HP has been treating its premium Spectre line like fine
jewelry for the last few years now with an emphasis on flashy designs and
thinness they've looked good especially for HP laptops but now with the latest
spectre x360 13-inch the company finally has an ultraportable that would look
right at home alongside gold and diamond.
HP finally modernized the x360 with vastly thinner screen bezels
and the smaller footprint it's a high point for the company and together with
Dells XPS 13 2 & 1 the new x360 is a sign that PC makers are truly
beginning to perfect their craft.
Much progress HP is made with the specter though last year's
leather-bound folio was also a major design triumph that truly stood apart from
every other laptop on the market the new Spectre x-360 is the dramatic reinvention
like the folio but it builds on everything HP has been doing with the convertible
since 2015.
HP Spectre x360 Laptop Review:
HP spectre x360 is that it's practically all scream this revamped
model features a 90% display to body ratio compared to 78% last year. HP
basically took a cleaver to the chunky bezels at the top and bottom of the 13.3
inch display and it looks like the company took a scalpel to the side bezels
which are ever so slightly thinner the result is a screen that dominates the
laptop it practically looks like it's hovering in the air the rest of the x360
s design complements that massive screen it's metal cases honed to perfection
and it's diamond-cut angular edges help it stand apart from a sea of
utilitarian laptops most of that look is carried over from last year's model
but still holds up today the only glaring aesthetic issues are the prominent
hinges which allow you to fold the X360 into a tent formation or a large
tablet, but Dells latest convertible so it's possible to hide those hinges a
bit more while still being pretty flexible it's a small nitpick but it's
something that distracts a bit from these spectres glorious screen this year
you can equip the X 360 with either a 1080p or 4k AMOLED touchscreen I'm more
intrigued by the AMOLED aspect of that premium upgrade you can't really beat
that contrast but it'll also eat into your battery life our review unit was equipped
with the 10 P screen which was bold and bright enough for editing photos and
streaming HDR video I could tell it wasn't as bright as the XPS 13 - and one
though which also features Dolby vision HDR and a slightly taller 16 by 10
aspect ratio HP match has shrink down the spectre x360 by 13% from last year it
now weighs 2.8 pounds which is less than the MacBook Air and many other Ultra portables
it's very compact but unlike LG's Graham series it also feels like a solid and
well bit machine.
HP also includes a sleek leather sleeve with the spectra to
protect it from the elements I find that a bit unnecessary but it fits with the
premium aesthetic the company is going for and at the very least it'll prevent
the x360 from getting the nicks and scratches that can quickly make a new
laptop seem weathered and old The Spectre x-360 also features a surprising
amount of functionality for something so thin there are two USB C ports for
charging and data a drop-down USB a connection for older devices and even a
micro SD card slot that means there's less of a reason to keep a dongle around
with the X 360 though you'll still need one for things like Ethernet and HDMI
like last year HP plates the power button and one USB C port along the rear
corner notches of the X360 which also helps it stand apart it would have been
nice to have one of those USB C ports on the left of the machine though so you
could charge it from either side there's also a super slim IR camera for
Windows hello face authentication at the top of the monitor that's something we
missed on the XPS 13 - and one which only features a fingerprint sensor the
spectres camera is terribly grainy and blurry unfortunately but that's the
price you pay for squeezing something into one of those tiny bezels the X 360
also has a fingerprint sensor if you don't quite trust Windows base mapping
biometrics yet thanks to that smaller frame the X360 now features a wide
edge-to-edge keyboard it's a larger key caps are pretty luxurious and I really
appreciate it just how deep the key travel is it feels reminiscent of Microsoft
Surface lineup this is one area where for many people HP has an advantage over
Dell well I got used to the XPS 13 - and one's fairly flat Maglev keyboard the spectre
x360 delivers the sort of typing experience PC enthusiasts crave it's trackpad
also feels very smooth and accurate though I wish it was larger like apple and
bells latest premium devices thankfully HP dumped the terrible synaptics
touchpad drivers from its last batch of machines and added a precision driver
this time around that gives the touchpad a much more modern feel and frankly
it's something the company needs to do for years as far as performance goes the
spectre x360 delivers most of what we've seen from other laptops with Intel's
10th gen CPUs it's plenty fast for daily tasks even when I'm juggling dozens of
tabs slack and other apps and intel's iris + graphics give it enough power to
play few games like overwatch although I had to lower the resolution of that
game down to 720p to get anywhere near 60fps that might not sound impressive
but it's a huge step forward from the weak integrated graphics until used to
rely on its enough power for the X 360 to play simpler and slower paced games
well - like minecraft and disco Elysium the laptop geek get a bit warm to the
touch when I was playing games or doing anything demanding as fans are noticeable
once they kick up
HP Spectre x360 Laptop Specifications:
HP reworked its cooling design from last year so at the very
least it should be quieter than the last X360 which sometimes sounded a bit
like an overeager jet engine when you're not gaming you can also expect to see
some solid battery life during our benchmark which involves looping an HD video
it lasted for a healthy 14 and a half hours almost exactly the same as the XPS
13 convertible the spectre x360 13 starts at $1,000 at the time of this review
with an Intel 10th gen Core i5 CPU eight gigabytes of RAM and a 256 gigabyte
SSD our review model goes for $1,200 which adds a more powerful i7 CPU and
doubles that storage to 512 gigabytes those prices are a bit better than the
XPS 13 - and one which starts at $9.99 with a meagre core i3 CPU and 4 gigabytes
of RAM matching that notebook up with HP's base specs will cost you $1,250 as
usual we recommend getting as much computer as you can from the start so if
you're going for the X360 be sure to spring for 16 gigabytes of RAM and 512
gigabytes of storage which will run you 1280 dollars with a core i7 processor
but revamped Spectre x-360 feels like a realization of a dream for HP it's one
of the most stylish Ultra portables we've ever seen without sacrificing power or
usability for more laptop reviews.