HP Spectre x360

I'm not sure that they did add that... powercfg/a shows S0 low power idle is not supported (i.e. connected standby as disabled).

 

Hi Matt

I think i had Synaptics from the beginning. How can i test the other driver you say is better? I have some issues with my trackpad, mainly many times i have to press it 2-3 times to get the click, and i don't know if it is me and my finger or the device. Thank you!

 

How do i find the exact model? In my settings i can only see a generic name, without the 4000 part

EDIT: ok, found it!

 

He probably has something hooked to the usb ports drawing power.

 

@alkpit, I hope my post wasn't confusing. What I meant is that I'd downloaded Synaptics generic touchpad driver from their website (19.0.9.1.C) but it caused all kind of trouble, including the multi-tap issue you described (OMG selecting an area on a spreadsheet was IMPOSSIBLE). So I uninstalled the app and completely cleared out the generic driver, and replaced it with the one distributed by HP (19.0.12.98) and everything is working again.

Well, with one minor caveat (that I've mentioned before): it seems that right after installing the HP-supplied driver, 3-finger gestures default to horizontal=switch-app and vertical=minimize-all/maximize. But after sleep, the vertical gesture disappears and the horizontal ones switch to page back/forward. I've seen identical complaints for other machines (e.g., Dell and Lenovo) and the popular view is that it's the result of using a Synaptics touchpad, which is partially in conflict with the default driver that 10 attempts to install on top of the HP version. In any case there's no fix in sight for now. My hack, when I want the default Windows 3-finger gestures is to kill and then restart SynTPEnh.exe, and then for that session, I have the gestures working again.

-Matt

 

That sounds like Intel's Display Power Saving Technology (basically dynamic contrast), which is easily disabled in the Intel display control panel. It's in the power section, battery power tab options.

 

anyone know if the spectre x360 will work with a Samsung 950 pro m.2 drive??

or is the Samsung 951 the fastest it will be compatible with?

 

A few updates on my Broadwell X360 i7/8GB/512...

-On the speaker pop issues, I've run out of things to try. It's been sent back to HP and the speakers were replace. OS reset to 8.1 and upgraded to Win10. Drivers were updated, etc. Still getting that tick/pop when doing things involving sound or not.

-HOWEVER on the track pad issue, I did download the latest HP Synaptics driver and along with the tip below(Thanks to DP-K on HP Support Forums), find it keeps the settings after I restart. Oh, and the trackpad works too.

Hold down the Windows key and press R
Into the Run box type regedit and hit enter
In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Synaptics\SynTP\Install
Inside, look for a key named DeleteUserSettingsOnUpgrade
If this is present, right click the key and select Modify
Set the Value data field to 0 ( Zero ) and then click Ok.
Close the Registry Editor.
Make the Synaptics setting changes you require in the usual way and save them, then check if they're now retained after a reboot.

-I did try the new F2 BIOS and didn't see any difference but went back to the correct BIOS just because that's me.

 

Anyone here program/type a lot have an opinion on the keyboard? Reviews I read ranged from average to bad for it. Usually something about the keys being mushy instead of crisp to type on.

Deciding between the Spectre and the XPS 13. I like the various flip modes of the Spectre, but using this mainly as a portable coding device so keyboard has priority.

 

I was also debating between the XPS 13 and Spectre x360; the dealbreaker for me was the XPS 13 keyboard. I only spent about 15-20 minutes on each laptop, testing out the keyboard so my experience was very limited, but it was an easy decision for me.

If you have the chance, check out your local Best Buy or MS Store (preferrably). While I liked the Spectre better, you might have different preferences.

 

Just making sure, you're saying that the Spectre keyboard is better than the XPS (for you at least)?

 

Ι am a writer and i really love typing on my Spectre

 

Thanks Madmook, Unfortunately with all the other annoyances and bits that I just didn't like, plus the 14 day return period running out I have sent the device back to HP. They are going to refund me. Decided that I might as well bite the bullet for now, I bought a retina Macbook pro 13" (need a laptop now so no waiting for Skylake). Hopefully Windows laptops will catch up in the next 2 years. Include things like a better track pad. The surfacebook should raise the bar!

