HP Spectre 13T-3000

Can you elaborate on the trackpad palm rejection settings you tweaked? I might also try to install the generic drivers as I don't use the gestures mostly because I'm o nthe desktop side of windows 8 99% of the time, and so have no real use of swiping to "snap" apps.

 

Wondering if there was a final consensus if the QHD screen was brighter overall than the FHD screen ?

 

Out of curiosity, is there a way to tell windows to require a double-click on web links in a browser? I know that you can adjust the settings for opening files and programs but I don't see the option for web links. I'm asking because the context menu key on the Spectre could be very useful for those that like to "open in new tab" a lot. Unfortunately, just hovering on the link and pushing the key doesn't work.

 

I'm not sure if anyone has actually tested the specs but my "personal" opinion of the QHD is that it has plenty of brightness for indoor use. I have mine down in the 50% - 55% range for battery performance and it is still nice and bright. Basically, I think it is up to personal preference unless someone actually has a meter to test how many nits the screen is putting out.

 

On the topic of the QHD panel, can someone identify the model name?
To do this, you can just:
1. open up Device Manager
2. Double click on the monitor to bring up its properties.
3. Go to the details tab and select "Hardware Ids"

And the panel name should be listed there. E.g. it could look something like MONITOR\LGD0349
I'm mostly just curious. For reference, the 1440p 13.3" Acer S7-392 has the Sharp LQ133T1JW02, and the Zenbook Infinity UX301LA has the Sharp LQ133T1JW14.

Also, any new thoughts on the fan noise? Still just somewhat annoying under load?

 

The screen is stated as an LGD0000
There is no abnormal fan noise when the system is operating under load. I have other, older laptops that are much louder and much more "annoying". Also, when operating on battery under typical light use such as using email and web browsing it is virtually silent almost all of the time. My system is normally set on the HP recommended default power settings BTW.

 

My only complaint after a little over a week with this thing is the Synaptic drivers. Half the time coming out of sleep, it resets the two finger scrolling direction. I'm used to my Chromebook where swiping down scrolls down and up scrolls up, and we all know the default on here is down is up and up is down. I mean it only takes ~20 seconds to shut down and start back up again, it's just annoying.

 

Good news and bad: First the bad, IMO anyway, the current (and one earlier) HP Synaptics driver leaves a lot to be desired, and I've come to terms with it - at least until I use another laptop with far better touchpad response. (Frustration: my 2010 Sony Z13's is better in every way than the 13T's though it can't do many of those fancy gestures, which I never use anyway.) The good news: whether via HP or Synaptics itself, Synaptics drivers are constantly updated and normally reach decent functionality on new clickpad models.

Let me handle the fan question first. I hear virtually no fan noise - it's either on low or off most of the time - and even under moderate load (not like running a Prime 95 benchmark) even the high speed is, a) relatively short lived until it throttles down and, b) even at highest speed, it is far less obnoxious than apparently some have encountered; it does not have a high pitched whine (as my 14 Spectre does the very few times it runs the fan). Overall, I would not consider fan noise a significant factor on the 13 Spectre.

As for the screens, ours being an LG model (see below) it is clear that ours are not IGZO and the others with Sharp screens are. The main advantage of IGZO tech is a reduction of around 70% of battery draw vs. conventional screens. They also tend to be brighter, based both on the the IGZO technology and the fact that it takes far less wattage the fact that it takes little added wattage to project a very bright screen. I knew ours weren't IGZO but it disappoints me since several of the high end UBs are using the Sharp patented technology buyers envy, lol). Imagine the 13T screens, 50-75% brighter and the overall battery life up by about an hour! With the Dell XPS-12 i7 Haswell, 8GB/256GB and the Acer S7-392 (same specs) on sale at the MS store for $1,299 and $1,399 respectively (before student dicounts, 10% I believe), our favored child may be losing some of its price advantage. Now, neither of these alternates have QHD screens or AC wifi, but these seem to be minor shortcomings compared to the long and impeccable track record of the XPS12 (and it's modestly useful "flip" to a tablet form factor) and pretty much same on the Acer - both of these in their second year with only the substitute of Haswell for Ivy Bridge changing. Doesn't really change my mind about keeping the Spectre13, but it does raise the bar for clearing essentially all hurdles (on mine: trackpad, WIDI, a rare condition in which the screen goes dark as programmed in power settings, but waking it up doesn't work without a reboot. I've got 14 days left (can probably buy another week calling HP and saying it's either return for refund or give me another week to deal with issues), and I'm not sure it's worh even $200 to start down a new road with another brand.

