HP Spectre x360 (Intel Tiger Lake) Owners' Lounge

Figured it was worth creating a thread for the refreshed Spectre x360 line. In addition to the 13- and 15-inch, HP also added a 14-inch (13.5) with a 3:2 aspect ratio screen, including a 3,000x2,000 OLED touch display option.

Best Buy had the OLED 14 with i7 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and 1 TB SSD for $1,299 as part of a pre-Black Friday sale so I purchased one. Build quality is good, the display is beautiful, and I like that it has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, as opposed to one on the 4K Dell Inspiron 14. A second USB-A would be nice, but it's not a big deal. In everyday tasks, Tiger Lake feels snappier than even Ice Lake.

Post your thoughts, ownership experience, etc here.

 

There is so much to like about this laptop, but I ultimately had to return it over the smallest thing: there is no Ctrl key on the right side.

I just can't get used to it.

 

I have the 15" Spectre x360 Tiger lake (integrated Xe graphics) and received a blue screen after Windows update because one of the updates was a video driver. So if you see the Intel video driver as a Windows update I would suggest blocking it using wushowhide.diagcab. I had to go back to a previous restore point to get back on track with this notebook. I will only install updated video drivers from HP Update going forward.

 

Is the m.2 slot pcie gen4?

Availability of the 14 is really bad right now. Too bad they did not make a 32gb version, waiting on the MSI copy cat release to see if it is any good, looks to be exactly the same thing with an extra USB port and double the memory.

 

This is a Ctrl key on the left and right side on the 2020 HP Spectre x360.

 

2 gripes:
1. It appears that the SSD is non-replaceable by the user even though it seems like it is. The system just does not detect the new SSD. I tried a 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD and a 1TB Western Digital Black SSD and both times the system would not detect the drive for windows installation. Both SSDs were initialized and formatted before insertion. The BIOS and diskpart do not see the SSD.

2.The fans go on and off very frequently no matter how the power management and HP Command Center are set up. I can be doing nothing by reading this forum and it's enough to get the fans busy. It seems somewhat random. It's pretty annoying, especially from an M1 MacBook Pro user.

 

I have a Spectre x360 13 and the fans turn on randomly. Seems there's a background process that runs from time to time, causing the fans to kick-in.

 

how are you pleased with this model and do you perhaps know your memory speed? Read many times that there are different RAM speed in the Models.

 

I would like to take my HP Spectre x360 OLED 13.5" or 14" on vacation, but not without a clip-on plastic skin. Clear plastic is OK. Does this exist for this model? I could not find it. Most skins offered are sticker foil. I am not looking for a screen protector nor a keyboard skin. Only top and bottom need to be protected against scratches.

 

I've never seen one. Why not just use the pleather case that comes with it? It's actually pretty nice.

 

It's all about the OLED display, everything else is just ok. The fans are annoying and kick on randomly. Battery life is not so bad. This is for watching content in the best quality, not for hard work or gaming.

 

Hey guys,

I'm using a spectre x360 14 with a 38" monitor lg-38WK95C-W which is supposed to have a color depth of 10bit.



When I connect my laptop with USB-C to the monitor, the default setting appears to be (reading from the advanced settings of display settings) :

- 3840*1600

- 60 hz

- 6-bit color depth

Which results in very bad gradients. They all appear with ugly lines.

Now if I change the refresh rate to 30hz, the system automatically switch to 10-bits. But with 30hz it's unusable.

I just tried another laptop with a lower end intel gpu and it works on 8bit without any issue.

Now the thing is that some time ago I had problem with my thunderbolt ports (my monitor was disconnecting every 10 minutes), and I had to deal with the customer service for a long time until they made me do a modification in the registry, telling me this was a gpu driver's issue and that this modification will fix it.

My feeling is that this modification capped my thunderbolt capability, which could explain why there is this issue now. Or my thunderbolt controller is just instable and create both issues.

Anyone can tell me if they can use an external 3840*1600 with 60hz and 8 or 10-bits?

PS : I found the regedit modification that they had me do, below if someone happens to have the thunderbolt connection issue. In regedit :

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}

Add key :

RMEnablePhyRepeate REG_DWORD 0x00000000 (0)

So I removed it and I still can't get 8-bit or 10-bit...

HDR also doesn't work on 60hz. While it works on 30hz.


Thanks