 

Two days now my fan has been very noisy and the battery drains really fast, even when i do the lightest tasks. I don't know if the problem is some driver that i updated. Here is a screenshot of my task manager, the first two seem to be more busy and i don't know what they are about. Any help?

EDIT: i uninistalled all the stupid HP helping programms i recently had installed on my computer and now it works as before.

 

Hi all,
Just have a quick question, would like to gather some information from users here about a particular problem that has plagued me and is affecting a number of other users on the HP Support forum (see: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware/My-hp-spectre-x360-won-t-turn-on-at-all/td-p/5165831), where our laptops just refused to turn on. I would like some peace of mind that the issue is not as widespread as it seems to me.

Is it OK to post a link to an external survey, say, on OneDrive?


alkpit, taken from the first page linked below:
"it seems too simple to be true, but I disabled my network adapter and re-enabled it in the Network Connections window. I tried it ten minutes ago, so I cannot tell for sure it won't come back, but so far my cpu went back to normal."

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...9a4f0-53b7-4044-872d-7364e0eff6e1?db=5&auth=1
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ork/041d4024-3d50-4834-904b-cd4cf5c84b05?db=5

Just did a quick Google search for "windows wireless lan 802.11 extensibility framework" and these were some of the first links. Don't know if you tried them already.

 

bump. Could anyone help with getting the power profile? It should be saved under system32.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/75562-power-plans-export-import.html

 

Yes, I preferred the Spectre keyboard over the XPS 13, and it wasn't close. I LOVE the lack of bezel on the XPS 13 (and how the laptop was), but the keyboard was too big of a dealbreaker for me.

 

WOW. That's a truly chilling thread -- going all the way back to August, no less. I have to say I've read every page and every post in this thread, and have never seen mention of the problem (IIRC). I don't want to jinx anyone but as far as I can tell, none of us have had the restarting issue.

-Matt

 

I gave a Skylake Spectre x360 as a gift, and the recipient encountered that problem -- I know because they called me for help when it happened.

The computer hibernated and wouldn't turn back on. The "solution" was to hold down the Power button for five seconds to force it to turn off completely, wait another five seconds, and then briefly press the Power button to turn the computer back on.

 

I installed the Windows 10 November update yesterday. Tonight, I was working on my X360 and realized it was quiet...like no Sound popping quiet. Could it be that the update corrects it?

Will keep you posted.

 

I can confirm the same results with some songs. Rock and metal still pop, but its not to the same degree as before. Then I looked at the DTS control panel and bass and treble had been set to the minimum.

I disabled the sound enhancements. No pops on any songs and it sounds better without the enhancements anyway.

 

Anyone having wifi Issues worth the new November Windows 10 update on the new skylake x360?
WIFI refuses to connect. Disappears from device manager and blues screens and hangs when turning off or restarting.
I had to roll back to the older build and defer updates to ensure it doesn't try to update again.
Not happy as it's a new laptop and has bugs when updating windows!

 

If only that worked for me! I tried every combination of plugged in, unplugged, power button held, power button tapped, windows button held and power button tapped, etc... nothing whatsoever.

Apparently it is fixed now, just waiting for the courier.

Still interested to find out what other people's experiences are with hardware failures, as it is one of the more commonly enquired about hardware issues on the HP forums for this model. No one said 'yes' or 'no' to me posting a survey, so here goes...

http://1drv.ms/1LhCNNM

If any of you have a few minutes spare, it would be nice to get some information from other users about their experiences. My experience has been frustrating, and I'm fearful of what will happen when the warranty expires.

 

I didn't experience this problem, the update went smooth.

 

I am a lawyer so I type quite often. I think the typing experience is great. The full sized keys and the decent spacing between them probably helps with that.