This is just my current knee-jerk reaction to learning ours has an "old-tech" screen while other premium UBs, with high end specs, have an IGZO and are being discounted $300 or so. That, an the touchpad pissing me off more and more

 

I don't think we have a concensus, but I am pretty confident in the knowledge that a similar screen with the same backlight assembly will be dimmer the higher the pixel count which would imply that the FHD screen is likely somewhat brighter. That's disappointing because the only measurement of brightness I have read was in the laptopmag.com review , which measured the FHD screen at only 254 lux, which translates to about 215 nit. Unfortunately, those numbers square with my "eyeball" measurement. I find the QHD screen fine for indoor use, but likely to be pretty useless out of doors. Then again, knowing myself to be a sucker for a really bright screen, this limit forces me to use less power and thus attain longer battery life than if I had a way to make the screen brighter. FYI, the comparison in the laptopmag review measured the Acer S7-392 at 329 lux (about 30% brighter) but the Sony Pro 13 and 2013 MBA were both about the same as our Spectre 13 with FHD.

One final - fairly important - point is that the HP owners' documentation suggests both screens have a maximum brightness of 340 nit, 50% brighter than laptopmag measured and than I, frankly, believe to be the true brightness on the QHD 13T. A second comparison I have is to my HP Envy 14 Spectre (Ivy bridge version) has been measured at around 225 nit by several highly reputable publications (notebookcheck.net, anandtech.com) and side by side the max brightness on these two Hps (ambient light sensors disengaged for both) seem quite similar in brightness. Once again, most people don't require more than about 175 nit for indoor viewing, a bit more if you have a window directly behind you) so it is only an issue if you are brightness-obsessed (present company very much included!) or need to use it out of doors fairly often. But none of this excuses the inflated numbers in HP's documentation, not that I think there is a think we can do about it, other than returning the product and I, for one, wouldn't consider doing it for brightness alone.

 

Actually, I'm don't think the XPS 12 and the 1080p S7-392 have IGZO panels. I believe it's the 1440p S7-392 that has IGZO (i.e. the Sharp panel I listed above). Likewise for Dell, it's only the high DPI laptops that have IGZO (1440p XPS 11, 1800p XPS 15).
It seems IGZO is more useful for high DPI since they need to have brighter backlights for the same amount of luminance.

edit: Nevermind, I don't think you were saying that the XPS 12 and S7 have IGZO. I just misunderstood your comment. It is unfortunate that the Spectre doesn't have IGZO, but as you said, probably not a deal breaker.

Thanks for the comments on the fan noise. This seems to be kind of a subjective matter.

 

I have had my 13T for almost two weeks now and I think it is great, I have the QHD screen and notice bleed when the computer boots up and the HP logo is on but when my screen is black on say that youtube test it is hard to see the bleed but it is still there. Most prominent in the upper left corner and in the middle part of the bottom of the screen.

Also, for some reason I am connected to my Netgear Nighthawk router as 2.4 instead of 5 and my sister in laws MBP connects as 5 and an iPad mini connects as 5 as well. How can I tell if the Spectre is connected as AC and how can I get in on the 5 band? I know my router settings are correct as those other devices connect, although they are Apple products.

I sometimes think I should have went with the regular 1080 screen instead of the QHD one, does anyone else feel that way? Sometimes on screens with white backgrounds the display seems to be a bit dull but on colorful pages it is outstanding.

 

I don't have an AC router, but you can set 5Ghz as the preferred band. Go to Network and Sharing Center (right click on the wireless 'bars'), click on 'change adapter settings' , right click on the wifi adapter and choose properties, then click on the 'configure' box for the wireless adapter. Select the 'advanced' tab, select the 'preferred band' entry and choose your preference in the dropdown select box.

