NOW AVAILABLE: HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook 15t-4000 (12/4)

After doing a good search, I came across the link in the shopping area:

http://shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-Spectre/A9G16AV?HP-Spectre-XT-TouchSmart-Ultrabook-15t-4000&aoid=44661&ci_sku=A9G16AV&ci_gpa=pla&ci_kw={keyword}

I just got a new fully loaded DV6-72xx ENVY, but I put one of these on order too. Looks like it might be a great machine with the 15.6" Full HD IPS Touch panel. Will post a short review when i get it.

 

Looks sweet!!

Final configuration options should have an AMD GPU (I am curious to see model they will put) and 8GB of RAM neither is currently available for this customization model.

Also, the model is now publicly available on the General Spectre HP Web-ppage

 

If possible please make a video of the unboxing/review. Also post lots of pictures.

 

SSD configuration options are also not available yet. Will they offer a discrete GPU? They didn't mention that when this notebook was announced back in August.

 

No discrete graphics option and slow 5400RPM hard drive as the standard config for a premium notebook starting at $1,399? They have the audacity to charge an extra $10 to upgrade to a 7200RPM drive that should absolutely be the standard, and really a 256GB SSD should be standard at that price. I love the fact it has a touch screen 1920 x 1080 IPS screen but the rest of the specs are a bit disappointing in light of the price you pay.

Still, I agree it looks nice, but the ENVY dv6 certainly wins in the price to feature ratio department.

 

nMIK-3, are you saying there is for sure an AMD GPU version of this coming out? If so where did you hear or read this? Or is it just something you'd like to see.

Id like more memory in it too but assuming there should be a place to upgrade as a place to also upgrade to your own SSD if you want.

The funny thing is, when I placed the pre-order last night, there were SSD options on there, but HP has since removed them. Looks like they are still tweaking the page.

 

Agree Andrew... thats why I'm going to try both out at once and see what I like better. I do like that the Touchsmart has a Thunderbolt port too as if I keep it Id plan on getting one of the new Thunderbolt docks coming out which should work much better than even the USB 3.0 ones for video on external monitors.

 

My bad guys, I remembered that I clearly read AMD GPU with 2GB RAM on the press release but it was for the ENVY TouchSmart Ultrabook , which was announced at the same time at the same press release with the Spectre XT 15.

Again "non-sense" decisions from HP. They are going to put a 2GB AMD GPU on the lower-end Envy TouchSmart and NOT to their high-end Spectre XT 15, that has a starting price of $1400?

 

The cheaper model is thicker, hence can accommodate the cooling required for a dGPU.

Meanwhile, I just noticed that the default RAM hp is offering has increased to 8GB from 4GB.

 

The problem is that the dv6 doesn't have a touchscreen. I'm not buying a Windows 8 notebook without touch.

 

Did you get it yet? I just ordered mine and it's shipping Dec 11th. Can't wait!

 

Does anyone have this laptop? It looks like a nice machine and should be getting into people's hands just about now.

 

I actually cancelled my order just the other day before it shipped out (12/4 was my supposed ship day). I decided I love my DV6T-7214 way too much at the moment. I just dont want a glossy screen as the Matte IPS is just gorgeous. Plus, I dont mind the slight extra weight or thickness as I have a Blu-Ray Reader/Writer and full i7 CPU with 16GB memory and 256GB Samsung SSD 830. Also upgraded the WiFi card to Widi with Bluetooth. Its the perfect machine for me at the moment.

I figured I would save the $500 extra I would have spent and put it towards a new Win 8 Tablet instead... where I would end up using touch more. Im just not using it for my laptop in Desktop mode as it stays in Desktop all the time.

 

I have ordered this laptop as well. Can't wait to get it it's a Christmas present for the wife. I wonder how well the 32gb msata drive on board will help speed up that 7200 rpm drive? Anybody have any plans to upgrade to SSD right away?

 

I'm surprised no one has one of these yet! They have been at Costco for a while now.... HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook

 

The good: 1080p IPS + Touchscreen display.
Good build quality (probable given previous Envy iterations).
The bad: Price.
A 5400 RPM hard drive standard on a $1400 "ultrabook".
The ugly: A 4 cell battery that even HP, notorious for advertising unrealistic battery life, rates at under 4 hours.
A 128 GB SSD upgrade option for the retail price of many 256 GB SSD's, and if you count the value of the 500 GB hard drive you're upgrading over and not receiving, it's more like $210.

Unless HP's still in the habit of offering 25-33% coupons consistently through the year, this is a horrible buy. Even at 33% off it would be pretty sketchy with that battery life.

 

Then again, 1299 bucks for a 5400 rpm HDD model @ Costco is pretty reasonable compared to Europe, where the going price for a 256 GB SSD model is approx. 1599 € or 2089 USD... I was tempted at first but the price premium is hard to comprehend, and they don't even offer the cheaper models at all.

