you know i like my razer blade stealth and all but i'm also a giant nerd and
always drooling over the next big thing so i wouldn't mind upgrading it and
since razer wasn't able to scratch that itch with their last blade
itself i've been looking elsewhere for my greener pastures
now the surface laptop too it's nice
but i really want Thunderbolt the macbook pro let's take a screenshot oh
oh you're in trouble yeah no
dell xps 13 well you know what that one's close it's definitely on my list
of things to try but hp i've been both hearing and even
experiencing really great things about their x360 line for quite some time in
fact last time i looked at one two years ago i called it the best two in one yet
but now that i have the 2019 versions of the
13 and 15 inch spectre x360s in my hands
it's clear to me that my search isn't over yet because i wouldn't really
recommend buying either of these
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now the non-square corners of the new x360 lineup might be a little bit
polarizing but for my part at least on the 13-inch anyway
i actually kind of like it it's unique and i mean honestly the look of this
thing overall is decidedly premium like it's
it's almost screaming for that first big bonus check that a young professional
takes home from their first job out of school on the right camphor you'll find a
Thunderbolt 3 port with fast charging noise so far so good and on the left is
the power button where we actually encounter the first problem at least
with the 15 inch version with the power cable plugged in and
pointing backwards you know where it would normally go you
actually can't easily reach the power button like it's not impossible and hp's
rational is that it allows you easy access to the power button in either
laptop or tablet mode
but they also could have placed it literally
anywhere else along this edge or oh i
don't know this edge and it also would have been
accessible and avoided the power cable issue
fortunately what helps make up for this is the decent i o on both models they
managed to squeeze a full-sized usb type-a onto the 13-inch along with
type-c Thunderbolt 3 micro sd and a headphone jack and the 15-inch even gets
a full-size HDMI port on top of all of that and i mean
just you know what i actually love the style of these
things they managed to look really slim and sleek while still having full-size
ports and being eye-catching without
ending up being like tacky or gaudy
unfortunately while the look is very premium the build quality is only
good like it's better than a typical MSI notebook but
it's not on the same level as the likes of dell microsoft or apple the aluminum
chassis is rigid but not
stop the aluminum chassis is rigid but not
quite as rigid as its carbon fiber and magnesium counterparts and there's some
mild flecks in the palm area and it's got a screen that is
wobblier than my weird uncle on a friday night
or well any night performance wise though there's some
good news both of these laptops are standouts the 13-inch has a dual fan
cooling design that allows its quad-core processor to hang with the likes of the
xps 13 putting light video editing or
photo editing easily within reach and for those needing a bit more power
stepping up to the 15 inch looks like a great way to go rocking a 6 core core i7
8750h and an NVIDIA gtx 1050 ti the
larger of the spectres is able to hang with the xps 15 for professional level
performance or even light gaming
is what i would say if this display here didn't have some of
the raunchiest pixel response times that
i've seen in the last five years
like seriously i bet the camera could pick
this up no problem without even switching to high speed i'm talking 30
FPS mode just moving the mouse pointer
around on the desktop makes it look like i've got pointer trails enabled and that
is on top of the display having a little
more input leg than i'm used to now neither of these things are really
noticeable on the 13 inch so that's
well i don't know i don't want to say good because you don't really get any bonus points for meeting basic
expectations but what is noticeable on
both models are the top and the bottom
bezels everywhere else in the industry hp's
competitors are moving either to slim bezel 16x9 displays or taller aspect
ratios so that mobile users can make the most out of the screen area
hp seems to have clearly missed the memo
here also very dated the 360 degree hinge
design this is a situation where hp basically
shot themselves in the foot by creating maybe the best convertible design ever
with the spectre folio i was really hoping that with this complete redesign
of the x360 we would get that hinge
with a quad-core processor and without
the polarizing leather finish but no it's just a regular convertible
laptop with a wobbly hinge and those
little feet that get in the way of the left control and the right arrow key
back to the displays though response times aside i do have some good things
to say here both of our models are equipped with brightview displays that
feature HDR support along with excellent color accuracy and contrast and i'm a
pretty big fan of their sure view displays as well now these two units
don't have this function but basically it's a toggleable privacy display which
