HP Spectre X360 16″ :
The HP Spectre X360 the 16-inch version now, larger version is a larger screen and the ability to specify it with a dedicated GPU, aluminum cover, the night black color, there are a ton of fingerprints on the cover.
It’s obviously a little heavier than the 14-inch model at 4.3 lbs instead of 3.2, the range of ports is identical, so on the left side you get a usba port, this one doesn’t have a flap because the laptop itself is a little thicker and of course, because this uses this gem-cut design design, you have your combined audio jack in the back left corner, then in the back right corner you have a four-port HDMI 2.1 Thunderbolt port, and another port Thunderbolt 4.
Now, I would have loved to see another usba with a port on it, or even another type-c port, but it should definitely have an SD card slot, it has a nice OLED screen that photographers will use this video, the creators will potentially use it and they will want SD card slots.
Now with my HP Spectre 14, I have two different dongles, but this one, no dongle comes in the box, which probably means that it doesn’t come with the retail units, and HP probably just sent them with a review unit, but it comes with a pen that came with the HP pen, it works absolutely fantastic, it feels just as smooth right on the screen, as it did with its smaller 14-inch model and because the panel is 120 htz, you just get a very low latency weak.
I should also say that the magnet on the right side of the laptop is super strong, like I can bounce it off the table and the magnet catches it.
How does the laptop feel on your lap?
I’ve already tested it outside and look it’s comfortable you know how it’s a good size, it stretches all around me, I can go hands-free, I don’t feel like it’s going to fall off my lap as it’s very good, I will say that it’s a little too heavy just because this screen, is a heavier screen than most other laptops, so keep that in mind, as you don’t want to have it too close to the front of your lap or obviously it’s going to fall, it’s very pleasant to use.
Now because it’s a convertible or two, the screen can flip 360° so you can use it as a tablet if you want this hinge is nice and stiff, there’s not a ton of wobble, it just won’t fall back right away, which means it’s nice and tight.
I love this keyboard, it’s exactly like the Spectre 14.
Now, some of you might complain that there is no numeric keypad, personally, I don’t want it, I don’t need it, I don’t want to see it on a laptop, but I understand why you do a lot of it, you crunch numbers, it’s super important, I just think overall it makes the laptop cleaner without those super clickable keys, it has a nice sound, they feel so good to type on it.
Massive touchpad, which is haptic, which is the same idea and the same concept as MacBook airs, uses and it’s really nice to use like after using this, you’re not I’m going to want to go back to a plastic or glass touchpad, that should be the gold standard, on all laptops in the future.
Now you have top-firing and bottom-firing speakers, the sound quality of this laptop is pretty good.
The placement of the stickers, they are quite straight this time, the sticker man has done his job, but I don’t see an IMAX improved sticker, the color range is about the same as the 14-inch model, and the same as the AC accy color.
The only thing that’s a little different is that I found that the screen brightness was a little lower on this one, not by much, but it’s a little lower even if technically, it’s an HDR screen with a maximum brightness of 500 nits.
Now the pwm flicker on this laptop is really good, even below 50%, it has not started to have this flicker, so the new generation Samsung panels are obviously much better, as I noticed some latency or tearing of the screen rather, when I was doing the screen tear test and even when I was playing games, if there is definitely some kind of software update that needs to happen, I should also mention that there is a fingerprint scanner integrated into the power button, or that you can use the cameras for facial recognition if you want to use your face instead.
So fun fact, it’s actually a 4k camera, but it only appears as a 1440p camera under the Windows camera app if you go to the hp app where you can adjust things like frame blur, background, etc. you can actually record a 4K video, using the front camera.
Now, more importantly, I think it looks pretty good, but also let me know how the microphones sound now, this has a 140W power brick adapter, which is larger than the 14-inch model, simply because it comes with a dedicated GPU, but it uses a type-c connector and that’s a good thing, you know that type-c means that if you lose that power brick, you don’t need to find a proprietary power brick to replace it, you can simply continue on Amazon to find a 140 W Gan charger and use it with this laptop.
Now this retail unit comes with an Intel Core Ultra 755h, you have 16 GB of LP ddr5x memory, beautiful 16-inch OLED display 2.8k resolution, 1 tbte mvme SSD.
Now the performance is where things get super weird because it doesn’t work as it should now, the single-core clock speeds are the same as the competition, which is great, but the multi-core speeds were much higher for the laptops, which are in a 14-inch chassis, including the Spectre 14 mozzilla Firefox, which is a test that should end in the 20s, with most similar PROCESSORS.
I even checked the PROCESSOR power compared to the 14-inch model this one exceeded about 28 to 29 Watts, the 14-inch model reached about 36, this is not a drastic difference, but it is still a difference considering, that it is a larger chassis, even things like the average clock speeds of the core, were higher on the 14-inch model.
Then I checked the PROCESSOR temperatures on the 14-inch version were in the high 80s, this one was in the mid-60s, which automatically tells me that there is a lot of thermal margin here that is not being used.
The benefit to all of this is that the fan noise was always pretty low on this laptop, like even when this thing was fully charged, it would be like 44 to 45 DB.
Now, what all this is telling me is that the hardware is fine, it’s just that whatever the software, or the HP bios is running on the 16-inch model, needs an update to push this laptop even harder.
The RTX 450 works as it should, so that’s a good thing, I don’t recommend playing on this laptop at 2880 by 1800, the 4050 is not powerful enough for that unless you play like a great old title, but this lap top should be played at 1920 x 1200, and you will get very good frame rates at this resolution.
To get inside, there are only four screws to remove, but few things are scalable.
The RAM is soldered to the motherboard, as is the case with all the core Ultra processors this year, but you have a drive slot, which you can upgrade to something larger, if you want more storage space you have a swappable Wi-Fi 7 card, which you have have a two-fan solution.
The battery life was not as good as the 14-inch model, as this one is an 83w hour battery, and only has 5 hours and 33 minutes before it needs to charge.
Conclusion :
So here’s what the HP Spectre 16, has everything that makes the HP Spectre 14 very special plus with a dedicated GPU, the only thing I can say at the moment is that I don’t like the battery life and you don’t get the full performance that this laptop should offer.
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