HP Spectre x360 14 review: A luxurious laptop that checks all the right boxes

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I’ve tested several versions of the HP Spectre x360 over the years, a luxurious and exemplary well-built laptop with a flip-up screen and pen rest. They’ve often been a little too expensive, a little too heavy, and a little too behind the curve to merit a solid recommendation. But always good.

The latest 2024 model is very elegant and sleek with a 14-inch screen covered by a glossy glass panel, a solid metal chassis, and aluminium surfaces in a muted dark grey-blue tone. A high-quality keyboard provides a nice typing feel and a large mouse pad with force feedback from a haptic motor instead of a mechanical click provides both good control and a comfortable working position. While this machine has a lot to offer, it’s important to consider the high price tag and heavy weight. Read on to learn more.

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HP Spectre x360 14: Well-thought-out design… sometimes

Although the keyboard isn’t particularly wide due to the speaker grilles on either side, it does feel spacious thanks to the clever design. My first complaint is that the on button with the built-in fingerprint reader sits just above the backsplash of the keyboard. This causes involuntary locking on many other computers, but HP managed to solve it and a short press does nothing.

Edges and corners are softly rounded to provide the most comfortable grip possible, which may be needed as the computer isn’t very light. It weighs 3.43 pounds, well above the 2.86 pounds that’s usually considered the limit for an ultraportable.

The computer’s few physical ports are secondary with a USB-C port and a headphone port on beveled corners towards the back and a USB-A that needs to be unfolded to plug in gadgets. Neat, but perhaps not the most practical.

It works anyway and the ports are of the highest standard. You’re getting Thunderbolt 4 on two USB-C and USB 3 gen 2 on the USB-A port. However, you don’t get more, so if you want to charge the battery on a USB-C and connect various accessories, you’ll have to get a hub.

HP Spectre x360 14: Fast OLED display

The screen is a high-resolution OLED panel with 2880×1800 pixels, up to 120Hz dynamic frame rate, intense colors with 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage, and excellent contrast as well as HDR support. Brightness under normal use is up to 400 cd/m2, so it’s great for working outdoors. However, the glossy touch surface can cause some reflection problems.

With IMAX Enhanced support, this means that not only does the screen meet high color and dynamic requirements, but the sound is also at a high level. The upward-facing speakers at the side of the keyboard and a couple more built into the front provide clean, clear sound with plenty of volume and detail. There’s a slight lack of warmth and weight in the bass, but that’s not surprising given the slim form factor.

Both screen and sound can be controlled from the My HP app, where you’ll also find fan control, trackpad gesture controls, and pen settings (if you have one). I didn’t get one with my test computer and it doesn’t seem to be included, so I haven’t been able to test how good the Spectre x360 14 is as a tablet with the screen flipped back. But the predecessors have been good at it, so I guess HP hasn’t actively degraded the pen control in this year’s model.

For some reason, there are two more control programs, which are the HP Command Center and the Omen Gaming Hub. They only have a couple of small functions each. Why HP didn’t simply include these in My HP instead is beyond me.

HP Spectre x360 14: Good performance for most tasks

The hardware is impressive, too. Here sits Intel’s new Core Ultra 7 processor, the same one I tested just before Christmas in a new Asus Zenbook 14. The Core Ultra generation, also called Meteor Lake, doesn’t mean a huge performance boost compared to generation 13’s Core i7 processor, but the main advantages are cooler and more energy-efficient operation and significantly more powerful graphics with Arc circuitry instead of the previous UHD Graphics or Iris.

Now you can even play some games on it with decent quality, something only AMD processors could do before. At least with careful graphics effects, ray tracing, and resolution around 1080p. Occasional games may have trouble running as they don’t recognize separate video memory, but with time and the right drivers, this should clear up. Longer gaming sessions also cause performance to drop gradually.

You get 32GB of fast, low-profile DDR5X memory and a very fast 1TB SSD. You don’t get an SD card reader, so you’ll have to plug in a USB disc for more storage space if you absolutely have to.