Regarding the display, Intel's display drivers can be set for optimizing power use over display quality, at least when on battery. It has been complained about in the past; you can choose to disable the energy optimization by going to the "Power" section of the Intel HD graphics application, choose 'on battery' and check the Intel HD Graphics settings for the 'Display Power Saving Technology'. Select the ? to see what it does (it modifies contrast and brightness to save power while on battery; you can disable it or choose the aggressiveness). Personally I don't see any significant ill effects but I love the battery life of this machine. For those who are disappointed it doesn't have the latest technology, the QHD panel does use the VESA eDP 1.3 standard (the FHD is still at eDP 1.2, also fairly new) which allows the panel (instead of the GPU) to refresh itself while you are staring at a static screen, described here VESA's eDP 1.3 Standard Promises to Deliver Improved Notebook and Tablet Battery Life
You can turn PSR on and off in the Intel HD Graphics settings ('on battery' in the Power section of the latest driver).

 

The Acer S7 battery life is lower than the HP 13T as is the case with the majority of high end Windows ultrabooks (at any price point). So, IGZO or not, that is a fact.
Regarding screen tech numbers on paper. I used to think that raw numbers of brightness ratings (Nits/Lux) were one of the most important factors to consider. Now that I have looked at many machines from entry level to top of the line with differing reported brightness numbers, I have found that those numbers taken by themselves are not very important. The totality of the screen quality (contrast/range/color rep/resolution etc etc) brought by the other factors are much more important than being at the top of the brightness rating scale. Of course, I am not one to work on a laptop outside routinely and perhaps I would feel differently if I did.

 

Thank you for that info, I was able to find those settings now and I am glad you told me about that setting in the Intel HD program. The screen bleeding is kinda getting to me now, I went to play a movie and paused it when the screen was all dark and the top left corner of screen is significantly lighter than the right side and the bottom of my screen has several spots that has some decent bleed. With that being said it is not extremely bad but definitely not acceptable IMO.

I tried using remote desktop to get onto my work PC and when I connect the text on the screen gets extremely small. I did some googling and found many Yoga 2 Pro users having the same problem, I think it is just an issue with remote desktop since the resolution of my work screen is smaller than this. But if it isn't does anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks

 

Can you please post pictures if possible? I think I might go through the entire thread and see who's having what problems and make an open Google docs spreadsheet to help and see which configurations have what problems to what degree respectively.

 

Since this is both a matter of luck of the draw (within limits) as to the screen you got from the parts bin and of your subjective sense as to how much "bleed" is clearly noticeable with useful content (as compared to boot screens) it's hard for me to know whether to advise you to try not to fixate on it and expect that you soon won't notice it or to encourage you to return it and roll the dice on the next one or to look into competitive models and check that there aren't just as many comments about bleed in forums for those models. I can assure you that the phenomenon of backlight bleed is born of two major advances in laptop LCDs: 1) IPS technology and, 2) brighter screens (hence brighter backlights). You rarely heard of this regarding the 160 nit TN screens of just a few years ago and the highest proportion of such reports were for the Asus Zenbook Ivy bridge models that to this day are among the finest 13" displays produced but they had an unheard-of (particularly for a non-tablet) 450 nit brightness and a IPS display with perfect viewing angles and 100% sRGB color gamut. As perhaps with our 13Ts, some of the Zenbooks had worse bleed than others and got returned, but evidence is most either didn't notice it or learned to look past it because it was a comparatively minor "blemish " on an otherwise spectacular screen, which some 90% of reviewers pronounced the finest ever seen. Personally I don't see a hint of bleed in my QHD and, where I've noticed it in boot screens of other laptops, I have never seen its effect while viewing any content, and I'm pretty fussy/OCD!

