- When it comes to Ultrabooks,
The Dell XPS 13 and Surface Laptop 2 come to mind
as some of the nicest and best on the market.
But the HP Spectre x360 13 inch
may be the best value out of 'em all.
Today I'm gonna tell you what's new
and great about this laptop for 2019.
Stay tuned.
(techno music)
Alright the Spectre x360 has a special place in my heart,
it's the first HP laptop that came out in 2015
that really convinced me that HP can make a laptop
that I actually would want.
Since then, it's undergone quite a few revisions.
I wasn't that much in love with last year's,
which made some changes I didn't think was necessary.
They made some more changes again this year,
but wow, it's so good.
This new visual ID that they went for, this gem cut design
is really excellent.
And it's just an amazing feat
that their engineers have accomplished with it.
There's a lot going on with this laptop,
I still think it's probably the best value
for most people out there.
But there's still a couple things that really
bother me about it too.
Alright, let's get to the tour
and show you what's new with it for this year.
Alright, looking at the top of the Specter here,
you can see the HP logo, really nice design,
and they do have the antenna line here
for WiFi and Bluetooth.
HP's still very big at putting it on top of the display
for a maximum reception.
It does have a trade off though
which I'll show you when we talk about the display
in a minute.
Looking at the right hand side of this device,
there's a lot going on here.
We have a micro SD slot and, well this is new.
So this is a kill switch for the webcamera
so you just flick it over here.
And what it's doing, it's killing the camera basically
through an electrical circuit which is kinda nice.
You still don't know it's technically not working
I mean when we try to use a webcamera,
it won't work of course.
But I'm not sure it's as good as a slide cover
but it's still a nice option to have.
Over here you have a USB type C
as well as a headphone jack and a little LED
to let you know it's charging.
And it's also because you have another USB type C
over here in the corner.
Now these are full Thunderbolt 3,
with four PC PCIE lanes, so it should be very good.
And this whole corner design is super clever.
It's not just to make it look cool,
it's so when you have that power charger,
it shoots off kinda behind the laptop.
But it frees up the right hand side
so if you're using a mouse,
you won't have interference from cables.
It's actually very utilitarian and pretty a great design.
Looking at the left hand side,
you do get the power button on that back angle again,
and that's so you don't accidentally hit it
when holding it in tablet mode.
So while it may look cool,
it's also again, very utilitarian and I like that a lot.
You also have a USB type A for your old peripherals.
Now looking at the bottom of this device,
very clean design here I love that.
You have the nice intake vent here.
There are two fans on the inside which is very good.
The HP cooling system has been criticized in the past
I like this year's a lot, with dual fans
it just basically means you can have smaller fans
that run a little bit more quiet,
as opposed to one giant fan that gets really loud.
And it works very well here,
this laptop never gets very loud at all.
Sure, you'll hear it during updates
and everything like that but,
it's still a very cool and quiet system
and the thermals on this device are pretty nice as well.
And speaking of elegant design,
that air gets blown out the back here
through this ventilation system
which, again, I think just looks absolutely stunning.
Now you take a look here to the display,
and well it's a mixed bag actually.
It's a very good display, it is a 13.3 inch
full HD, there is a 4K option.
There's also a version with Sure View,
if you don't know what that is,
HP Sure View is a button you can hit
and it does masking of the screen
so onlookers can't see what's on your display.
It started with the EliteBook series
and has now worked it's way to Specter.
Overall though, nice display.
Bezels are well, they're kinda thin and kinda not right?
So on the side here you have very thin bezels,
slightly thinner from last year
and I do like how the top and bottom bezels
are more symmetrical, so that's kinda nice.
But I'll have to admit, they are kind of thick as well.
Now probably that's because the antenna system
is right there.
And that's the way HP does your devices.
They prefer to maximize throughput for the antenna system
and as a result here, it goes through the plastic.
So, you also do get a Windows Hello camera.
It works pretty well as well, it's a dual IR lens system.
It does stay on a little bit longer
than I would like after the effect.
But that's a simple bug fix I think.
Regarding color accuracy,
we're talking around 98, 99 percent SRGB.
And around 79 percent Adobe RGB.
And around 300 nits for brightness
which is actually very good.
