Customer Ratings & Reviews

Clear, bright graphics. Slightly larger keys work well with backlight feature. Lightweight and extremely transportable.

Fast!!!! , Touch screen comes in handy, tablet mode is nice as well, good computer for a college student, fair price

Very comfortable and light for travel. Lovely design, touch screen is fabulous, speakers sound very loud and clear.

Great looking, great battery life, love the 2 in 1 feature for classes

Great laptop. Love the looks, packaging and accessories. It is really fast. It’s lightweight and a great size.

I bought this for my girlfriend for school and i was blown away by hoe fast, slick and fun it is to use.

Much more than I expected! Lightweight, great picture and sound, and versatile. Very satisfied with my purchase!

There is no doubt about it, the HP Spectre series is one of the most prolific and well known ultrabooks/convertibles. This latest iteration brings not only a nice visual refresh, but also Intel’s Whiskey Lake platform which replaces the previous Kaby Lake R. There are also a few key differences between this model and the previous which might make this the right choice for you. First of all, this model comes in a nice box that looks rather chunky compared to what you’d expect. Inside the box you’ll find a sleeve designed for the Spectre that has a holder for the included pen. I’m excited that manufacturers are including niceties like this - and HP’s sleeve is quite nice, with a simulated leather externally and soft interior. Speaking of the included pen, it appears to differ from previous models in that it doesn’t use USB-C to recharge, but rather it is powered by a single slim AAAA battery. This is taking a cue from Microsoft whose Surface Pen is also powered by the same battery. I’m not sure if this was a cost saving measure or what, but it does seem like a bit of a regression. The pen itself is a n-trig unit with the standard two side buttons. There is no eraser here or other button. We do have pressure sensitivity, which seem to work well, however I’m no artist so I can’t really weigh in on it other than through basic sketches. It does not appear to support tilt. Also inside the box you’ll find the included USB-C 65w power brick. This power brick has a braided cable that feels quite durable and solid. Time will tell how it holds up (some braided cables snag and then unravel, but no doubt that HPs feels higher quality that most), but it’s a welcome feature for me. The power brick does include a ground plug (3 prong outlet). Once you take the laptop out you’ll be immediately hit with its color. The ‘Dark Ash Silver’ definitely falls somewhere between an ebony and dark brown with a trim color that is a dark gold color. The sides highlight this polished metal color, along with the hinges and HP logo (speaking of - HP that logo is macho - I say using my best Lego Batman voice). The material of choice here is gem-cut anodized aluminum, which means the finish should hold up reasonably well compared to painted chassis. The build quality is impeccable - with a solid feeling and rigidity that only comes from metal chassis. The sides play into the previous generation’s hinge design (which has carried over) feature of jutting angles. Thost angles have been further extrapolated as corner cuts angling at the rear of the laptop. This offers up a unique design feature of having both the charging port and power buttons angled away. This keeps you from accidentally hitting the power button while on the other side keeps your power port from interfering with your mousing area or other port usage. Due to the various size issues that come into play with USB-C dongles, this is wonderful. Speaking of USB-C, you get the angled port that supports Thunderbolt 3, followed by a small pinhole for the charging LED, 3.5mm AHJ combo headset jack, another USB-C Thunderbolt port, a camera off switch, and finally a MicroSD card reader. The left side offers the power button and a USB-A 3.0 port, a welcome addition in such a thin machine which means plugging in a thumb drive doesn’t require a dongle. Opening the laptop up you’ll be greeted by a 13” IPS 1080p screen flanked by 2-3mm bezels. These thin bezels help maintain a very compact form factor: fitting in my Fossil man bag that otherwise could only hope to contain a 12” Macbook. Overall dimensions are: 12.16” x 8.58” x 0.57” at less than 3lbs. Of course the thin bezels on the side are paired with nearly 1” thick bezels on the top and bottom. It's clear that we’ve reached a point where 16:9 is no longer serving the design and engineering of convertibles well. Comparing this to something like the Surface lineup’s 3:2 aspect ratio or even older 16:10 it seems obvious that there is opportunity here for HP and other manufacturers to start pushing towards aspects that can be not only more useful for convertibles, but also decrease these unsightly bezels. The keyboard found inside is generous in its travel and feels pretty good. Compared to an Apple butterfly keyboard, the travel is at least double. The keys feel more comfortable for longer typing sessions, and they are dead silent which is probably a boon to some. The keyboard is backlit in white, with two brightness settings (low and high). The font on the keyboard is oversized compared to previous versions. Below the keyboard is a oversized trackpad that stretches from the spacebar through over half of the right Alt key. This trackpad, like most recent Windows laptops, is excellent. You get a solid smooth surface and built in Windows gestures like three and four finger swipes. Flanking the trackpad on the right is the fingerprint reader which supports Windows Hello. Unlike the previous version of this convertible, the fingerprint reader is more conventional. The previous iteration placed this sensor on the side of the notebook. Some might not like this change, but frankly it’s not a big deal, because just like the Surface lineup - the HP Spectre includes an IR camera they dub the HP Wide Vision FHD IR Camera. This enables Windows Hello facial recognition which is the shiz. Trust me, it’s amazing, and you’ll want to use it. Just like the iPhone X, Windows Hello w/ IR camera can log you in with your face. Microsoft was doing this years before Apple and it shows, as it flawlessly logs you in just by looking at your laptop. From a technical standpoint, big update is Intel’s Whiskey lake platform. Besides conjuring up images of dark liquor, it offers several hardware mitigations for Meltdown and Spectre exploit variants (google if you don’t know, it was a huge todo). It also brings the Intel 9560 WiFi and other platform enhancements. Other than that, it’s not as big an update as Kaby Lake R, which it is closely patterned after. You get the i7 8665U, which offers 4 cores 8 threads at an astonishing 4.6GHz boost. Of course you need to be plugged in to get these crazy high boost clocks, but the HP chassis helps maintain boost clocks relatively well while maintaining a non-vacuum level fan noise. The 4.6GHz boost puts this half inch thick machine in good company. In Cinebench R15, the single-threaded score (184) comes within spitting distance of my overclocked 4.6Ghz 7820x desktop (195). The multithreaded score puts up a valiant fight against 95W desktop CPUs of last generation with it’s score of 630. The score are much more consistent than what I’ve observed with my work laptop (a Surface Book 2), where concurrent runs of Cinebench maintain scores within a margin of error. It does come at the cost of living at the edge however, as temperatures of the package and CPU cores on the Spectre routinely can reach 100C (212F) when operating in High Performance mode. While this is within the specs of the operating temperatures of the CPU, it’s something to consider. Like I said, the Spectre gets away with this without sounding like a vacuum, so that’s a plus, and it never goes above the 100C mark during load, but yet maintains >4.0GHz clocks across all cores. Storage wise, you get a 256GB WDC SN720 SSD. This is an M.2 NGFF PCIe x4 drive which maxes out the PCIe 4 lane bus at over 3 GB/s, but writes come in at around half that (1.6 GB/s). This is definitely a drive that keeps up with other OEM drives (like the PM961 from Samsung), but is a cut lower than say the WD Black drives or Samsung Evo/Pro drives. Storage performance does hum along at a good clip, so it’s hard to complain. Battery wise, I have no real complaints. Like most recent Windows laptops, HP claims a high number of hours, obviously with specific optimal conditions. Day to day battery life here is around the 8hr mark give or take depending on load. It’s not bad for a thin and light laptop, but it’s far from the 20hrs I’ve seen in some marketing material. Then again, realistically 8hrs on battery alone is pretty impressive considering the amount of processing power on tap. So what could be better? The screen: in both aspect ratio and brightness level. It’s not horrible by any means, but it’s not nearly as bright as what you’d find on an Apple or Microsoft premium machine. At least both the viewing angles are good, and the screen appears to not exhibit any nasty PWM (flickering of the backlight on lower brightness levels). The panel used here is shared between the Spectre Folio (referenced observation from a forum on tabletpcreview.com) and is a lower powered screen from AU Optronics called the AUO572D. If screens are your thing, you won’t be impressed. However if you’re already used to a 1080p screen at 13”, this unit will be perfectly fine for you. In fact, 1080p is still my sweet spot here, as I can get away with 100% scaling in windows which still is more compatible than scaling with a higher resolution. Another item is sound. While the 4 Bang & Olufsen speakers found in the chassis can get loud, they cannot get deep. What you end up with is rather tinny sound, even if it’s loud. It’s hard to get too cranky about this is a chassis this small, but there are other manufacturers who can somehow get this to be a bit more balanced. The USB-C support for charging also needs work. Both the F.06 (shipping BIOS) and F.08 BIOS if I use an Apple USB-C charger, or any other USB-C charger the computer doesn’t just reject it, it locks up cold. Perhaps a newer bios will fix these issues, otherwise you’re tied to the included power brick and/or other HP accessories. The Spectre X360 13-ap is a great example of a wonderfully engineered computer that has evolved it’s already superb design in the past couple of year.

