HP Spectre x360

I just ordered a custom Spectre x360. When I was building the machine, it said it would be built by March 17th. After I checked-out, the final page indicated a 2 day build time. When I login into hp.com and check the status of the build, nothing is specified. Anyone know how to decipher this information?

 

I did receive a confirmation email yesterday. It says that it would be sent out today, the day after I put the order in. This is unlikely since, again, its a custom machine. Anyway, I checked the website today. It now reads "5 days to customize."

 

Congrats to you! this spectre x360 looks like a solid killer machine!

not only the hardware is solid but with HP and MS engineers working together, it would seem all the software at all levels will work so flawlessly! let us know your impression and experience

 

The device looks great:full aluminium body, convertible with a sleek hinge, great price. I am waiting for the owner's first impressions.

 

Just ordered one from the UK store: i5, 256GB, 8GB memory with leather sleeve. Recent reviews have been generally positive with two maybe problem areas: 1 highly reflective screen 2 possible sticky trackpad ( although on YouTube videos it seemed reasonably fluid to my eyes). Any one got any experience of the trackpad?

 

When do you expect it?

The reflective screen is an issue of most touch ultrabooks (this is regarded as a negative of the touch XPS 13, too). As for the trackpad, if there are problems i think at least some of them are dealt with in future updates.

Waiting for your first impressions!

 

Ordered Sat 7 March, due on Tues 24 March.

 

Hi Stuckat1,

I apologize for any confusion related to the ship date of your HP custom order.

I can certainly escalate you concern and get the latest shipping information from HP Home and Home Office.
In order to escalate your issue, please send me an email with the following info:
HP Home and Home Office order number
The email address you used to place your order
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Send the above info to [email protected]

Please include your Notebook review username in the subject line of email.

Look forward to talking with you.

Cheers,

Cheron
HP Social Media Ambassador
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the views and strategy of HP
Please review the HP Privacy statement at the link below
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Reviews are still scarce on the Internet, and I haven't found any in depth review with details on daily use with noise, heat and usage in tablet mode... Let's have that the new macbooks don't steal the whole attention right now.
Will be waiting for your impressions!

 

Two descent reviews i've seen and appear to be very good:

http://hothardware.com/reviews/hp-spectre-x360-ultrabook-sleek-sexy-convertible



Very useful info in the comments, too.

 

Love when a company takes the time to have a representative comb these sites. Don't know why all of them don't do it.

 

Really looking forward to this laptop. Any news on when this products will be available in Canada?

 

Another review from LaptopMag:
http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/hp-spectre-x360-13t

Also a stress test video on Youtube:


There seems to be an issue with heat on heavy use. I wonder if it is uncomfortable because of that....

 

I checked this out in Best Buy today. The unibody is nice. The screen is okay. I didn't think it was great; I was hoping for great. The surface pro 3 screen is better. The keyboard is okay but not great. Kinda mushy. The very bottom of the palmrest is not rounded, it's almost a knife edge that one really doesn't want to use to rest the palm.

The hinges are fine. Very pretty. Very shiny though, and I found that a bit of a distraction. I dunno seems functionally very similar to the yoga hinge regardless of the internal gears. The trackpad seemed good. I think overall I was expecting more, but compared to the current crop of windows machines, I'd say it's fine.

 

Bought the $1,150 i7/256gb/8gb/1080p config at Best Buy today. They don't have the i5 models available yet for some reason, so I sucked it up and paid the premium for the i7 processor.

So far I am very pleased with it. I had previously bought and returned the Dell XPS 13 because of two main issues: automatic screen dynamic contrasting that Dell does not allow the user to disable, and an input lag issue when making fine movements with the trackpad.

