HP Spectre x360
That’s what makes HP’s latest Spectre x360 so interesting. It has the same basic spec sheet as countless other laptops, and from a distance, even looks similar to many others. But in a year that’s been full of laptop disappointments, the Spectre x360’s cohesive design and lack of compromises has been a breath of fresh air.
The Spectre x360 is a 13-inch convertible laptop that sits at the top of HP’s consumer range and starts at $1,049. It hits all the right marks for a great laptop: it’s thin, it’s light, it’s powerful, and it has great battery life. It has a full touchscreen, a great keyboard, a spacious and responsive trackpad, and both traditional USB Type-A and forward-looking USB Type-C ports. On top of all that, it looks great.
The Spectre x360 is HP's newest flagship notebook. It's also probably the closest you'll get to seeing Microsoft build its own laptop. You see, though the machine has Hewlett-Packard's name on it, HP designed it in close collaboration with engineers from the Windows team, optimizing everything from the fan noise to the screen's color gamut. The result is a well-built laptop with fast performance, long battery life and a nearly bloatware-free version of Windows. And at $900 to start, it undercuts almost all of its rivals. Is there anything not to like?
With its 15.6in size, the Spectre x360 measures 356 x 251 x 179mm. It’s no light laptop either at 2.01kg, meaning carrying it around can be a strenuous task. On the plus side, HP does provide a faux-leather carrying case in the box, a nice touch of class.
On the right side of the laptop, there are two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C ports, one of which can be used to transfer data and connect an external monitor, while the left side has HP’s Sleep and Charge, allowing you to power other devices while your laptop is asleep or hibernating.
An HDMI port and a volume rocker is found on this side of the laptop along with a multi-format SD card reader, a regular USB Type-A 3.1 port, a headphone/mic combo jack and the illuminated power button. There are vents on either side of the laptop and a large one at the bottom, which provides enough breathing space for the laptop’s internals.
As for audio, that’s delivered by dual upward-firing Bang & Olufsen-branded speakers situated either side of the keyboard, which can be fine-tuned to your liking through the Bang & Olufsen Audio Control desktop app. I found sound quality perfectly acceptable for a laptop of this size and when used as a tablet, the speakers resonate effectively under the screen. You can’t expect deep bass response or a fantastic treble extension, however. For that you should rely on an external Bluetooth speaker.
There’s also a Full HD 88-degree wide-angle webcam above the screen, equipped with dual microphones for making video calls.
If you opt for a Spectre x360 with 4K display, on top of the higher resolution, you get even better color range that covers 131.5 percent of the sRGB spectrum, while brightness and accuracy remain nearly the same at 305 nits and 1.53, respectively. And when you put this all together, when we watched the trailer for Justice League, watching the glinting Batarang fly in slowmo towards The Flash in 4K is downright mesmerizing.
The pen does have another convenient feature, though. It has two customizable buttons near the tip that lay flush with the surface of the pen. Using HP's Pen Control desktop app, you can change the function of each button to be nearly anything you want. By default, the top button right-clicks on the screen, while the bottom turns the pen's input into an eraser. Each button has over 20 options, ranging from the simple Undo function to switching between apps, launching the task manager, and disabling the pen completely.
We can't wait for when we can finally ditch the boxy, USB ports of old for the slim, multipurpose USB Type-C ports of the future. But until that happens, we're going to need both varieties in order to avoid carrying annoying dongles around. Thankfully, the Spectre obliges, with one USB 3.1 Type- A port and two USB-C ports that support Thunderbolt 3 and power delivery. That means if you have the right dock or monitor, you can use a single cord to carry video and data and recharge the system, instead relying on the bird's nest of wires you'd need on older systems.
The one feature I kind of wish HP hadn't removed from previous versions is some sort of SD or microSD card slot. For me, the Spectre x360 would be an almost perfect mobile photo-editing and presentation platform. However, in order to transfer photos from my camera to the laptop, I'd need to carry an external card reader or USB cable.
