The crown jewel of HP's current line-up of laptops - HP Spectre,
has finally made its way to India. Claimed to be the thinnest laptop in
the world, the HP Spectre has a really capable spec sheet and a design
that immediately makes it stand out anywhere. The ultra-thin laptop is
sure to give quite some competition to the Apple MacBook Air and HP's own EliteBook Folio.
But such a combination of power and design certainly doesn't come cheap. Unsurprisingly, the HP Spectre's price starts from Rs 99,990 and goes all the way up to Rs 1,39,990.
That's quite a lot of money for a PC that's primarily geared towards enterprises. So if you're in the market for a premium business laptop, is the HP Spectre something you should take a look at? Here's our review.
Design and display
Make no mistake about it - The HP Spectre is all about premium looks. Crafted out of aluminium and carbon fibre, the Spectre has a design that is as impressive as it is gorgeous. The glossy bronze and black colour scheme further adds to the machine's classy appearance.
Another major aspect (and one that has been pushed quite a bit by the company) of the Spectre's design is its thickness, or the lack of it. Measuring just 10.4mm (0.41-inch) at the thickest point, the Spectre makes Apple's 12-inch MacBook (0.52- inch) and MacBook Air (0.68-inch) look chunky in comparison. Not surprisingly, it weighs just around 1.1kg and is thus, extremely light and easy to carry around.
The Spectre's chiclet keyboard comes with backlit keys and features a trackpad too. During our testing, we found both the keyboard and the trackpad to be extremely responsive.
Other than that, the laptop has speakers with nicely designed grille on both sides of the keyboard, and these enhance the design even more. The lid hinges are done in copper gold, and though they look extremely good, they are also a bit susceptible to fingerprints (marks).
The lid features HP's redesigned logo at the back, which, the company has said will be appearing on all its premium products. The laptop has three USB-Type C ports along the back, and two of them are high speed Thunderbolt compatible. The company has also included three USB Type-C adapters, one each for USB, HDMI and Ethernet, to make connecting peripherals easier.
Apart from this, the back also houses a 3.5mm jack at the extreme left corner.
In terms of display, HP Spectre has a Full HD IPS display with edge-to-edge Corning Gorilla Glass protection. During our time with the device, we found the display to be sharp and having good viewing angles. The display, however, turned out to be extremely reflective and prone to smudges.
Overall, the design and display of HP Spectre are spectacular. In fact, it's probably the best designed Windows laptop that you can get right now.
Performance
The key specs of the HP Spectre are as follows:
CPU: 2.5GHz 6th Gen Intel Core i7-6500U Mobile RAM: 8 GB LPDDR3 Storage: 512GB PCIe SSD Operating System: Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)
As seen above, these are some really powerful hardware specifications. Although the laptop is available in both i5 and i7 CPU variants, our test unit had an i7 CPU.
With all this power under-the-hood, the HP Spectre had no issues handling day-to-day tasks. From multitasking between intensive programs to browsing the web to even a bit of gaming, the laptop worked great with everything.
While running the benchmark tests, the HP Spectre scored 4199 on PCMark and 3748 on 3DMark. The low score on 3DMark implies that the Spectre isn't meant to be a gaming laptop. It's intended to be an elite business notebook, and in that regard it surely succeeds.
During our testing, the HP Spectre lasted about 5 hours of use on a full charge. The usage included watching movies and videos, light gaming, and internet browsing. While it's not bad, the battery backup is almost half of the 9 hours claimed by HP.
The laptop comes equipped with Bang & Olufsen powered speakers which delivered great audio quality in our testing. The laptop also has HP's TrueVision HD webcam, which we found to be average but still good enough for video calls.
Verdict
HP Spectre is available in two variants - the Core i5 version bears a price tag of Rs 99,990 and the Core i7 version costs Rs 1,39,990. The laptop's biggest competitors are Apple's MacBook Air and HP Elite Book Folio. But with price ranging between Rs 62,925 to Rs 79,795, the Air is way cheaper than the Spectre.
There is no doubting the fact that the HP Spectre is a powerful and impressively built business-grade laptop. And its premium design further makes it stand out from the crowd. But even with all of that, the Spectre isn't without its shortcomings. A glossy reflective display, average battery life and limited connectivity options are all downers for the laptop.
