HP – Spectre x360 2-in-1 13.5″ 3K2K Touch-Screen Laptop – Intel Evo Core i7 – 16GB Memory – 1TB SSD – Pen Included – Nightfall Black

I picked up the HP Spectre 12″ Gen Alder Lake from Best buy
HP Spectre x360 2-in-1 13.5″ 3K2K Touch-Screen Laptop Intel Evo Core i7 16GB Memory 1TB SSD Nightfall Black 14-ef0013dx – Best Buy
I am really impressed how much more mature this laptop has, comparing the 2020 – 2021 13.5 Gem cut Spectre 11gen. I thought I would not like the new redesign of this year’s model. I am surprised how well the design is so far.
Body Chassis: I like the rounded design more than the gemcut from last year. The Gemcut at the edge of the bottom keyboard tray would dig into my wrists making long typing experiences uncomfortable. I do wish they would have put in a HDMI port and full size SD card reader. Both USB-C ports are on the right side of the laptop.
Screen: The screen is OLED and looks great in both indoors and outdoors. I went outside in direct sunlight and still can see everything clearly on the screen without any issues of glare or sun brightness. Whites are white and blacks look black.
Keyboard: Gone are the island keys Home, pg up, pg dn, end, but HP put these key shortcuts into the left, Up, right, and down keys. To use pg dn, simply press the down arrow key and fn key at the same time. The keyboard typing experience is really nice on this machine, the key travel has got a nice bounce to it. I do not feel cramped when typing on this machine.
Touchpad: The touchpad is a bit bigger than the last year model; this is nice change as the bigger trackpad feels and performs much better than last year.
Fan: The fans are very quiet I cannot hear them when they kick on. The level noise is like a whisper. What I do not like is the position of where the heat is blowing. When I have the laptop sitting on my laptop I can feel the heat blowing on to my legs. It is not hot, but warm air that makes it noticeable and slightly uncomfortable for period of time feeling warm are blowing on my legs.
Battery: Battery Life is an impressive 10 hours of use, that is checking emails, watching YouTube or Netflix content, typing using Microsoft word. I can say that for larger demanding tasks like playing games or video or photo editing will take a larger toll on the batter life off the charger.
Speakers: There are only two bottom firing speakers, I opened the machine to see for myself I only see two of them and they sound much better than last year quad speakers. Bang & Olufsen has finally put in some good speakers. If they can put in the next model quad speakers that would be nice. These two speakers have a good mid to highs in the range of sound. There is a lack of base.
Pen Stylus: is the same nothing has changed in this design or performance, the pen works fine for the tapping and writing.
Performance:
Processor 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1255U 1.70 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
The tasks that I throw at it, it can handle with good performances. HP went with the i7- 1255U because this laptop was designed for more battery usage out of it. I am ok with that tradeoff as I prefer a machine that can get me through at least 10 hours per day of usage. I cannot stand the laptops that prefer performance over battery life which means you will need to search for a wall outlet quicker to keep your laptop going. I like this processor.

It’s a great laptop. Good build quality, great features, compact design, and decent battery life. My only complaint, for which I almost took away a star (or two), is that there are tiny dots on the screen that are visible from the touch screen feature. Sometimes when I’m reading my eyes want to only focus on those dots, and they kind of distort some words and colors a bit. I don’t understand why they’re more visible on the HP OLED touchscreen than on the Dell OLED touchscreen. They’re not noticeable when watching movies, just annoyingly there when reading an article or web browsing. You get used to them. I’ve tried several laptops over the past few months, frustrated by most for some reason or another, and I’ve settled on keeping this one.
Keyboard is pleasant to type on, speakers are okay, and I appreciate that it comes with a laptop sleeve for some protection. OLED has nice color range. I personally don’t care about the 2in1 features, but it’s a nice to have.

This is one of the best looking laptop. I really liked it. Best features are :
1. Camera
2. Screen display quality
3. Processor speed
4. Sound quality
Drawbacks :
1. Slow charging (even though HP claims it will charge 0% to 50% in 45 mins, but it’s not true. It took almost 1 hours 30 mins to charge the laptop from 0-50%)
2. Also, battery backup is max 5-6 hours.
3. HP should give portable dock as it does have any hdmi port.
It’s an HP flagship series product, HP should pay attention to what they are claiming. We have high expectations from HP flagship models/series.
I bought it during Pre Labor Day sale 🙂 so not much regret.

My HP Spectre x360 is real fast. A big difference from my 10-year old laptop. I’m learning how to operate it. Too bad there’s no user guide to make it a bit easier to find my way around all the new features. Hooked an ASUS 4K monitor with a webcam up to it and, after figuring out how to get the computer to access it (takes two cords, an HDMI that allows the same images as are on the laptop’s screen and one that activates the webcam. I like the ability to flip the touch screen around and use it like iPad. I still have a long way to go to use more of the features.