is great if you want to keep your information private in a public place
and as far as i know hp is the only one that offers that function
are they yeah i'm not aware of anyone else you know what just correct me in the
comments if i'm wrong anyway they also don't just look good
they feel good too with excellent touch support along with a really great
drawing and writing experience coming from the included pen something that
isn't bundled with basically every other laptop on the market
but now we've come to the point in this review where i need to address a time in
the past when i was wrong
or more accurately i was being facetious
i said that the pen holder on the spectrefolio was so bad that maybe they
just shouldn't include one at all well
no no it turns out that this having literally no way to attach the
pen to your system at all is in fact
worse something is better than nothing
so okay hp you win
sort of the webcam falls considerably short of the surface laptop but
fortunately in this massive forehead they were at least able to fit Windows
hello facial recognition which saves hp from having to listen to me complain
about the location of this fingerprint sensor
why isn't it on the power button oh wait i guess they didn't get saved
from it at all i did still complain about it that's a shame anyway you don't
have to use it the speaker grille placement above the keyboard looks
really nice and the speakers themselves are pretty good but while that lost
keyboard space at the top isn't a problem for the 15 on the 13 it means
that anyone with big hands is going to end up resting uncomfortably on this
actually surprisingly sharp edge what makes this more frustrating is that
otherwise this is quite a good keyboard the keystrokes are long and quiet and
although the feel might not be quite as crisp as the surface laptop i still
really appreciate what hp has done with the switches with me being able to get
up to full speed very quickly what is simply unacceptable though is the
trackpad and that's what actually inspired the title of this video it's
the same unit on both models which means that it's a pretty good size on that 13
inch and they both have very serious
palm rejection and acceleration issues
for some reason hp has opted to use
synaptics as touch pad drivers instead of the Windows precision ones and the
experience is just awful like here watch
this if i move slowly
close to the edge
it's actually several centimeters of movement before the track pad even
registers my finger being there it's so bad that when i
first used this machine i i assumed it was broken and that we
would have to delay our review so we could wait to swap it out for another
unit but then both of them behaved in exactly the same
way now as it turns out this dead zone can
be tuned in the synaptic software but then you get palm rejection issues
because that's how it does it and it also turns
out that other laptops do have a similar
dead zone like on the surface laptop it turns out there is roughly a centimeter
on either side that isn't immediately activated but the thing is that between
alex and i we've been using the surface laptop razor blade stealth many other
laptops for years and just like never
noticed it whereas on these hp's it was apparent to me within about 30 seconds i
was like something is wrong
oh it's like not working because it's a full two and a half centimeters on both
sides so
since what the software is said to out of the box does appear to be the better
solution compared to turning palm rejection off at all the spectre x360
2019 ends up with the dubious honor of
tying the MSI gs75 for
worst track pad i've seen in years something that is particularly
unacceptable on a non-gaming device where you aren't expected to regularly
plug in a mouse speaking of plugging in one area where
the x360 13-inch really shines is in the
battery life department with its 60 watt hour battery it delivers some truly
incredible time away from the wall after a full eight hour work day writing this
script with no plugging in the x360 13 inch still had 70 of its battery left
when it was time to head home as for the 15-inch model well it's no
slouch either lasting through the workday handily but it's 84 watt-hour
battery can't quite compete with the 97 watt hour one in the dell xps 15.
bottom line time then overall neither the x360 13 or 15 inch
did it for me on paper it should be a pretty clear decision to take this over
something like a surface laptop too it's got better battery life better
performance better connectivity and better security features all for a very
similar price and it does feel like hp
has spent a lot of time working on the details of this machine
kind of like there's a laptop design rubric created by a consumer study that
the engineers have made sure that they get top marks on
the only problem is that when you take a couple steps back from these things and
just use them the issues that we've talked
about especially the trackpad are really
hard to ignore all i can hope for is that this is
something that hp can fix through software updates
and redesign in 2020
yeah or that speaking of 2020 you won't have to wait
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