The Spectre x360, I am happy to say, has neither of these issues. Intel's "Display Power Saving Technology" can be disabled in the graphics control panel, and the Synaptics-controlled touchpad has been nice, smooth and lag-free for me (the Dell XPS 13 uses Windows 8.1's built-in "precision trackpad" drivers). The glossy screen is not any more reflective than the other Windows glossy-screened laptops I saw at Best Buy, and on a side note I think the Macbooks do a better job at mitigating glare because they treat their screens with something (like with the Ipad Air 2). Anyways, I think I read that HP (in their press release or whatnot for this model) made the display "optically bonded" and so I don't see any gap between the screen and the glass. Gives it that nice "smoothness" and "pop" to the image that differentiates glossy from matte screens (besides the glare, obviously). Color and contrast both seem excellent to my casual but discerning eyes. So that takes care of the review which scared me a lot when I was researching this model: http://mashable.com/2015/03/07/hp-spectre-x360-review/ I really have not had any of the trackpad issues the reviewer had. I did go in the Synaptics options and tweak things to my liking, but even upon first bootup I had no issues with the tracking.

Fan seems to be dead silent for casual use, including during YouTube and Netflix streaming. The bottom where there's a vent opening does get warm, but not hot. If I lean in close to the machine I can hear a faint buzzing which I guess is just the electronics inside. It's not the "whine" like the Core2Duo processor, definitely a buzzing sound, and it is thankfully inaudible when I am not right up against the machine.

I am on my first full battery charge, so I may have more to say later, but I am down to 41% now and that's after 5 hours and 17 minutes of runtime, which was mostly regular browsing and a good amount of YouTube and some Netflix also. Looks like 8-9 hours of light use.

Other odds and ends:
- The hinge is indeed sturdy and smooth, hope that doesn't wear out over time.
- Speakers on the Dell XPS 13 were clearer, fuller and louder, so a clear win. They were also side-mounted, versus bottom-firing like the Spectre's. So while not as good they're still alright, certainly not leagues behind the Dell's.
- I like the Spectre's keyboard better than the Dell XPS 13's. Mine is not very mushy, unlike what bladebeam1 says above. For me the XPS 13's shorter travel didn't "feel" as good. This is purely subjective, but I think the Spectre's keyboard is pretty great.
- The keyboard's backlight is on/off without any dimming as noted in reviews, and when off the light under the F5 key (which turns the kb backlight on and off) stays on. This will probably drive any OCD person mad, having one singular lit key.
- SD card sticks out like about 1mm when inserted.
- The sleeve that is included is a pain to put on and take off. Not gonna use it.
- A USB-to-ethernet adapter was not included, I think I read a preview or two saying this accessory would be included.

 

Nice to see the first owner feedback. I don't think you may have different keyboards, right? It is most likely that each of you experiences the keyboard in a different way. I hope it is good, indeed, because i write a lot.

However, this always on backlight key seems insane to me! Isn't there a way to disable it?

 

As I note, my keyboard impressions are purely subjective. And I highly doubt that there'd be different keyboards for this model. Though that's not to say the keys weren't indeed mushy for bladebeam1 when he tried the floor display model. The Best Buy I went to did not have a floor display model. Thankfully my unit's keyboard seems pretty solid.

I haven't seen any obvious toggle for the F5 key LED, and true to their word HP put very little in the way of bloatware, so I don't think the light can be disabled. I can see their line of reasoning for making it like that, though: during the day it would be not too noticeable that one key is still being lit up. And in the dark you wouldn't have to fumble around for the key that turns the backlighting on. But I'll dig around tomorrow and see if I can find any options for it.

I haven't seen the BIOS yet, the option may be buried in there. I've tried mashing F1, F2 and F10 during bootup but it doesn't seem to work. Another thing I'll be tinkering with as I settle into using this little guy. Unless someone already knows exactly how to access the BIOs, which would be greatly appreciated.

 

madmook: could you please comment more on the "fan noise" compared to Dell xps 13? Is it much better in normal light conditions? Which XPS13 version did you have (FHD/QHD+)? The noise of the cooling system (especially while doing light stuff) is very important to me. So any more comments on this will be highly appreciated
Thanks

 

Thanks for your impressions everyone. It really helps in the decision.