But if budget isn't a problem and you can live with these issues, the HP Spectre is arguably the best Windows 10 laptop you can get.
But such a combination of power and design certainly doesn't come cheap. Unsurprisingly, the HP Spectre's price starts from Rs 99,990 and goes all the way up to Rs 1,39,990.
That's quite a lot of money for a PC that's primarily geared towards enterprises. So if you're in the market for a premium business laptop, is the HP Spectre something you should take a look at? Here's our review.
Design and display
Make no mistake about it - The HP Spectre is all about premium looks. Crafted out of aluminium and carbon fibre, the Spectre has a design that is as impressive as it is gorgeous. The glossy bronze and black colour scheme further adds to the machine's classy appearance.
Another major aspect (and one that has been pushed quite a bit by the company) of the Spectre's design is its thickness, or the lack of it. Measuring just 10.4mm (0.41-inch) at the thickest point, the Spectre makes Apple's 12-inch MacBook (0.52- inch) and MacBook Air (0.68-inch) look chunky in comparison. Not surprisingly, it weighs just around 1.1kg and is thus, extremely light and easy to carry around.
The Spectre's chiclet keyboard comes with backlit keys and features a trackpad too. During our testing, we found both the keyboard and the trackpad to be extremely responsive.
Other than that, the laptop has speakers with nicely designed grille on both sides of the keyboard, and these enhance the design even more. The lid hinges are done in copper gold, and though they look extremely good, they are also a bit susceptible to fingerprints (marks).
The lid features HP's redesigned logo at the back, which, the company has said will be appearing on all its premium products. The laptop has three USB-Type C ports along the back, and two of them are high speed Thunderbolt compatible. The company has also included three USB Type-C adapters, one each for USB, HDMI and Ethernet, to make connecting peripherals easier.
Apart from this, the back also houses a 3.5mm jack at the extreme left corner.
In terms of display, HP Spectre has a Full HD IPS display with edge-to-edge Corning Gorilla Glass protection. During our time with the device, we found the display to be sharp and having good viewing angles. The display, however, turned out to be extremely reflective and prone to smudges.
Overall, the design and display of HP Spectre are spectacular. In fact, it's probably the best designed Windows laptop that you can get right now.
Performance
The key specs of the HP Spectre are as follows:
CPU: 2.5GHz 6th Gen Intel Core i7-6500U Mobile RAM: 8 GB LPDDR3 Storage: 512GB PCIe SSD Operating System: Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)
As seen above, these are some really powerful hardware specifications. Although the laptop is available in both i5 and i7 CPU variants, our test unit had an i7 CPU.
With all this power under-the-hood, the HP Spectre had no issues handling day-to-day tasks. From multitasking between intensive programs to browsing the web to even a bit of gaming, the laptop worked great with everything.
While running the benchmark tests, the HP Spectre scored 4199 on PCMark and 3748 on 3DMark. The low score on 3DMark implies that the Spectre isn't meant to be a gaming laptop. It's intended to be an elite business notebook, and in that regard it surely succeeds.
During our testing, the HP Spectre lasted about 5 hours of use on a full charge. The usage included watching movies and videos, light gaming, and internet browsing. While it's not bad, the battery backup is almost half of the 9 hours claimed by HP.
The laptop comes equipped with Bang & Olufsen powered speakers which delivered great audio quality in our testing. The laptop also has HP's TrueVision HD webcam, which we found to be average but still good enough for video calls.
Verdict
HP Spectre is available in two variants - the Core i5 version bears a price tag of Rs 99,990 and the Core i7 version costs Rs 1,39,990. The laptop's biggest competitors are Apple's MacBook Air and HP Elite Book Folio. But with price ranging between Rs 62,925 to Rs 79,795, the Air is way cheaper than the Spectre.
There is no doubting the fact that the HP Spectre is a powerful and impressively built business-grade laptop. And its premium design further makes it stand out from the crowd. But even with all of that, the Spectre isn't without its shortcomings. A glossy reflective display, average battery life and limited connectivity options are all downers for the laptop.
But if budget isn't a problem and you can live with these issues, the HP Spectre is arguably the best Windows 10 laptop you can get.
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