It's not the highest we've seen
but it's, you know, good enough.
Overall though, the contrast and display on this
it's just a really good screen.
I really, really like it, it's just pleasant to look at.
It is glossy and supports touch, and supports pen
which we'll talk a little bit more about
in a few minutes here.
I just wish those bezels were a little bit thinner
but there you go.
Alright let's look at this keyboard deck here.
So you do get the audio system back here.
So you get two speakers, Bang & Olufsen quality.
Just really, really nice speakers actually,
HP's done a really good job
of improving audio on these devices.
You also get two more speakers on the bottom
which helps when you switch this to a tablet.
Overall though very good audio.
I just like the way it looks too with that grill,
I think it looks really sharp.
For the keyboard, I've reviewed these in the past,
I think HP makes some of the best keyboards on the market.
And that stands the truth here.
And this is such a good keyboard
just really enjoyable to type on.
Really good travel, probably about 1.2 millimeters.
Now the arrow keys are a little bit small over here
but, overall great design.
And I like the edge to edge look as well.
Another change for this year is,
they put the fingerprint from the side to the top deck,
as where it should be.
I think most people agree,
that's a great place for a fingerprint reader.
So in case you don't want to use the Windows Hello system
or you kill the camera and want to leave it off,
you can use a fingerprint reader as a nice backup.
Regarding the trackpad, really nice size.
This is HP's elongated design,
they've been doing this for a few years now.
Very smooth glass, pretty good feeling,
nice clickiness as well, but it uses Synaptics drivers.
You knew I was gonna say that.
They're not using Precision on this device
and well, that drives me nuts.
There's just no world where Synaptics is gonna be better.
For instance here, this is the Huawei MateBook X Pro,
which does have Precision drivers
and you can see here when I pinch and zoom
well, it is night and day difference with the
Precision's driver doing a bang up job
and the Synaptics one well, just being garbage.
So again HP, I'm gonna implore you
please change your drivers.
Now one great thing about this laptop is,
it does include a pen here.
So here is the HP pen that is included.
It does use Intrigue Technologies,
so this is basically the same as a Surface pen.
If you have a Surface pen, it will work here.
It's a pretty solid pen too, it's great for note taking,
and some mild artistry.
It's not quite as good I don't think as a Wacom pen
that they use in their higher end devices,
but this is still very good.
And the fact that it's included in the box,
well it's a nice addition.
However, there is no way to really attach it to this device
so you just have to carry it in your bag
and hope you don't lose it.
It doesn't have any magnets or any way to stick to it.
Something their EliteBook series does,
that this one does not.
Alright let's talk about the power and performance
of this device.
Now HP is sort of selling this as the
most power efficient and best battery life
for a 13 inch, two-in-one on the market.
And it's actually probably pretty true.
We'll talk about battery life in a second,
but let's go through the specs.
So we're talking about Core i7-8565U,
this is just pretty run of the par these days.
This is a Intel Whiskey Lake Processor.
It's really nice, 15 watt.
It does clock a little bit higher here
running a little bit warmer.
And with those dual fans it actually runs very well here,
you get better performance than last year.
It doesn't quite run as well as say
the Huawei MateBook X Pro,
which just has a better thermal profile on it,
but still a very good processor.
Speaking of that processor, HP has new software this year
called HP Command Center.
Which is something they've used in their gaming series,
but it's now in the UltraBook.
It's a stripped down version,
but it gives you thermal profiles
so you can run it cooler or warmer
depending on what you want.
And that affects the noise.
So if you are in an office setting,
and just say in a meeting, and you just don't want any fan,
well you hit that silent button
and well, it's gonna stay nice and quiet for you
which is really nice.
But if you want performance, you can do that as well.
Now it comes to RAM, you get eight or 16 gigabytes.
It is DDR4, so it's the good stuff that we want.
And the SSD,
Well we're using Western Digital this time around
with 256 gigs, so it gets very good performance.
Of course if you go to the 500 gig series
you're gonna get a little bit better performance
due to the dual and parallel nature of how SSD's work,
so just keep that in mind.
Now for graphics, nothing to tell here,
Intel UHD 620 which is going to be pretty basic again.