I think that one of the plus points with this device is the reported collaboration between HP and Microsoft to optimize the overall interaction between hardware and Windows 8.1, and according to everyone's reviews, it seems that this is a well built machine.

I really wonder if this will be also the case with Windows 10. Each time I used a laptop (most of them were HP), after an upgrade to a newer OS, several issues and incompatibilities and driver issues usually arise, so I really wonder whether this will be the case with this laptop, and most of all, if it would be better to buy it with Windows 10 natively and not as an upgrade.

 

I am not hearing any fan noise at all for light usage. I am using it on battery, however. I did keep it plugged in when I was doing the first-time boot up and setting things up, but I don't remember the fan turning on then either. I had the FHD (non-touch) Dell XPS 13, and the fan would also stay off during light casual usage. I know there were complaints from people who used it when plugged in and said that the fan would love to stay on. But I will mostly be using this laptop while on battery (only plugging in to charge) so I am more than happy that there is zero fan noise for my usage pattern.

I also noticed that in NotebookReview's own review of the Spectre x360 they complained that the trackpad is buttonless and thus they had problems with the left and right-click action:

I don't know what happened with their unit, but my touchpad's physical left and right click work fine, as well as the standard two-finger tap for right-click. I've not had a one-finger tap for left-click register as a right-click. For the physical click you'll have to press along the bottom edge because like most buttonless touchpads it is hinged at the top so you can't click down there.

 

Gotta agree with madmook, I have the same system and really am impressed with everything. I have absolutely no issue with the palm rest whatsoever. Fan noise has been very low during the times it has kicked on (which is few). I really thing this is much better than the Dell XPS and you save a couple of bucks at the same time.

 

Quick battery life update after an hour and 5 minutes on (light web browsing):

Boy, how I wish it could be.

 

Yea I had a similar moment when I did the same thing @ 78% and said I had 12 hrs left. I still went another 5 hrs and had more than 50% battery left.

 

I start to prefer it over the XPS 13 which has been my clear choice till now Thanks for your info.

Try BatteryBar this is much better for battery lifetime estimation (you may know it). The Windows tool is not accurate.

madmook & other owners: could you please try if there is a different fan behavior when plugged in? (I mean if you could try to plug in for a few seconds - does it kick the fan in?)

 

When the XPS 13 came out i really loved it. But as time went buy, i noticed several cons: the soft paint touch gets extremely smudgy, even the trackpad,and i wasn't sure if i liked the aluminium-carbon-aluminium sandwich style. I by far prefer the more premium aluminium unibody of the spectre, which at the same time is greatly more functional and at a great price.

Sure, the XPS 13 has the infinity display which looks marvellous, but over time and after my initial excitement i found it to be not so significant.

I hope the comsumer feedback won't reveal any major drawbacks, like in the XPS (the auto-adjustive brightness, among others).

 

I purchased the same config as madmook from Bestbuy this past weekend. Pretty much echo everything he said, though I do hear the fan quite a bit under my workflow. How heavy is this load: (chrome 8 tabs, one youtube video playing), 2 pdfs open, and a video playing in vlc. With that load, my fan seems to cycle to an audible degree, but it's not terrible. I noticed it much worse when plugged in. That's really my only gripe. Keyboard feels great to me and I set up 1,2, and 3 finger tap to click and it all works great.

 

Quick tip, just found this myself today: there are some audio settings available in the Control Panel called DTS Audio Control Panel.

Messing with the sliders has improved the sound quality. Default is every setting in the middle. Upping the treble and center will especially help.

 

To the owners of the spectre 360, would it be hard to upgrade the SSD? I'm asking because the only model that is offered in Canada is the i7 with the 128SSD. Very bizarre spec combination if you ask me, not sure why HP is doing this. Pretty disappointing because I think the i5 with 256SSD is the best all around spec combination. I would cross the border and buy it in the US but then I would loose the warranty, which is a no-no with laptops.

So I might still buy the i7 and try to upgrade the SSD capacity, if it's possible. Still cheaper in Canada to get the i7 model than to get the Lenovo Yoga pro 3 that is seriously underpowered.

