Gadgetory

hey how's it going guys this is Dave 2d and this is my review of the HP Spectre x-360 so this is a notebook that's been out for two three months so this review is kind of late but quite a few of my viewers have been asking me to do this review so I thought I should finally do one it's a notebook that's made by HP and was co designed by Microsoft so they helped with the hardware design they helped with some software stuff and yeah here's the review now some of you guys are pretty upset when it ripped open that ps4 box so I'll do this one nice and slow it's a black box that has a soft touch finish and when you pop the lid there's foam on the bottom side of the lid which is nice the notebook itself is on top and underneath there's a box and if you open it there's an AC adapter and a bunch of pamphlets now my review unit came with a neoprene sleeve it's a really thin material and it's clearly not designed as some kind of like super protective casing but it'll protect the finish and it's cool that they give you one at all and it also has a specter logo stamped into the material which is a nice touch the top surface of the notebook is aluminum it's not as smooth of a texture as a MacBook it's a little rougher and because of that it's actually easier to hold than MacBooks the HP logo up top is subtle and it looks pretty professional there's also a groove at the top here which is more like a design accent than anything else now in the bottom surface there's four rubber feet they're grippy and they're actually really soft and you'll see why in a bit there's also two down firing speakers and an air intake vent that runs along here you can pop the bottom lid off by removing some Torx screws and the first thing you'll notice is how big the battery is it's a 56 water hour battery but it covers like two-thirds of the surface area it's really large the ram is soldered on and there's an mSATA SSD up here there's really not much you can do on the inside but at the very least if you need to you can replace the drive and you can replace the battery the unit I'm reviewing is the Microsoft signature edition so it has a two core Broadwell i7 running at 2.4 gigahertz 13 inch 1080p touchscreen Intel HD 5500 integrated graphics 8 gigs of ram 256 Drive all for 1150 now it comes in cheaper variants some of them starting at 900 and you can also get one with a quad HD screen for 1400 the sides of the notebook are polished and it gives the specter an aesthetic that's really different from any other notebooks out there so they didn't copy any one and it still looks really awesome so they did a really good job on the right side of the notebook we have a Windows button for when you're in tablet mode volume rocker mini DisplayPort HDMI port two USB 3 ports and a headphone jack I try to both of the video outputs and they work fine on the left side of the notebook there's an AC socket exhaust vent one more USB 3 port power button and an SD card slot the SD card sit pretty flush when they're inserted so that's always a nice thing in terms of dimensions it's the same width as a 13-inch retina MacBook Pro but it's slightly longer and weighs around 3.2 pounds it's heavier than the average ultrabook in 2015 but it's not heavy by any means it's also a little thicker than your average ultrabook the specter is as thick as a 13 inch retina MacBook Pro but it's still very portable and easy to carry around there isn't very much keyboard flux which is good there's a little bit of screen flex but the whole chassis just feels really durable they did a great job on build quality the main feature of this notebook is probably the super special hinge which lets you rotate the screen all the way around if you want to you can obviously use the notebook in its normal state just like a regular notebook and does a great job in this regular mode you can also set it up in stand mode which is theoretically for presentations and tent mode which they claim is for play touchscreen jeans but I mean I tried both of these modes for a couple weeks and they just really aren't useful especially for presentations at work it just wasn't useful for me and the last mode is a tablet mode which in theory makes this a hybrid device it is usable like you are theoretically holding a tablet shaped object but it's really cumbersome all right let me explain when you take the notebook and you fold it backwards the top surface so that a book closes in on the bottom surface of the notebook and those soft rubber feet are there to prevent it from scratching but you notice how there's a huge gap between the two halves so that's where you'll often hold it and the edges kind of dig into your hand because of the sheer weight of the device so a 3.2 pound tablet is an urban AMA to hold and there's also that keyboard on the back it's deactivated when it's folded like this so the keystrokes don't register but it's just really uncomfortable to use but here's the deal the whole folding screen thing is an optional feature right we're not forced to use it in this mode but it's available to use if you are so inclined so it doesn't hurt to have it there but it's not super useful the keyboard is really good aside from the hole up and down arrows being at the same level as the left and right keys I think they really nailed this keyboard there's only one stage of