 

You guys in Europe get it about as bad as we do here in China, with the exception that more interesting models tend to hit your shores (I saw an Envy 13 on display here - imported from abroad since the first several Envy generations never came out here - it was approximately US$3000 for the open-box display model). Fortunately for me, I go to the US every year during my school's summer break to see family and friends, so I have good options when it comes to buying a laptop - I've only bought two since moving to China, but both were purchased Stateside.

Either way, it doesn't change the fact that this laptop is massively overpriced.

 

any alternatives? I like the touchscreen and the ultra book form factor in the 15.6 inch screen. I know there are a lot of touchscreen laptops converts hitting the market. Xps 12 touch, Lenovo yoga and acer s7 touch were the other three I almost ordered. The acer only had 4 gb ram and they all had 12-13 inch screens. That acer was pretty slick. The dell started at $1199. It's very confusing.

 

I will update to SSD at some point, not right away though

 

Actually HP rates the battery as:
Battery
4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
Battery Life
Up to 5 hours and 15 minutes

The drive is upgradable to 7200 rpm for $10.

 

Full manual with parts breakdown is here:
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03572829.pdf

 

The 15-4010NR model, which is the base configuration for $50 less because they don't have to configure it to order, says 3 hours and 45 minutes. They're both advertising 4 cell batteries, but different battery life. Odds are 90% in favor of it being the same battery and 5:15 being one of HP's exaggerations.

The hard drive is upgradable to 7200 RPM for $10, but the laptop already costs at least $400 more than it should. This reminds me of the original Envy 14 Spectre - a $600 laptop in an apparently $800 chassis. Only now you don't even get the benefit of the premium Envy name, since they've muddled their lineup so that a lot of their upper-mainstream stuff goes by the same name.

 

Anybody have one of these yet? It will be nice to get an answer for some of these battery questions. And I want to see some unboxing opening pics and hear some real user feedback.
Thanks,
Ryan

 

Me too!! Someone out there must have one of these! Where are the reviews?

 

HP Spectre XT TouchSmart review - Pocket-lint

And for those that like to touch, my Fry's store has it on display.

I know it's been said a lot but this is the first time I'd agree, it REALLY looks like a MacBook Pro. Beautiful screen however.

 

Still no reviews :s

A website here in the UK has quoted 9.5 hour battery life for the Touchsmart- Buy HP Spectre XT Touchsmart 15-4000ea Ultrabook, Intel i5, 1.7GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB, 15.6



So far I've seen up to 9.5, 8, 5.15, and 4 hours quoted. Anything over 6 and this is a definite purchase for me.

 

1200 £ = 1488 € = 1921 $, and there's not even an SSD...

 

Good thing I'm getting it from the States then

 

I would bet against anything above 4 hours of actual use. HP posts 3:45 and 5:15 on their site, depending on whether you look at the preconfigured or configure to order options, and they're notorious for overestimating (as are most notebook manufacturers). The 3:45 is probably a realistic figure. The only way this notebook would come anywhere close to 8 hours would be if it came with an external slice battery, and I haven't heard anything about a slice.

 

I'd be shocked if it didn't get 5 hours in battery saver mode with the ULV i7-3517U Processor instead of the standard i7. My current Envy 14 with an i5 get's almost 4 hours alone without my slice battery attached. I'm ordering mine with an SSD so I'd expect that to help a bit also.

 

Well, although cell count isn't everything, the facts that the notebook in question here has a 4 cell battery and HP themselves advertise it (inconsistently, to be sure) as offering as little as 3:45 point to rather unimpressive battery life. There are always those of us who can and will tweak power settings and minimize background programs to get the best possible battery life from our machines, but most people probably won't see four hours with this machine unless the battery has a higher rating than most 4-cell laptop batteries do.

 

I'll be disappointed if battery life is not at least 5 hours, but even if its 4 or so that's ok - this isn't a laptop I'll be carrying around much.

 

I went to the Fry's store in Campbell, CA. They had a unit that they setup for display. I played with it for a few minutes.

The laptop is large. It was sitting next to the Gorilla glass Spectre 14'' model and that looked surprisingly smaller.

The machine feels solid, yet doesn't feel heavy. It looks good.

Screen: bright and clear. Glossy though. Touch works well. Resolution (1920x1080) is nice.

Keyboard: keys are well spaced out. Would have liked a bit more travel, but nothing to complain about.

Trackpad: Didn't require too much pressure to click. Seemed better than my experience with the Envy 15. However, I'm used to trackpads with dedicated buttons, so this will take getting used to. I often keep my finger on the left mouse button while moving another finger on the trackpad. With dedicated buttons, there is no problem. With the integrated trackpad, it sometimes gets confused.

Sound: didn't try it. There was no Internet access and there was no music preloaded.

When the sales rep powered it up, Win 8 started very quickly. This unit showed a 500GB hard disk, so I'm going to assume that it had 500GB rotational disk + SSD acceleration.

Machine was very responsive.