 

I'

I might be wrong, but I read somewhere it's impossible. I also think that the minimum is 256gb

 

Maybe the minimum in the US is 256gb but for some reason in Canada HP thought we could live with only 128gb, which is the bare minimum for everyday use if you have a big Itunes library... really disappointed by HP's decision in regards to the specs we get and the fact that no other option is available...I have to say that it's hardly the first time the Canadian gets weird PC configuration and almost no option....

 

Here in Europe the configs are bad so far, too.

I guess neither the RAM can be upgraded, right?

 

I think that the RAM can't be upgraded too, but let's wait for a more official info, since I'm not sure.

I'm also considering to buy the laptop from the US, and since I'm also concerned with the warranty, I contacted HP, and according to their their reply by email, if the laptop is available in your country, your laptop warranty should be covered in your country too. Here's the official reply :

I hope this helps

 

The battery life on the Spectre x360 that I just got is absolutely awful. Running the default installation of Windows, I'm lucky to get 4 hours of battery life using the HP Recommended powerplan while browsing the internet on a stable WiFi network with the screen brightness set to the absolute minimum. Is there anything that I can do to fix this issue or would my best bet be to contact HP directly? I bought this laptop solely based off of the claims that it could get up to 12 hours on battery and the fact that I'm lucky to see a third of that is appalling.

I have the 13-4005dx. (QHD screen, 512GB SSD, i7-5500U)

 

One question for the owners: what about the SSD? Is it Samsung? I had read there was an issue with some models of Samsung SSDs.

See here:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1507897/samsung-840-evo-read-speed-drops-on-old-written-data-in-the-drive

 

You are the first one here to give any impressions regarding the QHD display version... I'm afraid that the high resolution display is the cause, but it's still outrageous. I'd contact HP regarding this. So far data on battery like was very encouraging on FHD configurations.
Good luck

 

Please comment on the quality of the QHD display quality, as I have seen zero reviews from anyone with the QHD display. The official HP specs for the QHD i7 are up to 10.5 hours and up to 12 hours for the FHD i7 version, 1.5hrs less. Getting 4 hours of battery life seems inconsistent with the actual hardware, I'd expect somewhere around 8 hours, more in line with the Dell XPS 13 QHD+.

What browser are you using and have you installed something that might be continually running in the background? You might try selecting the default Windows Power Saver plan. One way to trouble shoot this is to install HWInfo64 and verify that the i7 CPU is actually down-clocking as well as monitor the actual battery discharge rate when you are completely idle and have various programs open. The Spectre has a 56Whr battery, to deplete that in 4 hours means you're discharging around 14W on average, which sounds a lot like your CPU is continuously running at full power.

 

The Spectre has a M.2 2280 80mm SATA SSD and WIFI module (which will be whitelisted), which are easily replaceable, however, the memory is soldered on the system board and NOT replaceable. I have not heard if the M.2 SSD port is tied to the PCIe bus or not.

 

I have the QHD i7 version and am thinking of sending it back for the following reasons:
1. Battery life seems to be all over the place, but nowhere near 12.5 hours, watching a 1080p film streaming off the network showed batter life as 3hrs 10 mins - barely enough for one good film. Typing this the battery went from 100% to 94% in < 5 mins - weird. This is difficult to judge as I'm installing and updating software still..
2. The F5 Backlight toggle is stupid, you have a choice to have a crappy light shining, or not being able to see the keyboard (with silver keys its almost always easier to see them with the backlight off).
3. Fan noise, the fan kicks in when doing the most mundane of tasks, even copying files where very little CPU is used, when the fan kicks in it drains the battery even quicker
4. For me this is the killer, the trackpad is erratic, registering false clicks when you press gently, not registering clicks when you click hard, and there seems to be a dead zone in the bottom 1/4 of the pad that only responds to physical clicks.
I think I may have a faulty on as I've never used a trackpad this bad (and I've used a few)..