HP Spectre x360 Webcam
This positioning prevents that awkward under-chin/neck view that you get on systems like the XPS 13 that have their webcams below the screen, and the dual mics and full-HD camera work together flawlessly to provide a premium video-chatting experience. Audio was crystal-clear, and while I could do with a little less grain, pictures and videos looked pretty sharp, too.
The specs of our current $1,600 review unit largely mirror that of the previous Spectre x360 that we reviewed: a Kaby Lake Intel Core i7-7500U processor, 16GB of LPDDR3/1866 RAM, a 512GB Samsung PM961 PCI-NVMe SSD, Thunderbolt 3, and a Windows Hello–compatible camera. What sets it apart is that 4K IPS touchscreen with active pen support. We’re going to jump straight to what we assume everyone wants to know first: What it’s like to use the pen and the 4K touchscreen.
As a disclaimer, I’m no artist (as you can see by my penmanship alone), so we're unable to comment in depth on how well the Spectre handles sensitivity when doing inking, shading, and the like. But we can say that the Spectre x360 works well for taking notes and sketching out rough diagrams. It feels natural, and the results look crisp. Palm rejection did fail me on occasion, but we could tie it to hesitant placement of my hand on the screen.
As for the 4K display, it’s gorgeous. So many pixels on a 13.3-inch screen may seem like overkill, but it’s hard not to like all the detail you can see in photos and 4K video if you work with (or view) them often. Overall, the panel is crisp and fairly bright, with a max output of 340 nits.
Of course, with a 4K display comes a performance trade-off. Surprisingly, the Spectre x360 showed dips in areas beyond what we expected, though those did little to affect the overall day-to-day experience.
HP Spectre x360 Price
The HP Spectre x360 can be found in both 13.3in and 15.6in variants. There are eight models in the product line, which you can compare for yourself on HP’s website.
The model we're reviewing is the 15-bl000na, a 15.6in laptop with a 4K display, an Intel Core i7-7500U, a 512GB SSD, discrete Nvidia GeForce 940MX graphics and a price if £1,500. You can buy it on Amazon and directly from HP’s website. The cheapest model is the £1,200 13.3in variant with an Intel Core i5 processor and no discrete graphics card.
We found a few laptops that compete with the HP but none that offer a similar combination of specifications. There’s the Dell XPS 13 (2016) £1,450 and the £1,300 Lenovo Yoga 910, but neither of these come with discrete graphics. The closest is probably the Dell XPS 15 at around £1,500, but this is a regular laptop and doesn’t offer quite the same feature set as the HP Spectre x360.
Conclusion
We’re still on the fence about whether the Spectre x360 is the best ultrabook laptop, but it undoubtedly still crushes the other convertibles out there. HP has thoughtfully curated bleeding-edge technology into a single machine that has tremendous value.
Just look at the math. If you want a convertible, you can opt for Lenovo’s Yoga 910, which actually gets you slightly better specs but no active pen support. A Core i7-7500U system with 16GB DDR4/2133 RAM, 512GB PCIe SSD, 13.9-inch 4K UHD IPS touchscreen, and fingerprint reader costs $1,500. That's cheaper, but keep in mind the Yoga 910 is also a larger and heavier notebook.
If you want a compact convertible with active pen support, there’s Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1, but you’ll forgo a 4K screen and some performance. The XPS 13 2-in-1 comes equipped with a low-power Core i7-7Y75 processor, 16GB LPDDR3/1866 RAM, a 512GB PCIe SSD, QHD+ (3200x1800) touchscreen, and a fingerprint reader. If you want a pen, it costs an additional $50. Total: $1,850
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Pitting the Spectre x360 against our current ultrabook champion, the Dell XPS 13, you’ll pay $1900 for a Core i7-7500U CPU, 16GB LPDDR3/1866 RAM, a 512GB PCIe SSD, and a QHD+ (3200x1800) touchscreen. You’ll also drop an additional $25 for a fingerprint reader if you want to use Windows Hello, and there is no active pen support nor option for an IR camera that enables Windows Hello facial recognition.
Specs aren’t everything, of course. You might want longer battery life, or a more compact package, or more ports. But if we had to recommend one laptop to someone who didn’t want to think too much about their purchase and wanted the best of everything, this is absolutely still it.
