Hp Spectre x360
Hp Spectre x360 is the best in its class, but one thing hides it from the greatness Pros Well priced with many settings.
To choose from Unmatched performance in its class Pixel-perfect 4K display Cons Short battery life Advertising.
Table of Contents
What do you need to Know?
- As 2-in-1 ultraportable laptops advance, HP’s Specter x360 is at the peak of greatness.
- A minor obstacle is in your way; it’s well-equipped with Intel’s newest 8th-gen Kaby Lake R processors.
- Choose up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. There is also the option of a dedicated GPU for gaming on the go.
Price and competition
- HP Spectre x360 comes in 13.3in and 15.6 invariants and neither are particularly cheap.
- With a total of eight models in the product line, the lower-end configuration, with an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage, costs £ 1,200.
- The model I’m reviewing is the 13-ae003na, a 13.3-inch 2-in-1 laptop with a 4K display, Intel’s Core i7-8550U processor. 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for £ 1,700.
- This model has no dedicated AMD Radeon RX Vega M graphics chip.
Performance And Battery Life
- The internals of the HP Specter x360 is impressive. This particular configuration runs a 1.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-8550U Kaby Lake R.
- Has 16GB of RAM and a 1TB PCIe SSD for super-fast data transfers and boot times.
- Unsurprisingly, the Specter x360 goes through everyday tasks. Expert Reviews benchmarks, which test images.
- And video editing speeds and how well the laptop copes with multitasking scored 56.
- It is a marginal improvement over last year’s model, but it is 80% faster than the Dell 2-in-1 Core Y-equipped XPS 13.
- Storage-wise, the 256GB and 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD configurations come with 8GB of RAM, but if you upgrade to a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD, you’ll have 16GB to play with.
- According to the AS SSD benchmark, these Samsung PCIe SSDs are blazingly fast, reaching 2,316MB / sec sequential read speeds and 1,095MB / sec sequential write speeds.
Design
- The HP Specter x360 is the very definition of a premium ultraportable. It’s a 2-in-1 convertible laptop.
- It means the screen folds up instead of separating like the Surface Book, and it’s adorable to look at.
- Copper accents shine through from the x360’s ‘Dark Ash Silver’ body, constructed entirely of aluminium.
- Weighing in at 1.29kg, it’s not the lightest hybrid, thanks to the high-touch 4K display, but it only measures 306 x 218 x 13.6mm.
Display
- The Specter x360’s display is a 4K (3,840 x 2,160) IPS unit with multi-touch input and pen support.
- And HP provides a low-profile bezel on either side of the screen, although the bottom is thick.
- The panel itself is much improved over last year’s model. Color reproduction is sound, with 97% sRGB gamut coverage.
- And the display is much more color-accurate, with an average Delta E of 2.14 (lower is better).
- It’s super bright too, and you won’t have a problem squinting at the display outdoors, with a maximum brightness of 327cd / m2.
Keyboard, Touchpad, And Stylus
- The x360’s glass-covered touchpad is more extensive than most, providing plenty of space for your finger to flourish.
- It is responsive and capable of performing Windows’ long list of multi-touch gestures without any inconvenience.
- The HP backlit keyboard is also a pleasure to use. Every keystroke feels heavy, with lots of positive and positive feedback.
- It’s always good that HP includes a stylus in the box at no extra cost, especially when Microsoft wants an extra fifty pounds for one when you buy the Surface Pro or Surface Book 2.
- This one works perfectly, and the laptop palm rejection works just fine. Effectively, too, disable capacitive touch input as soon as the stylus’ tip gets 1 cm closer to the screen.
- It has 102 pressure levels, battery life of 18 months (with 2-3 hours of use per day), but it is not sensitive to angle.
