HP Spectre Hands-on, First Impressions

After a few months from its initial announcement, HP has just brought its latest and the thinnest notebook PC to the Philippine market — the HP Spectre. At just 10.4mm, it’s nearly as thin as most smartphones today and is comparable to an AAA battery you use for your TV’s remote control.

The Spectre is one of the most beautiful notebooks you can lay your hands on. It’s made out of aluminum and carbon fiber with a two-tone finish of black and copper. HP is proud to introduce the laptop as a piece of jewelry. It’s also pretty light at just 2.45  lb or roughly 1.1 kg.

One of the notable things about the laptop’s design is the use of a different HP logo to match the aesthetic of the device. On the other side is a display measures at 13.3 inches with a 1080p IPS LCD panel topped by a scratch-resistant edge-to-edge Corning Gorilla Glass. If you’re looking for a touch display, you’re not getting it here.

The display is attached to the main body of the notebook with a unique hinge design using pistons. When closed, the laptop’s hinges are hidden making the notebook prettier even when it’s just lying on a table.

Flipping the laptop open will present a well-spaced keyboard and a large glass trackpad. If there’s anything that’s impressive with the notebook aside from its luxurious design is the keyboard. Why so? Even it’s the thinnest laptop, it didn’t skimp on having chiclet keys with a good amount of key travel unlike one of its direct competitor — the MacBook — whose keys are shallow to type on.

Speaking of the MacBook, the Spectre has two more advantages over it. First, it’s got three USB Type-C ports. This means you can charge, transfer data, and use another one simultaneously. Mind you, there’s support for Thunderbolt on two of them. Plus, HP is kind enough to include a USB Type-C to a full-size USB Type-A (the common USB port) adapter just in case you’re still catching up to the trend of reversible ports. Second, it’s powered by either an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor rather than the inferior Core M despite its extremely thin profile.

A pair of stereo speaker is flanked on both sides of the keyboard with Bang & Olufsen branding on them but we weren’t able to try them out so we’ll leave our judgment to the full review — if we’ll be able to get one of this beauty.

The laptop is a real piece of jewelry while at the same time a showcase of the marvels of today’s engineering. That said, the Spectre doesn’t come cheap with prices starting at Php79,990USD 1,363INR 115,554EUR 1,298CNY 9,927 for the Core i5 variant with a 128GB SSD and at Php89,990USD 1,533INR 130,000EUR 1,461CNY 11,168 for the top-specced Core i7 and 256GB SSD.

HP Spectre specs:
13.3? diagonal FHD IPS UWVA BrightView Corning Gorilla Glass WLED-backlit
up to 3.1GHz Intel Core i7-6500U CPU
up to 2.8GHz Intel Core i5-6200U CPU
Intel HD Graphics 520
8GB LPDDR3-1866 SDRAM
128GB/256GB PCIe NVM M.2 SSD
HP TrueVision HD Webcam with Dual Digital Microphone
Intel 802.11ac (2×2) Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 Combo
Bang & Olufsen with 2 speakers
HP Imagepad with multi-touch gesture support
1x USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1
2x USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 2 (HP USB Boost, Thunderbolt)
1 headphone/microphone combo
Windows 10
4-cell 38 Wh Li-ion polymer battery (9 hours, 45 minutes)
12.8 x 9.03 x 0.41 in
2.45 lb

The notebook will hit the local shelves by early September. Representatives from HP Philippines mentioned the possibility of shipping an updated 7th Gen Intel Core i processors to the local market as well.