I don't know how or why the keys are said to be mushy. I mean, they are scissor lift keys not mechanical so the activation pressure is not on/ off like cherry mx switches. I guess when they say mushy, they probably mean that the force to push the key from start of travel to end of travel is the same the entire left (i.e. not giving any feedback that you are hitting the end of travel). Given that there is something like 1.5mm of key travel anyway that doesn't cause an issue for me (because I am always hitting the end stops). I can see how it might cause an issue if you prefer not to push the keys all the way down.

I don't have this problem. However, people who have had this problem on other forums report that this appears to be a driver corruption issue. After the upgrade, fully uninstall the buggy drivers, download the relevant drivers again (remember Windows 10 64 bit) and reinstall them. This supposedly fixes the issue.

 

My spectre seems to consume some energy when i close the lid (2-3 % in 3 hours, while it used to consume such amount in almost a day with the lid closed). i think this is not normal, any idea?

 

Check that your pc is set to hibernate after 1 hour in sleep mode. Hibernate should use 0 power.

The other alternative is that your pc was hibernating (in which case, hibernating for 1 hours is the same as hibernating for 100 hours).

 

Unplug usb accessories or turn off the always on feature for USB in the UEFI settings.

 

I loved the look and feel of the x360. Between Broadwell and Skylake models; I went through 12 of them (Best Buy exchanging). The left palm rest getting too hot and the bulky/heavy feel in tablet mode; were all enough to make me give the Yoga 900 a try. The Yoga 900 is much lighter and felt great in tablet mode. But it is also made out of mostly plastic and rubber and the two together, felt very cheap compared to the Spectre x360. Also after going through 3 Yoga 900s I gave up on them. Very poor quality control. The lid on 2 of the units, had lint under the paint.

About a week ago, I picked up the new Samsung ATIV Book 9 Spin, from Best Buy. I finally found the best 2-in-1 currently on the market. The keyboard is even nicer than that on the x360. The touch pad, is hands down, the best I've ever used on a Windows machine. 2 finger scrolling, works perfectly, in every app that I have tried. Also Samsung got scaling right, unlike HP and Lenovo. I did not need to touch the resolution settings. The only downside is that the Samsung Spin, does not get as much battery life as the Yoga did for me. But it still does about as good as the x360.

If you are able to, give the Spin a try. It has the same high quality build and feel as the x360 but even better and a bit lighter.

 

I recently bought a spectre. Absolutely loving everything about it (asides from the somewhat wobbly hinge in stand mode).

But it's only been day 3, and when I turned it on this morning I noticed some slight coil whine. In the library, I can hear it from 2 feet away, and in a place with some moderate ambient noise, I can hear it from 8-12 inches away. It's especially bothersome since I use it in stand mode very often, so I have no problem hearing the whine in any reasonably quiet area. Anything I can do about that?

Also, I can't seem to enable loudness equalization through the playback devices options ("speakers" doesn't have the enhancement tab) or the DTS control panel. Any suggestions? It kills my ears to listen to music without loudness equalization.

 

I cannot vouch for Lenovo, but HP does not touch scaling whatsoever on the x360. That is all dealt with by Windows and video drivers. The Spin is also a different resolution than the x360 in any configuration.

 

After going through multiple attempts at resolving the Broadwell speaker pop/crackling issue... The wife wanted to upgrade her Dell brick to a Spectre so I ordered 2 customized Skylake X360. This time I didn't opt for the QHD in order to gain some battery time and not have a hard time with adjusting resolutions all the time. My current 360 is going up on Craigslist.

 

I have a very peculiar and irritating Wi-Fi problem:

My router is in the living-room and I spend most of my time in my bedroom, the distance between the router and my spectre being ~7m.One wall between. When my spectre goes to sleep and I open it again, my wifi connection doesn't work. I try to connect but nothing happens. Now, the strange thing is that if I get up and go into the living-room, it connects just instantly. Also, I have a smartphone that even in the bedroom gets connected fine all the time.

