an 11.6-inch touch display. But the device turns into a tablet once the screen is detached from the base.

"When I want it to, it can also be a great tablet," said David Conrad, director of product management at HP.

The benefit of a hybrid device is it offers the best of both worlds for Windows 8, which doubles as a tablet and PC operating system, Conrad said. The tablet is 8.5 millimeters thick and 680 grams, and the display shows images at a 1366-by-768-pixel resolution.

The Envy X2 runs on Intel's low-power Atom processor code-named Clover Trail. The device will be sold with the keyboard base and 64GB of solid-state drive storage, and the configuration cannot be customized. Conrad said the device will become available during the latter part of the holiday season this year and will compete with hybrid devices that have been announced by PC makers like Asus, Acer, Lenovo and Samsung. Windows 8 will start shipping commercially on Oct. 26.

Though the device can operate independently as a tablet, HP views it as a laptop first and people have to buy the keyboard base, Conrad said. The dock has an SD card slot, USB ports and a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) port. The device has two batteries -- one in the base and the other in the tablet. The device offers more than eight hours of battery life in laptop mode. It has NFC capabilities, a high-definition webcam on the front and an 8.0-megapixel camera on the back. An optional stylus is available.