backlighting and when you turn off the back light the toggle switch stays lit which I think some people find annoying but it's seriously a really good keyboard the trackpad on this thing is big it's like iPhone 6 big it works really well though and it's actually one of my favorite track pads on Windows notebooks right now it's smooth it's well textured and there's no jumping cursors and stuff my only complaint though is that because of the width of this thing even after using it for two weeks I would sometimes miss click when trying to right-click like I would be pressing too far over to the left so it's a very minor annoyance but I just don't think anyone needs a trackpad this wide it doesn't really add anything other than to confuse muscle memories so when you're using like other notebooks but aside from that this is a really good trackpad the screen is topped here it's a touchscreen 1920 by 1080 IPS panel with really good viewing angles personally I'd skip the more expensive quad HD version because at 13 inches and with this video card the 1080p option feels just right the glare on the screen is pretty standard for a glossy finish but because it's a bright panel it's manageable the colors pop brightness is good and it also has good color accuracy as well so a spider reads it as 97% srgb and 75% Adobe RGB so this is basically as good as it gets for notebook screens the webcam up top records in 1080p here's some footage I mean I don't use webcam as much but it seemed pretty good dry speeds are okay around 500 read and 300 write which is good enough for basically anything ultra ebooks are designed to do in terms of performance okay so for 1080p video editing it can handle it reasonably well renders aren't super fast but the editing process is comfortable in 1080p the 4k video edits are pretty bad partially because of the drive speed but there's also some CPU throttling now it only throttles a little here and there during 4k edits but it's really noticeable during renders so in case you don't know throttling is when a CPU chip runs slower for a bit just the temperatures are getting too hot so they're only a 10-minute 4k render it starts off with an estimate of 52 minutes but then as time went by the CPU got hotter and it throttled it down so it was running slower and so the estimated render time gets longer and longer and longer now the good thing is that only happens in really CPU intensive stuff like renders it did happen in games but it was pretty rare now speaking of which it gets pretty average ultrabook gaming performance it can comfortably play lighter games like dota 2 and counter-strike at native res even on higher settings like you'll get 45 frames per second but it's pretty bad for triple-a 3d titles like Witcher 3 I was getting single-digit frame rates even on medium-high settings Spectre idles at around 20 decibels so it's basically Sonic when you crank it though the fan hits 36 decibels now this is being measured right at the exhaust vent itself so it's actually a little quieter in real life I ran the thermal camera and you can see it here as well the spectre just runs cool it has a relatively low temperature while keeping fan noise down now granted this MacBook is a higher wattage CPU and it's running at a higher clock rate but there's a significant difference in heat output down firing speakers are never great and these ones are down firing speakers they don't get that loud the bass is muted and it just doesn't sound very good but that's just down firing ultrabook speakers free here's what they sound the AC adapter is 45 watts it's pretty dull looking and there's no lights on it to indicate charging but at least it's not too big okay a little bit about battery life playing games I got around 2 hours with screen at max brightness and volume at about half it's pretty average for an ultrabook but I was kind of disappointed I thought I'd be able to get more just because I was hoping for some crazy throttling to happen but yeah that's all I got two hours playing games on battery I got around 8 hours of regular use so that's just browsing the web and doing some work and the screen was at 80% brightness and I got about six and a half hours watching videos from the drive now I had to watch it at maximum brightness because I was watching it outdoors in a park but yeah six and a half hours videos straight from the drive now overall I think this is a great notebook the build quality is good trackpads good screen is great the battery life is good the specs are good now everything about it is really good quality now the only thing that's kind of weird to me is that hinge the 360 hinge is something that I mean it gives it the name that's why it's called the X 360 but it's also a very gimmicky hinge to me the tablet mode isn't very comfortable to use the stand up mode and the tent mode are also just not very ergonomic to use it's a very interesting feature but I wouldn't purchase the notebook based on just that hinge you probably won't find it that useful but if you're looking for a great overall experience in a notebook and you're willing to pay a bit of a price premium I think this is a great option that's the end of the review hope you guys liked it questions or comments type below and thumbs if you liked it subs have you loved it it's been nice I'll see you guys next time you