My Wi-Fi connection isn't great, has many disconnections now and then, but I have contacted with the provider and made some updates ets. Also, the smartphone (a Lumia) doesn't have the same issue, and the fact that it is like the wall doesn't allow the signal to pass through (?) seems just crazy to me.

I would really love some help here!

 

That could be any number of things. Wifi router firmware up to date? Intel AC 7265 wifi adapter driver up to date? Are you connecting to 2.4ghz or 5ghz, and does the problem persist regardless of which band you're using? Is your phone that works fine connecting to the same SSID as your laptop (in case you have a dual band or tri band wifi router)? If it re-connects once you get closer, sounds like a weak 5ghz signal? Perhaps the wifi channel you're on is running into interference with a neighbor who's using the same channel? Then of course there's the various settings within your wifi router that could be causing issues.

There was one driver release earlier this year for the Intel AC 7265 which gave me connectivity problems with my Netgear wifi router, but the current version 18.21 has been fine.

 

That happened to me. It was a bad wifi card (I also had card malfunctions showing up in event viewer). The card would not connect after sleeping, unless I went and sat next to my router. It would also randomly drop connections and stop seeing wifi networks. I swapped out machines at Best Buy and have never had a problem since.

 

Thank you for your responses. I will check some of these things and report later.

I think I have to mention though that only in my home network I deal with such problems, at least till one month ago. I will try some other networks again to see if it persists.

 

Mine happened on all networks.
You might just need to switch channels on your router.

 

Hi All,

Is anybody experiencing severe power limit throttling on this laptop?

Use anything that saturates the CPU for around 10 minutes and you should notice that the CPU throttles back below the "stock" 2.5Ghz speed. Obviously an artificial benchmark will do this but I have also noticed it when encoding video or batch post processing photos - so it's not limited to artificial things you would do with the device. What I find is that turbo boost disables itself within 1-2 minutes (this is normal and expected behaviour) then after that the device stays stable until the power limit throttling kicks in and significantly reduces the performance of the device by about 20%. It is obvious when this occurs because the fan slows down significantly and the case temperature decreases significantly.

It doesn't seem to be connected with thermal throttling at all. Completely covering the exhaust ports (a worst case scenario) nets the same result - obviously with the laptop because very hot in the meanwhile.

Would appreciate it if someone else would run this and see if they are experiencing the same.

I know the device isn't meant to be a gaming laptop but it severely affects gaming performance because after 10 minutes frame rates absolutely plummet (and the GPU clock is running at 650Mhz as opposed to its 800 base clock and 1050 turbo clock).

You can use HWInfo to check the reported CPU/ graphics speeds.

 

@illuzn I noticed something the other day that might be distantly related to your question. Anyway, the tl;dr is: maybe check your advanced power settings and make sure something hasn't changed there.

In my case, about a week a go I ventured onto Samsung's support site and noticed they'd posted a version of the Magician software that works with their M.2 drives so naturally I installed it. And I now enjoy 5000+ MB/s transfer rates on my drive.

What I didn't realize, however, is that during the install Samsung had surreptitiously updated the power profile, to something much closer to high performance. I keep several HWInfo icons in my system tray, and in particular, couldn't understand why my machine was constantly at 100% CPU speed (clock speed, not utilization). Long story short, I switched back to "Balanced", my clock is now back to sitting around 798MHz, and my battery life has bounced from 4 hours back up to the usual 6.5 hours.

EDIT: or wait, my bad...sort of. Just noticed I stupidly let Samsung do a full OS optimization, including "Power Options". Guess I got what I deserved!

-Matt

 

Unfortunately, mine is a case of underperformance not overperformance...

What happens to your TDP numbers if you run Prime95 for 10 minutes? (I think you are on Haswell but it would be nice to know whether this is a HP thing).

 

Forgive me, maybe there was a misunderstanding. Since you mentioned a concern about throttling -- and I'd noticed my machine had switched power profiles -- my suggestion was to take a look at yours, unlikely as it is.

