The HP Spectre x360 2-in-1 laptop offers a lot of power, screen real estate, and flexibility in a portable package, making it an attractive option for creatives on the go. This great video review takes a look at the laptop and the sort of performance you can expect from it in use.
Coming to you from Matthew Moniz, this excellent video review takes a look at the HP Spectre x360 2-in-1 laptop. A versatile option, the x360 comes with a wide range of features, maxing out at:
- Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
- Processor: Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 155H (up to 4.8 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 24 MB L3 cache, 16 cores, 22 threads)
- Graphics:
- Integrated: Intel® Arc™ Graphics
- Discrete: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4050 Laptop GPU (6 GB GDDR6 dedicated)
- Display: 16" diagonal, 2.8K (2880 x 1800), OLED, multitouch-enabled, 48-120 Hz, UWVA, edge-to-edge glass, micro-edge, anti-reflection Corning® Gorilla® Glass NBT™, Low Blue Light, SDR 400 nits, HDR 500 nits, 100% DCI-P3
- Display Brightness: 500 nits
- Display Color Gamut: 100% DCI-P3
- Fingerprint Reader
- Memory: 16 GB LPDDR5x-6400 MHz RAM (onboard)
- Storage: 2 TB PCIe® Gen4 NVMe™ TLC M.2 SSD
- Wireless Technology: Intel® Wi-Fi 7 BE200 (2x2) and Bluetooth® 5.4 wireless card
- Power Supply: 140 W USB Type-C® power adapter
- Battery: 6-cell, 83 Wh Li-ion polymer
- Battery Life: Up to 13 hours and 15 minutes
- Battery Recharge Time: Supports battery fast charge: approximately 50% in 30 minutes
- External I/O Ports: 1 USB Type-A 10Gbps signaling rate (HP Sleep and Charge); 1 HDMI-out 2.1; 1 headphone/microphone combo; 2 Thunderbolt™ 4 with USB Type-C® 40Gbps signaling rate (USB Power Delivery, DisplayPort™ 2.1, HP Sleep and Charge)
- Energy Efficiency: EPEAT® Gold registered
- Webcam: HP Wide Vision 9 MP IR camera with camera shutter, temporal noise reduction and integrated dual array digital microphones
- Audio Features: DTS:X®️ Ultra, Quad speakers, HP Audio Boost, Poly Studio
- Sensors: Accelerometer, AI chip, eCompass, Gyroscope, IR thermal sensor
- Color: Nightfall black aluminum
- Pointing Device: Haptic touchpad
- Keyboard: Full-size, backlit, nightfall black keyboard
- Dimensions (W X D X H): 14.05 x 9.67 x 0.78 in
- Weight: 4.3 lb
- Stylus: HP Rechargeable MPP2.0 Tilt Pen
Check out the video above for the full rundown from Moniz.
While the display seems quite good based on the specs, the lack of an SD card slot, as well as an anti-consumer design for maintenance and replacing parts, as well as for upgrades.It seems for a while now, they have been soldering the RAM to the motherboard, thus forcing users to live with a tiny amount of RAM, or pay a massive price premium for a more reasonable amount of RAM.
As configured in the spec list and video, the price is $1,979.99
At that price, 16GB of RAM is inadequate.
HP also gouges on components, for example, to go from a 512GB NVME TLC NAND SSD to a 2TB one, they charge an additional $270. Their SSD performs worse than many upper mid range units from companies like WD and Soledigm which are often sold at half the price. Though the good thing is that a user can configure the system to the 512GB SSD before purchase, which saves $270. The user can then purchase the Solidigm P44 Pro 2TB for $170, then buy a m.2 NVMe enclosure for about $10 and turn the original 512GB SSD into a USB flash drive.
The RAM cannot be upgraded unless you are good with BGA soldering and can find a supplier for bare DRAM chips at twice the capacity but will handle the same timings since replacing the BGA packages will not change the timings table.
The performance issues seems like it may be due to power restrictions, as a system like that really should have a 180 watt supply and not a 140 watt supply. Beyond that, the RTX 4050 mobile is a rather slow GPU, while better than any integrated solution, and offers desirable Nvidia features, it is not a very good gaming GPU, but is fine for content creation.