Well, it certainly looks nice. HP’s
new notebook is a sleek little number,
with its touchscreen, digital stylus, and
360-degree hinges for swapping between
different configurations. Our review
model comes with a lovely matt finish
with rose-gold accents. It’s certainly easy
on the eye, and easy to use; touchscreen
control is smooth and effective, and
the 13-inch screen provides excellent
sharpness and color contrast. The
maximum brightness does leave a little
to be desired, though, struggling a bit in
brightly lit environments.
Performance-wise, this isn’t going to
blow any minds, but it does its job well.
The Spectre X360 13-ap0038nr—catchy,
we know—packs an Intel Core i7-8565U
processor with integrated UHD 620
graphics. That’s a quad-core CPU with a
base clock of 1.8GHz, and Intel claims that
its Turbo Boost technology can lift the
frequency up to a maximum of 4.6GHz.
HP offers a variety of performance modes
and thermal settings for tweaking how
you want your laptop to run; we found that
this machine did get quite warm and noisy
under CPU stress. With 16GB of DDR4-
2400 memory, the Spectre X360 is best
suited for image manipulation and office
work, rather than heavy-duty gaming and
3D rendering.
The 512GB M.2 SSD boasts brilliant
read times, on par with the best M.2
drives available right now, although write
times came back tragically slower—
barely superior to conventional SATA
drive speeds. For connecting other
hardware, there’s a single USB 3.1 port
on the left-hand side, and two Type-CNot the best ultraportable, but one of the prettiest
HP Spectre X360
8
verdict HP Spectre X360 13-ap0038nrFriendly Ghost Elegant
design; fast SSD reads;
thoughtful security features.
Jump scare Fan is noisy; a bit heavy for a
notebook; unimpressive SSD write speeds.
$1,479, http://store.hp.comSPECIFICATIONS
processor Intel Core i7-8565U
Graphics Integrated Intel UHD
Graphics 620
ram 8GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM
screen 13-inch 1080p 72 percent
NTSC color gamut
storage 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD
Keyboard Full-size island-style
backlit
Battery Four-cell 61Whr
psu 65W USB-C
Weight 2.9lb
Our laptop zero-point is the Asus GL502VS-DS71, with an Intel Core i7-7700 HQ, an 8GB GTX 1070, and 16GB of DDR4-2400. All game tests are performed at 1080p at the highest graphical profile. os Windows 10 Home 64-bitbENCHmArkS
Zero-
Point
cinebench r 15 multi (index) 743 561 (-24%)
crystaldisk Qd 32
sequential read (mB/s)^563 3,100 (451%)
crystaldisk Qd 32
sequential Write (mB/s)^133557 (319%)
3 dmark: Fire strike (index) 13,202 1,062 (-92%)
rise of the tomb raider (fps)^995 (-95%)
pcmark (index) 2,379 2,543 (7%)
Battery life:
movie playback (mins)
183 840 (359%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%100%ports on the other, joined by a standard
headphone jack and a microSD card
reader. The Spectre charges from these
ports, too; one is offset diagonally on the
top corner of the chassis, intended for
charger connection.
It’s not as small and lightweight as
some notebooks currently on the market,
thanks in part to a thick bezel on the
lower and upper edges of the screen,
the latter of which houses HP’s own Wide
Vision FHD IR camera and a dual-array
microphone setup. Audio is a pretty big
deal with this notebook; HP has teamed
up with Bang & Olufsen to deliver high-
quality sound via four speakers and HP’s
Audio Boost 2.0. Paired with the sharp
WLED-backlit screen, watching videos
on the Spectre X360 certainly makes for
an enjoyable experience.
Also in the box is an HP Tilt Pen, a
powered stylus with two buttons. This is
by far the best way to use “tablet mode”;
once calibrated, the stylus is precise
and effective, and the buttons can be
remapped to perform various functions,
such as bringing up the Windows Ink
sketchpad. Touchscreen control with a
fingertip is also an option—and better
for quick taps in laptop mode, because
pressure from the pen has a tendency to
make the screen shift on its hinge a bit—
but extended use is sure to leave your
screen covered with fingerprints.
One of the more original features on
display here is the integrated privacy
screen function, HP Sure View. With
the tap of a button (F1, to be exact), a
screen polarization effect is instantly
triggered that renders the screencompletely obscured to anyone looking
at it from outside a narrow cone of
visibility. Security features have all been
quite well thought out by HP for this
laptop; the camera comes with a physical
independent power switch on the side
of the casing, and can be used for facial
recognition login on Windows 10, and—
like many modern laptops—it comes
equipped with a fingerprint scanner
beside the trackpad.
Finally, an oft-contested point of
machine quality for notebooks: battery
life. The Spectre is impressive in this
department, capable of providing 14
hours of charge for working on the move.
The lithium-ion battery weighs 250g
and is supplied by a 65W AC adapter,
which supports fast charging, thanks
to USB-C—the battery is capable of
charging to 100 percent in approximately
one hour. With that in mind, we feel
comfortable saying that the Spectre X360
is a solid piece of gear. –christian guytonin the lab
80 MAXIMUMPC aug 2019 maximumpc.com