The Most Desirable Laptop
Building a great, premium laptop is surprisingly hard. Despite the fact that every company, from Apple to Dell to Lenovo and everyone in between, pulls from the same basic parts bin — Intel processors; high-quality IPS displays; aluminum chassis; large, glass trackpads; USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 — putting all of those parts together in a competent, no-compromise laptop is a sadly rare feat.
That’s what makes HP’s latest Spectre x360 so interesting. It has the same basic spec sheet as countless other laptops, and from a distance, even looks similar to many others. But in a year that’s been full of laptop disappointments, the Spectre x360’s cohesive design and lack of compromises has been a breath of fresh air.
The Spectre x360 is a 13-inch convertible laptop that sits at the top of HP’s consumer range and starts at $1,049. It hits all the right marks for a great laptop: it’s thin, it’s light, it’s powerful, and it has great battery life. It has a full touchscreen, a great keyboard, a spacious and responsive trackpad, and both traditional USB Type-A and forward-looking USB Type-C ports. On top of all that, it looks great.
The Spectre x360 is HP's newest flagship notebook. It's also probably the closest you'll get to seeing Microsoft build its own laptop. You see, though the machine has Hewlett-Packard's name on it, HP designed it in close collaboration with engineers from the Windows team, optimizing everything from the fan noise to the screen's color gamut. The result is a well-built laptop with fast performance, long battery life and a nearly bloatware-free version of Windows. And at $900 to start, it undercuts almost all of its rivals. Is there anything not to like?
HP Spectre x360 Design
The HP Spectre x360 is designed to perfection. It’s a 2-in-1 convertible laptop, which means the screen folds over rather than detaches, and it’s lovely to look at. Copper accents glint out from the x360’s “Dark Ash Silver” body, which is built entirely from aluminium.
With its 15.6in size, the Spectre x360 measures 356 x 251 x 179mm. It’s no light laptop either at 2.01kg, meaning carrying it around can be a strenuous task. On the plus side, HP does provide a faux-leather carrying case in the box, a nice touch of class.
On the right side of the laptop, there are two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C ports, one of which can be used to transfer data and connect an external monitor, while the left side has HP’s Sleep and Charge, allowing you to power other devices while your laptop is asleep or hibernating.
An HDMI port and a volume rocker is found on this side of the laptop along with a multi-format SD card reader, a regular USB Type-A 3.1 port, a headphone/mic combo jack and the illuminated power button. There are vents on either side of the laptop and a large one at the bottom, which provides enough breathing space for the laptop’s internals.
As for audio, that’s delivered by dual upward-firing Bang & Olufsen-branded speakers situated either side of the keyboard, which can be fine-tuned to your liking through the Bang & Olufsen Audio Control desktop app. I found sound quality perfectly acceptable for a laptop of this size and when used as a tablet, the speakers resonate effectively under the screen. You can’t expect deep bass response or a fantastic treble extension, however. For that you should rely on an external Bluetooth speaker.
There’s also a Full HD 88-degree wide-angle webcam above the screen, equipped with dual microphones for making video calls.
HP Spectre x360 Display
The Spectre x360’s screen is a glorious 4K (3,840 x 2,160) IPS unit with multitouch input and stylus support, and when used in tablet mode the display responds well to touch input. HP has also concentrated on providing a low-profile bezel on either side of the display too, which is nice to see, but the bottom bezel is a tad distracting due to its size.
The panel itself perfectly competent, but it isn’t outstanding. Colour rendition is middling, with 85.4% sRGB gamut coverage colour. It isn’t the most colour accurate of screens, though, with an average Delta E of 2.76 (lower is better). It’s super bright, though, and you won’t have any trouble using it in outdoors with maximum brightness reaching 345cd/m².
HP Spectre x360 Keyboard and touchpad
We love nearly everything about the Spectre x360 15's keyboard. The keys are a hair smaller than those on my MacBook Air, but they're neither too small nor too big, and they allow me to type at my normal pace. Like the 13-inch mode, this convertible has an extra row of keys on the far-right side that let me access home/page up/page down/end features without Fn-key combinations. While these are useful, one feature got on my nerves.
