HP Spectre x360 review: A premium convertible laptop with sleek performance

The 11th-Gen Intel Core i7 breathes performance in a spectacular-looking HP Spectre x360 convertible laptop, making it a near-perfect thin-and-light notebook

The HP Spectre x360 (13-inch) has always been appreciated for its ergonomic design, but not so much for its performance. The thin-and-light convertible laptop recently upgraded to the 11th-Gen Intel Core i7 processor (review unit). This upgrade has brought the performance gain this 2-in-1 laptop required to justify its premium stature. Besides, the laptop is Intel Evo platform-certified to deliver optimal user experience with a quick-boot time, instant resume function, extended on-battery time, and enhanced data transfer rate. So, how do the fresh upgrades work for the HP Spectre x360? Let’s find out:

Design and display

The HP Spectre x360 has been through several design refresh cycles, but the latest upgrade does not bring any significant changes to its looks. The convertible laptop boasts portable ergonomics with a thin and lightweight form factor. Crafted from a single piece of aluminium, the laptop has faceted corners and sides and chamfered edges. The top side of the laptop has minimal visual elements, except a glossy silver accented HP logo engraved on it. Like the top, the rest of the laptop carries a silver theme with no flashy design elements – even the keyboard, power button and fingerprint scanner are painted silver to maintain a design symmetry. Overall, the HP Spectre x360 looks premium and stunning.

The design is complemented by a 13.3-inch IPS LCD touchscreen of a fullHD resolution. It is bright, vivid and responsive. The screen is connected with the body through a 360-degree hinge, which makes it go all the way to the back to turn the laptop into a tablet. Thanks to the 360-degree hinge, you can also turn the laptop into a display stand to enjoy multimedia content. Speaking of multimedia content, the built-in audio set-up is not great, despite featuring the ‘Bang & Olufsen’ moniker. It is, however, s compromise that seems negligible in the larger scheme of things – some of the positives being the laptop’s solid build quality, thin and lightweight form factor, and comfortable ergonomics for both laptop and tablet usage.

Performance

This is one area where the HP Spectre x360 has gained considerably with its new upgrades. Powered by 11th-Gen Intel Core i7 processor with Intel Iris Xe integrated graphic processing unit (GPU), the Spectre x360 is not shy of handling more than everyday work tasks. For example, it is competent when handling complex tasks like photo editing and video encoding. Moreover, gaming is possible, too, but do not expect an experience similar to the one offered by gaming notebooks with discrete GPUs. That said, the HP Spectre x360 is quite an efficient 2-in-1 laptop for everyday usage; it may also be a good fallback option for power-users like content creators and data analysts.

Performance aside, the HP Spectre x360 also impresses by the way it handles everyday functions. It boots up in no time and lets you sign in quickly through Windows Hello face recognition and fingerprint scanner methods. Thanks to the 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD storage, 32GB Intel Optane memory and 16GB LPDDR4x-4266 SDRAM, the basic tasks like moving files internally to other locations, opening multiple tabs on internet browsers like Chrome, and working on multiple data-heavy spreadsheets, etc, seem effortless.

Despite bringing a performance boost, the HP Spectre x360 does not compromise on the battery life. For regular operations, the laptop works for about twelve hours on a single charge with screen brightness at 50 per cent and keyboard backlight turned off. Therefore, expect a minimum on-battery time of about three hours on heavy usage. Important to note that the laptop works as well on battery power as when connected to a power source.

While everything else seems close to perfection, the HP Spectre x360 is prone to heating issues. Surprisingly, it heats up significantly even when not used for heavy operations. The built-in fans are quiet but hardly effective in bringing down the temperature.

Verdict

The 11th-Gen Intel Core i7 breathes performance in the spectacular-looking HP Spectre x360 convertible laptop, making it a near-perfect thin-and-light notebook. Near-perfect because there are thermal issues which hamper the laptop’s on-the-go utility. The laptop also lacks a discrete GPU, which limits its usage to everyday tasks. But it should be noted that there is no other laptop this light that also packs in a discrete GPU. Priced at Rs 129,999, the HP Spectre x360 is a premium convertible laptop good for everyday use. It, however, is not the only capable laptop in its segment. The Asus ZenBook Flip S UX371 (review) and Dell XPS 13 are the two other 11th-Gen Intel Core processor-powered options you might like to check before finalising your pick.