Thanks. That's really interesting stuff I knew nothing about As for altering screen settings to conserve battery life, the two I believe will achieve the vast majority of power conservation are, in this order, 1) reduce brightness to the lowest level you find comfortable and, 2), reduce the sampling rate from 60hZ (default) to 40 hZ, and reduce the color from 32 bit (default) to 16 bit (you can adjust these from the same graphics control panel referred to above. You will notice a slight degradation to color quality and even some "dithering" at gradients, but the steps in #2 could add close to an hour of battery endurance. I'm not sure why you would need to do this - setting your display quality back around 7 years! - given the exceptional endurance this computer has, but if you find yourself already low on power and nowhere near an ac plug, those measures will squeeze a significant amount of extra battery capacity. Another helpful accessory to keep in your bag is a universal battery charger that can hold between 25% and 50% of a full charge for your laptop for not much money ($50 and up) and not much weight or bulk in your bag. These are must-have accessories for electric power outages to keep cell phones and other devices charged. For that kind of home use you can get heavier, bulkier battery chargers that will fully charge smartphones and tablets several times as well as topping off your laptop.

I agree with you that screen quality is measured y more than one spec, but as far as brightness suitable for outdoor visibility, white light brightness measured in nits or equivalent pretty much steals the show.

What a noble and useful idea. If you can come up with a template of all the variables you want to include you might be able to get a Mod to set it up as a "sticky" and you can solicit the data from owners rather than having to go through a 130 page thread and gather data. We all have a stake in this and if you are willing to do so much heavy lifting the least you deserve is to have users supply you with raw data.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

My Spectre 13-3000T keeps losing wifi connection.

I've had this laptop for about 3 weeks now. The first day I got it, I was not able to connect to get it to connect to my wifi. It would say "not connected" and then "limited connection." I had to reset my wireless router and finally the laptop was able to connect. Every other day, the wifi will disconnect and I would have to reset my router. All my other wifi enabled devises work flawlessly. I have a Surface RT, Xbox 360, TV, smartphone, and they all work. It's just this HP that is having this issue.

Today, it has gotten unbearable. It disconnects every 5 minutes. I don't know whats going on. My drivers are all updated. Is this happening to anyone else? Is there a fix?

 

Lifesonfan2112,
You might try the Intel ProSet Wireless Tools application (via Control Panel>all items or from the Network & Sharing Center) diagnostics and connection statistics to see if anything odd shows up.

 

Unfortunately in the UK we can't get the QHD screen, so there is no easy cure. Would still be really interested to hear from more FHD screen owners whether you have backlight bleed or not. Mine behaves as follows:

Dark Room, Full Brightness,Black Screen - Very bad backlight bleeding (posted a pic earlier in thread)
Dark Room, Full Brightness,Dark Movie Scene - Very bad backlight bleeding (posted a pic earlier in thread)
Light Room, Full Brightness,Black Screen - Pretty bad backlight bleeding
Light Room, Full Brightness,Dark Movie Scene - Pretty bad backlight bleeding
Light Room, Half Brightness,Dark Movie Scene - Still just about noticable but not nearly as bad

It's going back to HP today for a refund, then going to decide whether to try another FHD Spectre13 or get a different model

 

I can only tell you that my first Spectre 13t that had an FHD (1920x1080) was not that bad. Just some bleed at the bottom that wasn't noticeable except on a fully black screen.

It seems like the most likely place for the light bleed is at the bottom of the screen (not sure why that is) but we have seen some examples of it on the sides as well.

I would try one more Spectre 13t if you have the time (and the patience) but I wouldn't blame you if you tried another brand. I've heard that it could be hit or miss with other brands as well if the have an IPS panel (I don't know that as fact though).

 

It sounds this is a common issue. I have had the same problem more often after updating the net driver, especially when the machine was in idle and not used for a while. When I awoke the machine, it either only connected at 11 mbps, or "limited connection" whether I checked on Intel configuration or not. I did not have such a problem before updating the net driver, so I rolled back to the older driver again. It seemed to work better but not fully solved the problem. Sometimes it still happens but not that often.

 

I believe that mine did that originally and I went into the DEVICE MANAGER and checked out the PROPERTIES of the wireless card. I think it defaults to automatically drop the connection after 5 minutes of IDLE time. Might be a power saver thing. You can disable this setting.

