The HP Spectre lineup of 2-in-1 laptops and Ultrabooks has built a reputation for adding ultra-power and ultra-portability through the years. As well as the HP Spectre x360 15 2018 leans more towards the former, using beefy Intel Kaby Lake Refresh silicon, a flexible hinge and a fingerprint sensor. And, it works: that laptop has been out for a year, but the HP Spectre x360 15 2018 remains keeping up with its Whiskey Lake-equipped contest.

Having a gorgeous 4K display with touch along with an included pencil, it's easy to see how the HP Spectre x360 15 is one of the finest 2-in-1 laptops accessible right now. This laptop even packs enough battery juice to make it a rival for the classroom and office alike.

Basically every PC maker creates a device in this way, with products such as the Microsoft Surface Book 2 along with the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1. However, in the face of numerous competitions, it can be trying for the Spectre x360 to get attention. How does it fare? Let us find out.

Price and availability

GPU and 360GB of SSD space, rather than the 512GB in the usa model. It is a good trade off, taking into consideration the processor is bumped up into the Intel Core i7-8705G.

HP takes a similar approach in the United Kingdom, employing a Radeon GPU and faster processor whilst cutting on the added memory down to 8GB and departing the SSD in 512GB.

The HP Spectre x360 15 is at the Exact Same league as the Microsoft Surface Book 2 and Dell XPS 15 in terms of cost. The XPS 15, without a 4K display and also distinct Radeon Vega graphics, starts at $1,299 (about £957, AU$1,650). If you'd like a 4K display like the Spectre's, then you are going to need to throw down $2,099 to get a comparable XPS 15 at the United States.

Together with the Surface Book 2, but you are looking at $2,499 (£2,349, AU$3,649) for the entry model, equipped with a beefier Nvidia GTX 1060.

Design, display and screen

The HP Spectre x360 15 includes a sleek and tasteful appeal for this. A dark gray housing is divided only by glistening gold highlights over the borders, surrounding the touchpad and hinges. When you start the laptop, you will be greeted with a brilliant 15.6-inch 4K touch display with slim bezels on the vertical sides, using a milder bezel on the underside and top -- either to make space for the webcam, and also to allow it to work better as a tablet.

With complete dimensions of 14.13 x 9.84 x 0.76 inches (35.9 x 25 x 1.94cm; W x D x H) and weighing in at 4.59 lbs (2.14kg), then you will have to be ready to drag this machine about. Ironically, it is not the heaviest laptop we've reviewed, but it is a bit on the side to get a convertible device. In other words, you are not going to need to maintain this in tablet mode for a long time.

When you look on the left side of the HP Spectre x360 15, you will come across a charging port, a full-size USB 3.1 port, a speaker grille, a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, an SD card slot and the power button. On the right is a Thunderbolt 3 port, a USB-C port along with an HDMI input. There's also another speaker grille, a fingerprint detector and also a volume rocker.

By putting the fingerprint sensor, power and volume keys on the faces of the home, HP made it feasible to unlock or correct volume once the screen is rotated all the way into tablet mode.

Talking of spinning, the hinges onto the HP Spectre x360 15 are powerful enough that the screen remains in place whether you are typing away on the keyboard or tapping the screen to pick items.

The touchpad is centered using the HP Spectre x360 15, rather than the keyboard, so it is somewhat off-center into the left, as a result of your number pad to the right of the keyboard.

The HP Spectre x360 15's display is nice and sharp, if not only a little over saturated. The text is free of any pixelation, because of that 4K resolution, and graphics were apparent, also. It is going to be quite difficult to whine about the display , regardless of what you can do with the device -- whether it is watching some Netflix or surfing Facebook.

Biometrics

The Spectre x360 makes for a good Windows Hello spouse, offering a fingerprint detector and facial recognition. We put up both unlock processes through our testing and found the facial scanning tech to be faster and simpler to use.

As you wake up the laptop, it starts looking on your face with the webcam near the top of the display. In a blink of an eye (but try to prevent blinking too much), the Spectre unlocks.

The fingerprint sensor is on the right side of the laptop, beside the volume rocker. It is only slightly polished inside the home, which means it is simple to find it without even looking. However we found that it might be hard to line up our registered digits together with the detector to get a consistent reading and, then, unlock the HP Spectre x360 15.

Stylus and pen input

Included in the box is a stylus along with a AAAA battery. Yeah, four A's -- we relied on them several times only to be certain. The HP Spectre x360 15 pen has two buttons on it, you to erase part of your drawing or writing and the other to pick a product or right click something.

So, the pencil does need electricity, however there is not any elaborate Bluetooth pairing or installation process. As soon as you power the pencil to the first time, the HP Spectre x360 15 will comprehend and take input from the stylus.

When you get that out of the way, there's a reassuring familiarity when carrying this stylus, together with comparable burden to that of the everyday pencil. Turning on the stylus is carried out by tapping the tip into the surface and gliding it around the notebook's display.

The HP Spectre x360 15's stylus feels normal when imagining about the display, using little to no latency between marks and writing appearing on the display.

Performance

Within the last couple of weeks, we have used the HP Spectre x360 a little. The keyboard has taken some getting used to, often feeling somewhat cramped despite its dimensions. The touchscreen has proven itself a winner, even although the touchpad leaves us frustrated occasionally.

That said, the general performance with this machine is remarkable.

We will not give you going point by point during the regular scores, but we'll point out that despite having the exact same course of GPU since the Surface Book 2, the Spectre maintained its own. By way of example, the Spectre virtually matched the newest Surface Book's single-core Geekbench 4 score (4,815 into 5,024) and handily beat the multi-core score (14,446 into 13,896) of Microsoft's laptop.

Similar remarks can be made about the Spectre's performance compared to the XPS 15. In everyday use, but the Spectre felt smooth and free of any significant hiccups. The added GeForce MX150 is not potent enough to get through an extreme gaming session of almost any AAA games, but you'll have the ability to play more casual games without worrying about performance.

Battery life

Battery life on the HP Spectre x360 is good enough for us. At the PCMark 8 battery evaluation, it scored 6 hours and 6 minutes, with 7 hours and 55 minutes within our own picture evaluation. Thus, we're convinced the Spectre x360 15 has enough juice to get through a cross-country trip.

Comparatively, the Dell XPS 15 dropped short of the Spectre's battery markers, lasting 5 hours and 8 minutes in our video playback evaluation. The Surface Book 2, nevertheless, conveniently beat the Spectre from the PCMark 8 battery evaluation with 7 hours and 39 minutes of performance. We are waiting to see just how long the Surface Book 2 continues within our video playback evaluation, but we think that it's safe to say it will top the Spectre's performance.

Apps and features

Sigh. 1 day, we'll have the ability to omit a bloatware segment from the majority of our laptop reviews, but before that day here we're yet again speaking about how intrusive programs like McAfee's LiveSafe package are on the end user.

What is more bothersome than pre-installing software like McAfee products, is that the program routinely prompted us to renew our subscription using prompts that looked much like Windows 10 system alerts in the center of the display. These types of alerts are fraudulent and designed to trick users, and that's incredibly annoying.

General assessment

The Spectre x360 is a remarkable bit of kit, especially once you consider the purchase price. Its performance is not anything to scoff at, and if you insert in a 4K display and leading battery, the price gets sweeter.

In case you're looking for a 2-in-1 laptop that could do just about all, the Spectre x360 is well worth a long, hard look. But for anybody that just wants to save a little money and perhaps even get a bit more gaming in, the XPS 15 is probably the ideal way to go.