I'm afraid you've caught me at a pretty crazy time. I'll have to pass the Prime95 offer to another forum member to report on!

-Matt

 

I just bought the Ash Silver (or copper, it's the dark one) edition HP Spectre x360 for myself and I love everything about it.

Except for the trackpad. I use Firefox, and scrolling with it is not smooth - it's rather laggy. That, and sometimes clicks aren't registered when I click down on the trackpad in the middle. Two-finger tap to right-click is slow and tap-to-click is hit/miss. There's also the issue of the cursor snapping back to the original place when I make small movements on the trackpad - I can even reproduce this issue consistently.

With how there's bloatware installed, I'm thinking of reinstalling Windows 10 to remove the bloatware (and hopefully the godawful Synaptics drivers as well).

So the big question here is: Will the Microsoft drivers (meaning no OEM trackpad drivers) work fine with the Spectre? Or am I doomed to have to deal with it? For those with the Microsoft Signature Edition of this laptop, does the trackpad work completely fine without the Synaptics drivers?

 

I messed around with one the other day at Best Buy and it seems a bit sluggish. The salesman stated it was from the Best Buy Promo software. I blame it on the bloatware.

 

Same experience here. Night and day difference after I unboxed mine and ran it. Actually OOB wasn't bad, but obviously wiping everything and installing Win 10 improved things. I'd say the display units are really unloved.

-Matt

 

I think it happens in other networks, too. I mean networks that used to work fine for me. My wifi used to be good, maybe some update wasn't proper? It is outraging, my cheap lumia phone was excellent wifi conection everywhere and I struggle with my ultrabook ( mainly when waking the laptop up from sleep)

Also, one question: do you have the "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option on?

 

Did you do a fresh install of the OS? If so, hows everything running? No driver issues? Particularly, trackpad issues?

 

I've discovered that the desktop HP Support app isn't showing the latest updates compared to the HP Web Driver tool. I happened upon an Audio Driver update from 11/19 via the web tool that the desktop tool hasn't notified me of. Hope this helps.

 

I noticed there is a SanDisk SSD update with HP driver downloads for my model.

Someone apparently forget to tell HP that the 4005DX has a Samsung PM851 drive in it.

 

Yup, full wipe and clean install. I have a few previous posts that work through the trackpad driver issues, but tl;dr is the latest version supplied by HP works great!

-Matt

 

Hey all

New here. I am sat with my browser pointed at a Spectre x360 (512GB, Ash, 8GB Ram, QHD, i& 6th gen skylake) on the HP UK website. Right on the cusp of ordering!

I have read through (well, read then "scanned" some of the chunkier parts!) this entire thread as love to read owners impressions. It seems that while their are niggles, many have been sorted thru software updates.

A few quick questions for those in-the-know:

1. The ash colour looks gorgeous. What do we think about long term hardiness? With anodised aluminium, it should be pretty scratch proof, and I have no intention of denting it! The black "Rubbing off" would drive me mad against such prettiness!
2. Likewise with the keys... I should think a black keyboard would be hardier than the painted silver one that one chap here has had paint smearing with ..? (I am typing this on my 5 year old HP pavillion with black keys that still look perfect)
3. Model numbers are confusing!! As of today, the model I want is £1099 on HP website -
   HP Spectre 13-4109na x360. However, identical spec on BHS (of all places) is £1025 - only with a different model number? - HP Spectre x360 13-4101na. Whats the deal? Different models for straight-from-HP? I don't want to get one full of bloatware, but then £75 is a warranty for 3 years... I might try calling HP order line and ask why/ask for a price match or a thrown in 3 year warranty. Part of me would rather order direct, considering that from a bricks-and-mortor store isn't an option for this model in the UK.

Thanks to all for their helpful posts on here .
If you guys help me pull the trigger I will naturally post my early feelings and stick around for questions afterwards (I assume this forum has email notification?!)

James