Gadgetory

with not one but two gorilla glass panels the HP Spectre is definitely one of the most stylish ultrabooks on the market but is this machines beauty only skin deep I'm Bill Detweiler head technology editor at tech Republic and I'm going to crack open the HP Envy 14 Spectre unlike the MacBook Air there are no tamper resistant screws holding the spectres case together I began cracking open the machine by removing the battery cover and then the battery next I disconnected a few internal cables removed all the external case screws including two hidden under the unit's rubber feet and removed the near-field communication module I then popped the bottom half of the case loose from the top half and gently separated the two disconnecting a handful of ribbon cables along the way next to come out was the SD card reader the headphone jack followed by the solid-state drive and the hard drive and volume control circuit board the touch pad was the last component I removed from the upper case now moving over to the spectres lower case I first disconnected the lids display and antenna cables then remove the hinge screws and the lid itself I then removed the wireless card cooling fans motherboard and power ports screws and the motherboard itself lastly I disconnected the RAM power port and removed the cooling assembly with that our teardown was complete so what did I learn about the Spectre from our teardown well first the machine is well built and relatively easy to disassemble and I like the fact that most parts can be replaced separately the user-accessible battery is also a nice touch as is the easy to reach SSD now our test unit came with a single 128 gig drive but HP appears to have put a spot right above it for a second SSD not only can you swap out the storage unit but unlike all the other ultrabooks I've cracked open you can also upgrade the unit's RAM as it's not soldered to the motherboard on the downside there's no way to get to the ham chip without removing the motherboard also the specter is a bit thicker and heavier than other ultrabooks it's a full pound heavier than apple's 13-inch MacBook Air and acer's aspire s3 and it's only slightly thinner than the MacBook Pro lastly while HP touts the spectres outer gorilla glass panel is tough and scratch resistant which it probably is it still concerns me to have such a large piece of unprotected glass on my laptop now I haven't conducted any puncture or shatter tests on our machine so my fears of opening my laptop bag and finding it full of broken glass may be completely unfounded I sure hope so the specter is definitely an eye-catching Ultrabook and as our teardown shows its well-built has solid hardware and is easy to work on but it's also on the pricier end of the Ultrabook market as of this taping an entry-level Spectre with a core i5 CPU four gigs of RAM and a 128 gig SSD retails for $13.99 now upgrading to a core i7 and a 256 gig SSD raises the price to 1899 this is a full-featured Ultrabook with a full-featured price for TechRepublic I'm Bill Detweiler and this has been a cracking open of the HP Envy 14 Spectre you