Check it out when you get the chance.:thumbsup:

I had to send mine back for another reason but should be getting my new one next week.

 

Very correct with all brands/system models being hit or miss. The reason I purchased the Spectre 13t is because I bought and returned a Dell XPS 11. It was full of bugs, power management issues, freezes etc. Also bought another Dell model, lots of issues. Some similar and some different. After reviewing experiences of others on these two systems, it was the same pattern. The number of issues associated with those two systems were greater in number, however, and seemed to impact a larger number of systems. So, an element of consistency in production quality that seems to have been present years ago just does not seem to be as common anymore. Perhaps this reality is the norm with manufacturers brand new model ultrabooks and systems and does not impact established models. All new platforms will of course have higher risk of issues in first generation products but it seems much more wide spread and random in nature. It is frustrating and a test patience for sure. Interesting that in high end first generation systems some get a relatively unflawed machine while other may go through a couple exchanges or more to get an acceptable one. Right now I am waiting on another Spectre 13T that should be here in about a week. The blatant defect on the first one was a large inch and a half white blotch/screen defect on the QHD screen. Other than that issue, an overall great system IMO

 

Do you mean the power settings in the PROPERTIES of the wireless card, or the power settings from the control panel? I already set the power on maximum performance with the power cord plugin, but this still happens.

 

I don't have my Spectre 13t right now since I returned it to get a replacement. The replacement is supposed to ship out tomorrow, so I won't have one until next week.

I do have an HP Envy 15t-j100 Quad TouchSmart at home and it has a similar AC wireless card. When I get home I will check it to see if I can refresh my memory on what I did.

I do believe it was somewhere in the PROPERTIES of the wireless card under the device manager but I am not positive about that. I just remember that I had a problem with the wireless connection dropping when I left the laptop idle for a while, and whatever I did seemed to fix the problem.

 

So my Spectre arrived today. I have an i5 processor, 8gb ram, 256 hard drive, QHD screen, AC wifi card. So far (a couple hours) there are NO problems. I did a full screen video, full screen color tests, and I don't have any dead pixels or backlight bleed. Under bright artificial light the screen might not get as bright as some, but it's still plenty usable for me. The fan is slightly whiny, but I can only hear it if the room is completely silent. Haven't tested the headphone jack yet.

So I'm really happy! Think I got a winner here. Let me know if there's anything I can/should test.

 

OK, here is what I did for the wireless connection:

Device Manage>>>Network Adapters>>>(wifi adapter??)>>>Power Management TAB>>> UNCHECK- Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

 

That's great to hear. I hope that when I get my second one next week, I am so lucky. :thumbsup:

 

THATS GREAT! :thumbsup:. Did you but the smart buy option? Because I think those go through more Q/C, because I believe they are not built to order.

Okay so as for the open Google Docs spreadsheet. I thought it would be more user friendly and easier to input data by creating a form. I am busy with school work right now. So if anyone wants to help create the form it would be great, just pm with your email address. I'm setting a goal to get the form setup to a usable degree by Saturday or Sunday (Probably a lot earlier depending on my work load). Obviously if I don't receive any help it will take longer.

BTW mine is shipping on Feb 4. Fully loaded without Windows 8 Pro.
Hope it ships early, but with the crazy winter storm in Texas I wouldn't mind it being just on time.

 

Here is my start screen, I tested this out using an all black screen from the youtube screen bleed test and I also started a few movies for when it gets really dark in the beginning and you can see the bleeding from the top left corner and all along the bottom. The start screen is of course the worst, but other dark scenes it is still pretty noticeable, specifically the top left corner of screen was much lighter than the rest of the screen on dark backgrounds. I initiated the RMA process today to get a new one, hopefully the next one will be better.

 

I was trying to decide between this Spectre the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro from BestBuy that has all the same specs as a maxed out Spectre, except HP has the wireless AC. The Y2pro doesn't have a very nice feeling material, it is very rubbery and sticky and I could see the palm rest area wearing out easily. I also wasn't in love with it in full tablet mode with the keys on the bottom and the fans being blocked because it was in tablet mode. The tent mode would be awesome and I could see using that as well as my daughter using it in tent mode. The Spectre just feels great and very solid and I like that it comes with LR5 (at least I think that is a full version of LR5 it comes with, right?) and I also like the trackpad with the two zones on there as I don't always use the touchscreen and find myself using it as a laptop so that feature works well for this.

