Review of HP Spectre 13 (Intel 8th Gen, 8 GB RAM with 512GB SSD)

 

In the month of Oct 2017, HP INC.  new innovations to its premium consumer line-up with the next generation HP Spectre 13 and HP Spectre x360 13 laptops. The second generation Spectre 13 – is one of the thinnest laptops.

There are 3 type of laptop available in the HP Spectre series in Middle East as per the HP website: HP Spectre – 13-af003ne(3FZ57EA), HP Spectre – 13-af001ne(2WA80EA) and HP Spectre – 13-af002ne(2WA81EA).

HP Middle East has sent me the HP Spectre – 13-af001ne(2WA80EA) which beautiful, slim, sleek premium laptop. It has touch screen panel with Display of 1920 x 1080 with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD Drive. It is powered by  8th Gen Intel® Core™ i Quad Core processor with Windows 10 for OS.

Body of HP Spectre 13

The HP Spectre 13 laptop which I have got a review is a dark brown chocolate colour with premium golden brush metal sides and gold colour HP logo on the cover. The laptop’s Display panel cover is matt finish brown colour and when in a closed position, you see a thin gold line near the hinge of the laptop which adds a touch to the beautiful laptop.

With dimension of 12.03 x 8.83 x 0.41 inches (30.56 x 22.4 x 1.04cm; W x D x H), it is quite slim and stylish to hold in your hand and it weighs 1.11kg.

I liked the brush metal gold sides of the laptop which gives a very premium looks. It only has ports on the back side of the laptop and they are

• 2 Thunderbolt™ 3 (Data Transfer up to 40 Gb/s, Power Delivery, DP1.2, HP Sleep and Charge)
• 1 USB 3.1 Type-C™ Gen 1 (Data Transfer up to 5 Gb/s, Power Delivery, DP1.2, HP Sleep and Charge)
• 1 headphone/microphone combo.

The front side laptop has edges facing inwards which makes it easier to open the laptop ( But due to lightweight, you need to hold both keyboard and Display panel to open).

The HP Spectre 13 laptop panels are joined together with two gold coloured hinges which look quite classy.

The HP Spectre 13 laptop has a display of 33.8 cm (13.3″) diagonal FHD IPS micro-edge WLED-backlit multitouch-enabled edge-to-edge glass (1920 x 1080). Just below the display, you have the new HP logo in silver and the HP Wide Vision HD Camera on the top of the display panel. It has a touch screen display, so you can also use your fingers to scroll or click on screen while web surfing. This particular model cannot turn into 360 degrees for a tablet mode.

Power button, Keyboard & Touchpad

With such a small chassis, there isn’t room for a lot of key travel on the Spectre. The backlit power button is on your top left-hand-side of the laptop. But despite the keys’ minimal 1.3 millimetres of travel and 70 grams of force required to press them, the keyboard feels clicky and tactile — far better than the shallow keyboard on Apple’s latest MacBooks.

The 4.3 x 2.1-inch touchpad which has a thin gold line around it, gives stylish looks and defines the area of the touch pad with very little depression from the bottom panel.  The touchpad is roomy and, more importantly, accurate. Whether I was browsing the web or needed to access my notifications, three and four-finger gestures were responsive every time.

Audio

The speakers on the Spectre 13 are par for the course on an ultra-portable laptop. It has got Bang & Oulfsen speakers.  The audio was loud enough to fill my room and was quite clear on listening to lower sound and mid level frequencies. The Bass is decent for ultra-port speakers. Obviously, you can’t expect booming bass coming out of the sleek laptop. But the sound quality was good, as I was listening to a different genre of music and didn’t irritate me to shut it down.

Battery Life & Connectivity

Being Spectre 13 is so small, you’ll need to fit a charger in your bag. It HP Spectre 13 has 4-cell, 43.7 Wh Li-ion batteries which last you for 4-5 hours on a single charge with web browsing with Wi-Fi on. The laptop is charged with USB TYPE -C 65 W AC power adaptor and it has been certified ENERGY STAR® certified
EPEAT® Silver registered.
It has Intel® 802.11b/g/n/ac (2×2) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® 4.2 Combo.

 

Performance

The Spectre 13 packs a 1.8-GHz Intel Core i7-8550U CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD with Windows 10 as OS into a slim chassis. Thanks to the SSD drive, the laptop booting happened quite fast and was ready with my response especially waking up from sleep mode. I have loaded photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop and did some editing and response was quite quick. It

I ran 3 benchmark test on the HP Spectre 13 laptop below are the results

Nova

PCMark 10

3Dmark

This benchmark is usually run it gaming laptops but I thought, let me try and I was wrong for obvious reason as HP Spectre 13 is not at all for gaming and I would not recommend anyone to buy it if you want to play any heavy 3D games.

Note: While running all the test, the laptop was emitting a quite good amount of heat, which you can feel it, if you are keeping on your lap. If you are using for web browsing and not making the laptop to run on graphics-oriented software or games. It will perform very well.

Accessories

The HP Spectre 13 Laptop comes along with a leather sleeve, USB Type-C™ to USB 3.0 adapter and fast power charging unit with 2 different wall unit plug cable.

Conclusion

As it performed well on PCMark10 and Nova benchmark, it is good to buy for people looking for a sleek, stylish, thin laptop. Due to matt finish, it is a fingerprint magnet and you may need to clean from time to time. The audio is very good and loud, so you can listen to your favourite music or play corporate presentation with music in decent filled up the room. Thanks to the 1.8-GHz Intel Core i7-8550U CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD storage, you will the laptop boot up in few seconds and enough space to save your files. The ports are less compared to other laptop but for a sleek laptop, you have to sacrifice. With the Fast-charge technology, your laptop would be fully charged in less than an hour. Need to buy additional adaptor accessories which I have mentioned in the below suggestion.

Suggestion

Please ensure you carry the laptop charger and adaptor always with you as it newer model, you may not get the charging pin easily. You would also need to buy USB Type – C to HDMI adaptor for presentation or viewing your content on a bigger screen. If you are used to wireless Bluetooth mouse or buy multiple USB port adaptor as there is only USB Type – C ports on the HP Spectre 13 laptop.

Who should buy HP Spectre 13 laptop?

HP Spectre 13 is a stylish laptop which is light and enough power and space which would perfectly suit the high-level executive and above, who are always on the move. As it is sleek, thin and premium looks, you would be paying a higher price compared to regular laptops.

What is the price & where can I buy?

Price mentioned on the Online store Souq.com: AED 5174
(Please Note: this rate is as per mention on the website while the review was created, please check for latest rate from HP and Channel & Retail partners)

HP Middle East has the tie-up with various retail outlets and shops, you can also use the HP website Dealers & Shop locator

 

If you have any query or question regarding buying electronic goods and need a suggestion, please feel free to write back to me: editor@criticreviewer.com