I didn't see any dented ports (a common problem reported with the Envy 15).

Fry's is charging $1350 (before tax) for the unit.

 

Nice, I used to go to that Fry's a couple times a year when I was in high school - it was the closest Fry's to where I lived at the time. Actually, from Central China, it may well be the closest Fry's to me now as well.

Good to know that all of the good of this Envy is indeed good. Still a shame about the bad, which is essentially the exorbitant price. At $1350, it's probably the preconfigured model; that's the same price it goes for on HP.com as well.

+rep

 

Mine shipped from China! Supposed to be here Thursday

 

Here's a review but it's in Polish or something:
HP Spectre XT TouchSmart w akcji - NetPozytywny.pl - YouTube

 

Here's a translation:
Google Translate

Not much of a review really although it does say that the HP has Intel SmartConnect technology so that you can get emails while in standby mode. Sounds sort of useless to me but I will be interested to see how it works.

 

You and my VP must have made the same trip, and he bought one. We have been configuring it for him this morning.

It is a nice unit, and as you have stated it's bigger than it probably needs to be. On the other hand, this is one of the nicer laptop keyboards and trackpads I have used.

Some bad news though, the battery life looks to be poor. This is not by any means definitive, just my observation. However performing the tasks of loading software (via network), patches, configuring said software etc. this machine conked out at just slightly less than 3 hours run time.

Again that was loading software and network access (wifi), but no external devices connected.

One kind of cool thing though. The unit has a thunderbolt port on it, and it hooked up without issue to one of the Apple Thunderbolt displays we have, though it did have to go out to the internet for some drivers.

I'll be working with it more today and I can try to answer questions. This unit specifically is the Touchsmart 15 4010-
nr

One thing that I'm going to try today is seeing if disabling the touch screen gains you anything. One an Envy 14 touchsmart we also have in house, disabling it, gains about an hour on battery life

 

Interesting... how do you disable the touchscreen?

Hard to believe that HP put such a dinky battery in a largish machine... what were they thinking?!?! Did you have it on full brightness?

Let's see, questions...

Does the screen have a large color gamut (range)?

What are the Google Octane benchmark results in Internet Explorer? ( Octane JavaScript Benchmark)

Does the silver palm rest cause distracting reflections in the screen?

 

- answers mostly in line above

PS: it cold boots in just under 20 seconds

 

I happend to be at Fry's to and checked out the laptop as well. Very nice unit, very solid feeling, however it felt heavier than I thought it would be. I have the DV6T-7214 fully load with FHD and Blu-Ray and it felt just as heavy. probably because the screen is so top heavy.

The keyboard was indeed nice and for a click-pad, it was actually easy to use. At the moment though, Im happy with my purchase as while the touch was nice and smooth, the gloss just ruins it for me. Plus the fact I work in Desktop mode 99.9% of the time and touch is a waste for that.

As mentioned Ill save the $500 difference in the DV6Y with Matte display and Optical drive and put it towards a Win 8 Tablet which I will use mainly for the new Win 8 UI more often anyways.

Still, a very nice sleek machine from HP for those interested still.

 

Does it suffer from Orange gate, like other full HD IPS's?

Really the battery life is the killer with me. I suppose anything is better than the 1 hour I used to get with my Sony Vaio a few years back, but 3 hours kinda sucks. Does anyone know if HP make sheet batteries?

 

No orange/red issue unlike one of the older envy 15's we have that most definitely has it.

I'm about to give it back to our VP. Anything else you all might want to know.

By the way, taking it apart is possible... Just getting the bottom off requires the removal of 14! screws. The hard drive is also one of the new 7mm models for those that are considering putting an SSD in it. If it were me, I'd go for the msata option (fairly easily accessible after the bottom comes off) and keep the main hd as a data drive

 

Good to see some momentum in this thread. I want more reviews & unboxings.

 

It's a desktop replacement intended to sit on your desk & connected to the wall most of the time

 

Are there any noticeable video performance issues (not games)? Smooth 1080p video playback is important for me and I'm concerned about the lack of a dGPU.

 

Any 'high memory usage' warnings during general use. Using a HP Envy UB and it's annoys me no end when I see that, even though I'm just using Chrome.

Also how's the audio?

 

I didn't test extensively but it played back some our corporate presentation 1080p 7Mb bit rate videos without hiccups

-

through the built in speakers it was pretty weak. No bass at all and not very loud even at maximum. Output through the headphone port seemed fine. Nothing exceptional, but no static or hiss

as to chrome, We use chrome standard for all systems. I didn't see any errors at all

 

One final comment, is that it seems to have the same affliction that all of the thin and lights that have come through recently in that the fans come on and off quite frequently even during simple web browsing.

Disabling coolsense helps but I worry about what that might be doing to the long term reliability.

Bonus comment: The VP said he only got about three hours off a charge when he was playing with it over the weekend. That looks to me to be the single biggest downside, at least in this specific configuration