HP Envy Spectre in the flesh, priced Php116,990

With the short time we had in London, the only place I was able to visit to buy some stuff was Harrod’s and was fortunately see get a good look at the HP Spectre in one of the shops there. Turns out, the HP Envy Spectre is already available and being sold in the Philippines.

The HP Spectre has that glowing effect to it because of the glossy finish and Gorilla Glass construction. At 20mm thick and 1.8kg in weight, it’s not really something that you’d think can be considered as an ultrabook but it’s pretty thin for its size. And yes, it’s got that Macbook Pro look to it.

Nevertheless, the Spectre looks really great and also comes with a Beats by Dr. Dre headphones out of the box. I wasn’t able to play a bit more or even test the sound so can’t really say much about the laptop at this point.

I guess HP intends to make the Spectre to be the high-end variant of its Envy ultrabook line-up. The extensive use of Gorilla Glass to make the body more durable and less prone to scratches is a huge selling point (breaks our heart to see our precious laptops get accidentally scratched, right?).

HP Envy 14 Spectre specs:
14″ Radiance HD+ LED Infinity Display @ 1600×900
Intel Core i7-2677M 1.8GHz
Intel HD Graphics 3000
4GB DDR3 RAM
2 x 128GB SSD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
GigaBit LAN
Bluetooth 2.0
HP Wireless Audio
Beats Internal Speakers
Beats Audio Playback with HP Triple Bass Reflex Subwoofer
Beats Solo Headset
HP Radiance Backlit Keyboard with proximity sensor
HD webcam
2-in-1 card reader
1 x USB 3.0 port
1 x USB 2.0 port
1 x HDMI port
1 x Displayport
4-cell Lithium-Ion battery
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

This configuration is available and being sold in Villman for a retail price of just under Php117k. That’s almost twice the going price of most other ultrabooks in the market nowadays.

In return for the hefty price tag, you get a Core i7 processor, a pair of 128GB SSD for storage (256GB total), Beats Audio and the Gorilla Glass materials. Fair enough?