 

Why would the Smart Buy systems go through more QC than custom built configurations?

 

Nope, not the smart buy it was a custom build.

Okay, so after a few more hours I'm really happy with this laptop. Bloatware was easy to remove, there really wasn't that much of it. I transferred the backup stuff to a USB drive and used the HP utility to remove the backup partition - took maybe 20 minutes total and I didn't have to do any manual partition resizing or whatever. I now have 182gb free of 229gb available (256gb drive) as my C: drive. The QHD screen is gorgeous - I've been playing some HD youtube videos and they look great, I set up Lightroom and loaded some of my 16mp shots and they look fabulous as well. I'll use a Spyder tomorrow and try to calibrate the screen, see how accurate I can get it.

Only dislike so far is the keyboard backlight - it looks kinda silly turned on, and I really want to disable the f5 light when it's turned off. Anyone know how to do that?

PS Yes it's the full version of Lightroom 5 to whoever asked.

Here's a couple shots to show lack of backlight bleed.

 

Just press the Function Key (FN) + A to turn off the light. (Thanks to gutermdp)

 

Unfortunately, that setting only works until the computer goes to sleep or you restart. Mine comes right back on when the machine does. Maybe a BIOS update or something will let the setting stick until you want to turn it back on.

 

I think you can grab another 8 GB of space if you go into Disk Management. Once HP removes the recover partition you can get to the adjacent 8GB OEM partition and add that too. You'll then just see the mandatory front end partition and an EFI partition before your C: drive.

 

Don't forget, not only is the Yoga Pro 2 missing 802.11ac but also it doesn't even support 5ghz 802.11n

 

I played with a Y2P in BestBuy for a short time. Honestly, I wasn't that impressed...it definitely didn't feel as high end as the HP, and I feel like the tablet mode would make me nervous with the keys so exposed. Take the $200 you save on the Spectre and buy a Nexus 7 for your daughter

 

Don't get me wrong, the Y2P is a very well spec'd and the convertible feature is definitely a nice bonus. It is very well reviewed and has identicial specs except for the wireless card and the one from BB is not a bad price except it was always out of stock. When I was looking for a replacement laptop I wanted to use my Discover card to get the 5% CB on online purchases and I went through shop discover to get to HP Home for another 5% CB. It was about two days before Q4 was ending so I had to buy one before the CB bonus category was going to change and the Y2P was OOS on BB so I went with the HP. Now of course it has been back in stock online but my CC cash back categories have changed so I would not save as much.

My daughter has an iPad mini, so she is good in the tablet department. I am an Android person but got her the iPad because it is so simple to use, I was afraid the Nexus 7 would be a little too complex for her. I was just thinking that Win8 with the touchscreen would be a nice added bonus for her to use especially since it is a laptop and all the programs work on it. But I have reservations with letting her using my new expensive toy anyway, but that will wear off after several months and I won't care as much as I did when it was brand new.

 

I found this too. Thanks. It works fine now.

 

First, congrats on getting a good unit the second

I guess you've alreadyo
gotten the trick to remove the backlight switch key light. As far as the back light in general I have discovered that there's a way to use it so that you get the same benefit as with the more normal backlight with black keys and white lettering. With metallic keys (which I really don't prefer) you use backlighting differently. Unless the room is very dark the backlighting will make it harder, not easier to see the lettering. But in those circumstances you will almost always find the combination of ambient light in the room and reflected light from the screen to light the metallic keys well enough to see the lettering in black contrast to the silvery keys just as you do in daylight. When the ambient room light and dimmed screen make it hard to see the lettering, then you will find the keyboard backlight will do an excellent job of illuminating the lettering on the keys and it will look very similar to a conventional white on black key backlight does in medium to dark ambient light. (Note : neither the screen light nor dimmed ambient room light will be of any help with white on black keys the way they do on reflective metallic keys, so you'll need backlighting to turn on sooner with that conventional key coloring.) Another thing you'll notice is that one it's dark enough to need the backlight on the 13T, the lighting will appear pretty much "normal" and uniform as backlighting of a more standard white on black key appears. It seems that the variation of the reflection on the surface of the "silvery" keys that causes the backlighting to appear very uneven in normal light. Notice, though, that when the room and screen are dark enough that you need the backlight on, the backlighting on the keys appear very uniform and neither uneven nor too dim nor too bright. I can't be sure if has a "method to the madness, or if it is more a matter of dumb luck with an inherently flawed design! My guess is it by design this being a flagship model and all.