The Home key sits next to the Backspace key, and we often hit it instead of deleting misspellings we was trying to fix. In WordPress or a text document, hitting the Home key brought my cursor to the front of the line we was typing. Many times, my corrections ended up misspelling words at the beginnings of my sentences instead of where we intended them to go.
The trackpad is super wide, measuring 5.5 x 2.74 inches, or about half the length of the key area. Its glass surface lets your finger move smoothly across its surface area, and it's pleasant to use. Sadly, it's not a Microsoft Precision Touchpad, which means it won't automatically support new Windows 10 trackpad gestures as they're added in future releases. While its wideness is useful in theory, we still found ourself mostly using the middle portion of the trackpad rather than taking advantage of its full width.
HP Spectre x360 Active Pen
The included N-Trig active pen will be useful for artists and note-takers alike. The pen is Windows Ink compatible, and it lets you write quick Sticky-Notes and draw sketches on a whim using Microsoft's software. But a suit of third-party apps are pen-ready as well. An active digitizer underneath the display and the tip on the active pen both support the standard 2,048 degrees of pressure sensitivity. It feels OK to use, but its performance is far from exceptional—after using the stylus on the Samsung Chromebook Pro, We wasn't used to the extra second or two of latency with this pen. It also needs a AAAA battery for power, so you'll need to worry about keeping a spare battery around. we wish HP had found a place in or on the Spectre x360 15 to house the pen—it's neither magnetic nor does it have an attachable holster or elastic band to keep it from getting lost.
The included N-Trig active pen will be useful for artists and note-takers alike. The pen is Windows Ink compatible, and it lets you write quick Sticky-Notes and draw sketches on a whim using Microsoft's software. But a suit of third-party apps are pen-ready as well. An active digitizer underneath the display and the tip on the active pen both support the standard 2,048 degrees of pressure sensitivity. It feels OK to use, but its performance is far from exceptional—after using the stylus on the Samsung Chromebook Pro, We wasn't used to the extra second or two of latency with this pen. It also needs a AAAA battery for power, so you'll need to worry about keeping a spare battery around. we wish HP had found a place in or on the Spectre x360 15 to house the pen—it's neither magnetic nor does it have an attachable holster or elastic band to keep it from getting lost.
The pen does have another convenient feature, though. It has two customizable buttons near the tip that lay flush with the surface of the pen. Using HP's Pen Control desktop app, you can change the function of each button to be nearly anything you want. By default, the top button right-clicks on the screen, while the bottom turns the pen's input into an eraser. Each button has over 20 options, ranging from the simple Undo function to switching between apps, launching the task manager, and disabling the pen completely.
HP Spectre x360 Speakers
With a clever quad-speaker setup by Bang & Olufsen, the Spectre x360 is built to deliver an optimal listening experience in any mode. Two speakers are hidden beneath the grille between the keyboard and the hinge, while the other two are located on either side of the system's bottom. This gives you fuller, more immersive audio, with pretty potent volume that easily fills up a room. And, unlike with a lot of other laptops, I didn't hear any hissing or distortion at max volume.
When I listened to Breakbot's "My Toy," the Spectre x360 nailed Yasmin's bubbly vocals, and while I could have used a little more punch to bring out the French DJ's funky bass, the quad speakers definitely did their job.
HP Spectre x360 Ports
HP Spectre x360 Webcam
While the Spectre x360's side bezels have shrunk down to almost nothing, HP smartly left a bit of room above the display for two cameras: a 1920 x 1080 camera for videos and a slick IR cam for unlocking the system via Windows hello. There's also a pair of mics for stereo voice recording.
This positioning prevents that awkward under-chin/neck view that you get on systems like the XPS 13 that have their webcams below the screen, and the dual mics and full-HD camera work together flawlessly to provide a premium video-chatting experience. Audio was crystal-clear, and while I could do with a little less grain, pictures and videos looked pretty sharp, too.