Browsing, running Office programs with large documents, editing photos, and cutting film is mostly quick and smooth and, with so much memory, it’s easy to multitask. The Spectre x360 14 gave me much better benchmark results than the Asus computer.

HP Spectre x360 14: Surprisingly quiet

The Spectre X360 14 has more subdued fan cooling, which only gives off a mild hiss that’s easy to overlook. This is noticeable when I compare stress tests on the two computers, Asus can stay at maximum level for longer, which means that long video exports are faster. But only slightly and I clearly prefer HP’s prioritization here. It’s a very comfortable computer to work on.

The fan control in My HP allows you to choose between running it completely or almost silently with muted performance, raising ambitions in a performance mode, or letting an AI-driven Smart Sense mode strike a good balance between those extremes.

Another thing that’s brand new is Wi-Fi. This is the first laptop I’ve tested with Intel’s BE200 circuit in it that provides Wi-Fi 7 support. It can be very fast and stable to shovel data through the air if you have the right router, which I fortunately had, as I am currently testing one as well. There will be an avalanche of laptops, tablets, and more mobiles running Wi-Fi 7 this year and more affordable routers, so being early with this one from HP is not entirely wrong.

HP Spectre x360 14: Lasts longer than expected

The battery life is quite good. I managed two hours of processor-heavy work and gaming on a bright screen and 19 hours of surfing and word processing on a dimmed screen. That’s really good considering its high-resolution OLED screen that can often jump up to 120 Hz mode. There are longer-lasting laptops, but not many that are this slim and fast.

HP also gets points for its high-quality and versatile webcam. It films up to 4K if you use HP’s own Enhanced Camera feature. It can then be accessed in other applications such as streaming or video conferencing as a virtual camera. It has features like smart light and color control, eye contact effect, de-worming, and more. These are things that are already abundant in meeting programs such as Zoom and Teams, but it would be nice to have another option. If you run the camera directly, you get at best 1440p, even then with high quality.

The camera also supports IR for face login and there is a well-functioning presence detection that uses the camera. It shuts down the computer when you leave it, wakes it up when you return, and can dim the brightness when you’re not looking at the screen. The camera can also recognize simple hand gestures to, for example, pause a media playback or browse a photo gallery.

So yes, even though this is a fairly expensive computer, you get enough quality for your money that it doesn’t feel like you’re being ripped off. If I got a slightly dubious impression of Intel’s new Ultra series with the Asus Zenbook 14, then HP straightens out the question marks here.

HP Spectre x360 14: Specifications

Product name: HP Spectre x360 14-eu0895no
Tested: January 2024
Manufacturer: HP
Processor: Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 6pcs P-core up to 4,8 GHz + 8pcs E-core, 2pcs LP-core
Graphics: Intel Arc Graphics
Memory: 32GB DDR5X
Storage: 1TB SSD
Displays: 14-inch glossy OLED, 2880×1800 pixels, 120Hz
Webcam: 9 megapixel (4k), IR for Windows Hello
Connections: 2pcs Thunderbolt 4, USB-A 3 Gen 2, headset
Wireless: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Operating system: Windows 11 Home
Other: Flippable to tablet mode, fingerprint reader
Noise level: 0-36 dBa
Battery life: 68 Wh, 2 hours 15 minutes (high load, full brightness) to approx. 19 hours (low load, low brightness)
Size: 31.37 x 22.04 x 1.69 cm
Weight: 3.43 lbs

HP Spectre x360 14: Performance

Cinebench R23, CPU multiple cores: 13,229 points
CinebenchR23, CPU single core: 1,712 points
Geekbench 6, CPU multiple cores: 12,889 points
Geekbench 6, CPU single core: 2,400 points
Geekbench 6, GPU: 35,468 points
Disk read: Up to 6,957.49 MB/s
Disk write: Up to 5,308.52 MB/s

This review was translated from Swedish to English and originally appeared on pcforalla.se.