No MX150 or 250, the trade off you're gonna get
for the size and form factor.
It is a teeny laptop, even compared to the Dell XPS 13.
Now when it comes to battery life,
HP's claiming 22 hours which is definitely absurd.
It's gonna be around 10 hours
depending on the form factor you get,
whether it's full HD or 4K.
The 4K probably around eight hours
or a little bit less than that.
But yeah, full HD you could definitely get
say 10 hours out of this, it's very good battery life
and I like the performance out of it.
Now another big change to this year, is connectivity.
So they're using the Intel 9560,
it's gigabit class wifi on here.
It's a really good performer.
And when you combine it with the antenna
on the top of the display, which gives you those fat bezels,
well you still get very good throughput on this
I had very good reception so
that's really nice to have.
There's also now an option for LTE
if you want that as well
you can go through HP's website and configure that.
I'm a huge fan of having that option.
It also has eSIM onboard too so,
it's a really nice modem to have.
And that's gonna be kind of the theme here with this device
just all-day power, and all-day connectivity
for wherever you are.
And I think they've succeeded so far.
Alright let's bring it all in, in the Specter X360.
So this is still one of my favorite laptops.
First of all the design, it's just outstanding.
It's almost too nice,
I almost feel like they over-engineered
the hell outta this thing.
But I mean I'm not really complaining about it,
it just stands out from the market
as just being a really elegant laptop.
Maybe even a little too fancy for some people.
Now you only get two colors.
You can get this dark ash version,
and there's also now a blueish color as well
that has a lighter paler brass color.
They both look really great
but there's no silver version anymore.
I'm kinda okay with that, silver keys if you remember
just didn't work well with a backlight design.
So, this I think, looks really nice.
Now if there's two things I could change about this laptop,
well, it's real easy.
So first of all, those display bezels.
I'm okay with the ones on the side.
The ones on top and bottom,
a little bit thicker than I would prefer
and I think that many of you will agree with that,
especially compared to the trends in the market right now,
everybody's going very thin here.
So I'd either like to see thinner bezels,
or more ideal, I'd love to see a 3:2 aspect ratio
put into this device, or even 16:10
if we wanted to give 'em a little space here.
I understand it's a little bit hard to get those parts here,
but man, that 16:10 with this form factor
would be totally killer.
The other thing that really bothers me,
it's gonna be that touchpad.
They really need to get off those Synaptics drivers
and just jump on Precision.
Again, it's just a terrible thing to have
that otherwise mars a basically a perfect laptop here.
So HP, please I'm imploring ya', I keep telling ya'
change those drivers.
As to who should buy this device,
Well, I think anyone who wants a really nice
convertible laptop.
It's got great audio, it's a really nice typing experience,
I love the display on this too.
The pen is really good, everything about this device
just looks really sharp.
And it doesn't look like
any other laptop on the market right now,
and I gotta give HP credit here for their new idea.
What they've done with this design here,
I think is just really outstanding.
Pricing is also $1,400.
And you can go to Best Buy and pick one up yourself.
So if you don't believe me or you want to go check it out,
just go to your local store and see it for yourself.
But, I think the pricing is very good,
don't forget this is one laptop
that basically does everything.
Now it doesn't have a GPU on it,
and that's okay considering its size
but you could use an external GPU
if that's really important to you.
But you're never really gonna find anything
that does as much as this device does for that price
and still looks that good.
So for me, the Specter X360's
still one of the best 13 inch laptops on the market
considering its price, its value, and functionality,
and overall its design, it's just an awesome thing.
Now HP you can still make it better,
so please pay attention to that.
Do it and you'll have one of the best laptops ever created.
Alright so that does it for this review.
Now if you have any questions,
comments, or recommendations for HP
well, leave them in the comments below.
I'll take a look at those.
If you want more information about this device,
you can go to the description it will have it there.
And if you liked this video, hey why not give us a thumbs up
and you know, don't forget to subscribe to us.
Thanks for watching, take care everyone.
Oh man.
Now let's talk about the battery life of this device
so (bleep).
Let's talk about battery life here,
HP's claiming around 22 hours which is of course absurd,
that is using the full HD version with their new low wattage
oh come on Dan (sighs).