HP SPECTRE 13

HP’S SPECTRE 13 runs Windows 8, but it doesn’t contort, flip, swivel, or do any other impractical tricks of so many hybrid notebook-tablet hybrids. It’s just a regular old Ultrabook—but a very good one.

If what you really want is a thin-and-light notebook with a great keyboard, a high-resolution display, and the power to tackle nearly any workload, the Spectre 13 comes pretty darn close to delivering that ideal design. It also leverages one of Windows 8’s touch capabilities to deliver a great innovation in usability: an almost comically wide touchpad dubbed the Control Zone; more about that shortly. The Spectre 13 looks a lot like Apple’s MacBook Air.

The Spectre 13’s aluminum unibody chassis feels sturdy without being especially heavy (it weighs in at 3.3 pounds). The shiny purplish lid is distinctive but not ostentatious.

Under the hood, you’ll find a fourth-generation Intel Core i5-4200U CPU paired with 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory. The 128GB solid-state drive feels a bit cramped, but you can double the storage for an additional $150. The PC packs Intel’s integrated graphics, so you won’t get much in the way of gaming performance, though dialing down the settings will do in a pinch. Those components are good enough to earn a respectable WorldBench 8.1 score of 270.

One shortcoming you won’t be able to fix is the Spectre 13’s cooling fan. It kicks in when the processor starts doing any heavy lifting, and the noise can be annoying. HP claims a battery life of 9 hours, but it delivered 7.5
hours in our batteryrundown test. That’s an hour-plus more than what Sony’s VAIO Pro 13 delivered, and nearly 2 hours more than Lenovo’s ThinkPad Yoga.

The 13.3-inch, 1920-by-1080-pixel display is nice and bright, with excellent viewing angles. Photos and videos look great, but if you’d like higher resolution, you can upgrade to a 2560-by-1440-pixel display for another $70. The Beats Audio speakers are very good, pumping out rich, well-rounded audio with a bit of bass.

The keyboard’s wide, spacious backlit keys are easy to reach, though the arrow keys are a bit cramped. The primary role for the row of function keys up top is media player control. If you want to use them as traditional function keys, hold down the Fn key. And then there’s the aforementioned Control Zone trackpad, which is designed to ease your transition to Windows 8 by translating its touch gestures into actions you can perform by
swiping on a touchpad—a method users are already familiar with— instead of by jabbing at a touchscreen. This helps make the Windows 8 experience feel more natural.

HP’s Spectre 13 won’t convert those wary of Windows 8, but it solidly delivers the basics.