BTW the QHD screen is OK, not iPad quality, but you have to have it so dim to save the battery its quality is irrelevant.

 

I ordered on the 3/4 and my credit card got dinged almost immediately. The order status ticked down to a 3/13 delivery estimate but is now going the other way currently showing 5 additional days to customize. I will probably call today and see what is up and may even cancel if I can.

Too bad as it ticked a lot of the things I was looking for, especially since 1080p touch screens are becoming rare and being I Wi-Fi Direct to my HDTV's almost daily

 

The low battery life on QHD models could be caused by the combination of power hungry panel + i7 and also some background tasks running. Start with getting rid of all the bloatware and antivirus such as McAffee... and also try not to use Chrome (IE is the most power efficient, Firefox somewhere in between them).
Dell is also stating 15 hrs for FHD model (in reality 8-10 hrs), and 12 hrs for QHD+ model (6-7 hrs in reality) and they have the auto screen dimming option activated to save battery life. I would not expect the QHD spectre to get 10.5 hrs but you can get close by turning off Wifi, lower the brightness etc... (so sort of readers or writers usage).

Try Hwinfo64 to see what is the power consumption and do the math... To be able to get 10 hrs you should not get over 5.5Whr average discharge rate.
I would try to lower the resolution as well on the QHD to see if it helps (but I doubt so).

In my experience the fan doesnt consume a lot of energy at all but the keyboard lighting is pretty demanding on battery (about 1-1,5Whr). Try the HWinfo and you will see how it is on this particular model. And you could also compare the power consumption after clean restart of the FHD and QHD models to see how much it consumes.

 

Called HP and it turns out my order has been knocking around FedEx in China since 3/16. So I am probably looking at another week, would have been nice if the Order Status reflected this instead of just adding days to "processing to customize".

On the reviews and previews that I have read so far they've all pretty much said that the battery life of the QHD models wouldn't be anywhere near that of the FHD. I wanted 1080p anyway as I want to run the native resolution of my HDTV's, have the "all day" battery performance, and not deal with Windows scaling issues. The Spectre x360 won out for me over the XPS13 as it offered touch on a 1080p display.

 

That's an additional reason i do hope there will be a way to disable this stupid backlight key that stays always on. This one really annoys me.

 

I have the 1080p screen model. These past couple days I got 8 hours and 9 minutes of total runtime (turned it off and on a few times in between without charging the battery, just took note of how long I used it each time) going from 100% down to 9% battery. This included a good amount of Netflix and Youtube video watching. Maybe yours was still doing background stuff (first time bootup?)?

The touchpad issue, I think in the Synaptics control panel there are options to make the outer edges be dead zones, I always disable that.

Anyways, wouldn't think the QHD screen drained the battery that quickly. Maybe use HWMonitor to check your battery's capacity? It should be like 55,000.

I would be pissed if I got just over 3 hours of battery life.

 

I'm just going to be honest in saying that I know very little about screens. The viewing angle is great but the QHD screen has caused me more issues than I'd have liked. A lot of programs (namely Photoshop) scale improperly (which is an issue with Windows more than anything) without some custom fixes like specifying a manifest file. The battery life is also (as I've said) completely awful. The insane amount of screen glare wouldn't be so bad if I could turn up the brightness a little but I'm lucky to get four hours now.

I ran HWInfo64 and the processor seems to be set to the correct clock rates (800 MHz while idle) but the graphics card is never going below 950 MHz with a memory speed of 800 MHz regardless of what I'm doing. The battery percentage seems to be really jumpy, for most of the time that I had HWInfo64 open my battery percentage was stuck at 100% and then suddenly after a few minutes it was 92%. When I began to write this post it was at 91%, I checked it every thirty seconds or so during all of which except the fourth it displayed 91%. On the fourth check, it was showing 87%.

The battery seems to be "good", HWInfo64 lists it as having a designed capacity of 54,720 mWh and a current capacity of 54,720 mWh.