easy start up - sleek, thin, yet durable. only suggestion would be adding a 2nd USB port - Thank you

It was either this or a MacBook. The spectre is so much more interesting. It looks great , the keyboard is better, and it has a USB port. I love everything about this laptop. Sometimes the mousepad can be annoying but it’s not something that’ll make me change my mind overall. I got it for school , it fits perfectly in my bag. It comes with a leather case. I like how the charger was made . I haven’t used the pen yet, but I still keep it around.

This computer was a replacement for a computer that had a lot of issues from day one. The computer is easy to use and easy to set up. I was able to load my software within 30 minutes and get back to work. The Associate who took the time to explain everything was also a great help this computer is used for a lot of Engineering applications and I FINALLY was able to get away from the heavy clunkers I have had to carry around for years!

This laptop is beautiful and lightweight. It has been really easy to use and set up. 10/10 recommend

I love it!!! It’s easy to use, lightweight, and it’s super easy to set up it tells you step by step.

This laptop has the two in one deal. I haven't really used the touch screen all that much. It doesn't have the HDMI port. I'm not sure if it can Cast to the TV, or other devices. Still have to figures that out. However, I've been using this for work for about a year and it is great. Long lasting battery. Super portable and I hope to use it for graduate school in the future still.

This laptop runs programs fast and is really light weight. I would recommend it to the average person.

Love the speed and Solid State Drive! Very portable and looks good. Just what we were looking for.

Georgeous appearance, fast processor, amaizing laptop perfect for students, work and traveling tool

I was looking for something small that can fit in my school bag. And I'm happy I got this one.

I was skeptical about buying a 2 in 1 but honestly it’s a very good laptop and the design is very nice

It’s a good laptop . Fast and efficient . Would recommend for a college student. But not for intense 4K editing