HP Spectre x360 Performance
The specs of our current $1,600 review unit largely mirror that of the previous Spectre x360 that we reviewed: a Kaby Lake Intel Core i7-7500U processor, 16GB of LPDDR3/1866 RAM, a 512GB Samsung PM961 PCI-NVMe SSD, Thunderbolt 3, and a Windows Hello–compatible camera. What sets it apart is that 4K IPS touchscreen with active pen support. We’re going to jump straight to what we assume everyone wants to know first: What it’s like to use the pen and the 4K touchscreen.
As a disclaimer, I’m no artist (as you can see by my penmanship alone), so we're unable to comment in depth on how well the Spectre handles sensitivity when doing inking, shading, and the like. But we can say that the Spectre x360 works well for taking notes and sketching out rough diagrams. It feels natural, and the results look crisp. Palm rejection did fail me on occasion, but we could tie it to hesitant placement of my hand on the screen.
Of course, with a 4K display comes a performance trade-off. Surprisingly, the Spectre x360 showed dips in areas beyond what we expected, though those did little to affect the overall day-to-day experience.
HP Spectre x360 Battery life
HP claims the Spectre x360 15 can get up to 13 hours of battery life. It didn't last that long in our testing.
On average, the Spectre x360 15 lasted 645 minutes, or just shy of 11 hours, on our default Wi-Fi test. On our graphics-intensive battery test, it lasted 279 minutes, or just about 4.5 hours. While those numbers are decent, they're less than what HP expected. Also, the 15-inch model only lasted 34 minutes longer on our Wi-Fi test than the 13-inch model did (645 minutes compared to 611 minutes).
You may want to stay near a power source when you're coming up on the end of a long work day.
You may want to stay near a power source when you're coming up on the end of a long work day.
The HP Spectre x360 can be found in both 13.3in and 15.6in variants. There are eight models in the product line, which you can compare for yourself on HP’s website.
The model we're reviewing is the 15-bl000na, a 15.6in laptop with a 4K display, an Intel Core i7-7500U, a 512GB SSD, discrete Nvidia GeForce 940MX graphics and a price if £1,500. You can buy it on Amazon and directly from HP’s website. The cheapest model is the £1,200 13.3in variant with an Intel Core i5 processor and no discrete graphics card.
We found a few laptops that compete with the HP but none that offer a similar combination of specifications. There’s the Dell XPS 13 (2016) £1,450 and the £1,300 Lenovo Yoga 910, but neither of these come with discrete graphics. The closest is probably the Dell XPS 15 at around £1,500, but this is a regular laptop and doesn’t offer quite the same feature set as the HP Spectre x360.
We’re still on the fence about whether the Spectre x360 is the best ultrabook laptop, but it undoubtedly still crushes the other convertibles out there. HP has thoughtfully curated bleeding-edge technology into a single machine that has tremendous value.
Just look at the math. If you want a convertible, you can opt for Lenovo’s Yoga 910, which actually gets you slightly better specs but no active pen support. A Core i7-7500U system with 16GB DDR4/2133 RAM, 512GB PCIe SSD, 13.9-inch 4K UHD IPS touchscreen, and fingerprint reader costs $1,500. That's cheaper, but keep in mind the Yoga 910 is also a larger and heavier notebook.
If you want a compact convertible with active pen support, there’s Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1, but you’ll forgo a 4K screen and some performance. The XPS 13 2-in-1 comes equipped with a low-power Core i7-7Y75 processor, 16GB LPDDR3/1866 RAM, a 512GB PCIe SSD, QHD+ (3200x1800) touchscreen, and a fingerprint reader. If you want a pen, it costs an additional $50. Total: $1,850
Pitting the Spectre x360 against our current ultrabook champion, the Dell XPS 13, you’ll pay $1900 for a Core i7-7500U CPU, 16GB LPDDR3/1866 RAM, a 512GB PCIe SSD, and a QHD+ (3200x1800) touchscreen. You’ll also drop an additional $25 for a fingerprint reader if you want to use Windows Hello, and there is no active pen support nor option for an IR camera that enables Windows Hello facial recognition.
Specs aren’t everything, of course. You might want longer battery life, or a more compact package, or more ports. But if we had to recommend one laptop to someone who didn’t want to think too much about their purchase and wanted the best of everything, this is absolutely still it.
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