 

Yes with Synaptics you have to be sure to disable all the Filtering under the Smart Check Settings. With my X1 Carbon Touch it reverts back to the default settings quite a bit, get tipped off to this when the UltraNav icon disappears from the system tray and of course when the TouchPad goes to hell.

 

Your CPU clocks do seem fine, but your graphic clocks should go down to 300 and not stay at the max 950. In HWInfo64, what does the Charge Rate say? This should be a negative number that indicates how much power in Watts your laptop is consuming at any given time. If it is reading -15W, then something is consuming too much power; you need to be in the -3 to -6W range to get 8+ hour battery life. Since your GPU clock seems high, you might check the CPU Power stats in HWInfo64 , to look to see what is consuming extra power, especially if your computer is idle.

 

With no programs open other than HWiNFO64, I'm seeing a discharge rate of -11,081 mW. I was unable to find CPU Power stats in HWinNFO64, but in hardware monitor I found a table with "Powers" stating that "Package" was using a minimum of 4W, IA Cores were using a minimum of 1W, GT was negligible (showing 0W most of the time), Uncore was using a minium of 2W, and DRAM was using a minimum of 0.6W.

I've still yet to see the GPU clock speeds drop at all.

The SSD (or at least the 512GB variant) is from Samsung. It's reported as being SAMSUNG MZNTE512-HMJH-000H1 ( http://www.amazon.com/PM851-Internal-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B00HWI56DE)

 

The Package Power is your total CPU power draw, IA is your CPU per core power draw and GT is your GPU power draw. Since you aren't reading much for the GT value, I wouldn't worry about your GPU clock not going to its lowest value. I have an old 2nd gen i7-2820QM quad-core and my CPU Package Power min is 3.4W, so there definitely seems to be some room for improvement on your 4W min CPU total power.

So, the next question is what is using the remaining 7W of consumption. One thing you could try is while monitoring the discharge rate, hook up an external monitor, disable the laptop display and to try to determine how much power the QHD display uses. Another option is to run "powercfg -energy" from the command line to get a report of how your system is using its power system and any trouble spots.

 

Anyone having issues with the active window not coming to the foreground? I use depot and it persists even when I close it. I looked around online and apparently a recent Windows update has been causing this issue, but I never installed it(it was released before in Feb before I got the spectre, so maybe it was installed on the original image?).

 

Analysis Results
Errors
CPU Utilization: Processor utilization is high
The average processor utilization during the trace was high. The system will consume less power when the average processor utilization is very low. Review processor utilization for individual processes to determine which applications and services contribute the most to total processor utilization.
Average Utilization (%) 19.95

Platform Power Management Capabilities: PCI Express Active-State Power Management (ASPM) Disabled
PCI Express Active-State Power Management (ASPM) has been disabled due to a known incompatibility with the hardware in this computer.

Warnings
Platform Timer Resolution: Platform Timer Resolution
The default platform timer resolution is 15.6ms (15625000ns) and should be used whenever the system is idle. If the timer resolution is increased, processor power management technologies may not be effective. The timer resolution may be increased due to multimedia playback or graphical animations.
Current Timer Resolution (100ns units) 10007
Maximum Timer Period (100ns units) 156250

Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Timer Request
A program or service has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution.
Requested Period 10000
Requesting Process ID 2528
Requesting Process Path \Device\HarddiskVolume4\Program Files (x86)\Razer\Synapse\RzSynapse.exe

CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization.
This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace.
Process Name explorer.exe
PID 3752
Average Utilization (%) 5.44
Module Average Module Utilization (%)
\SystemRoot\system32\ntoskrnl.exe 1.71
\SystemRoot\System32\win32k.sys 0.96
\Device\HarddiskVolume4\Windows\System32\ntdll.dll 0.56

I opened the Sensor Status window in HWiNFO64 and found the charge rate that updates consistently. While completely idle, the system was using -4.032 W. I then opened Firefox and reset the averages in HWiNFO64 and spent a few minutes scrolling through random websites. The charge rate during this period of a few minutes was an average of -14.311 W.