Personally, I don't like metallic keyboards; I find they feel as good to the touch. I think HP is using it here in keep the whole machine from looking like a direct copy of the MBAir.

I'm curious to know if others find my explanation and use instructions valuable. It works fine for me - and my vision isnt that good, but as usual, YMMV. I can tell you this: this would have been a deal killer!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

I agree with lovelaptops on the keyboard lighting; it works much better in practice than you'd assume at first glance. When you need it, it works fine... and I'm finding that I rarely need it. The superbright F5 key is kind of an odd choice, but a minor nit I can live with.

Another feature that I really like (though I thought at first was awkward) is the right angled power connector. I find it much easier to keep the cord out of the way than a straight plug. I've been through 3 power adapters on my Thinkpad T400s in less than 4 years, all because of the constant strain on the power connector (and doubtless some poor connector design by Lenovo). I'd like it better if it didn't stick out so far, but I think its going to hold up well.

 

Has something happened to the drivers' page or is it just me?
Software & driver downloads HP Spectre 13t-3000 CTO Ultrabook | HP® Support

 

What changed? Haven't been there nearly enough to tell if something has changed besides the driver update dates.

 

Everything was gone, but seems to be back again now.

 

Good suggestion on the backlighting. I realized I was mostly turning it on for the top row of function keys, rather than the typing portion of the keyboard. So once I learn those, it should be much less of a deal. And I agree, the light from the screen itself is plenty most of the time.

I tried to go in and delete the OEM partition, which is 8gb of empty space. The windows partition manager wouldn't let me. Do I need to use a 3rd party app for that?

Thanks!

 

Is the recovery partition still there? If so, you might only be able to get at the OEM partition if you move the recovery partition to USB. You might only be able to delete or expand the partitions adjacent to the system partition (C

 

I already transferred the backup to USB. The recovery partition is completely merged with the C partition, and OEM is at the 'end' of the drive next to it. I just googled and found this ( How to Delete an OEM Partition? | Disk Partition) which I'll try tonight.

 

Can anyone confirm the QHD display panel type and manufacturer? As well as the quality of it since it hasn't been reviewed anywhere for some reason. Can anyone provide a small review of it?

How many fans does the laptop have? 1 or 2?

Ram is soldered on I assume. What form factor are the ssd and wifi card? Are they replaceable? Anything else upgradable?

I contacted hp support, but for some reason they refused to answer and told me to ask the reseller. I doubt they would know any of this. Hopefully some of you can answer my questions, since hp won't.

Edit: what's the battery life like on the QHD display? Fan noise and heat is also nice to know. Does it get unbearably hot to the touch? Throttling? Vacuum cleaner fan noise? Might as well go all in with the questions at once

 

I do think mine is getting exchanged due to the backlight bleed, but I wanted to bring up two other things...

Based on my experience with other laptops I don't think the headphone hiss is unusual. Earbuds/IEMs are usually very low impedance and so the background noise of the jack comes through clearly. You don't get this with mobile devices as often because they are lower power and so the resulting background noise is lower volume. Even the ATH-M50s are pretty low impedance for full sized headphones, so hearing a little bit through those is not unusual.

The one thing I wanted to ask about is battery drain when turned off. I have only been able to use my laptop every other day or so, and I'm finding that I'm losing ~5% battery per day with the laptop fully powered down. I always charge the laptop fully (til the light turns white and then some) before I put it away and it's powering up around 95%. Has anyone else experienced this?