HP Spectre x360 15-bl002xx Convertible Review

The CNC-machined aluminum chassis is strikingly beautiful. The display lid, the keyboard deck and the bottom are "dark ash silver", but the color looks - especially outdoors - more like a slightly purplish charcoal gray to us. The sides and front edges of the notebook, the touchpad-surround and the HP logos are copper-colored; the hinges feature copper accents as well. HP's use of the accent color here is much more restrained than on their super-slim Spectre 13 and the overall result is very pleasing to the eye.

While not quite as sturdy as some other metal semi-unibody designs, the Spectre x360 is torsionally very rigid with no noticeable creaking sounds whatsoever. There is some minor give when pressing down in the middle of the laptop or to the left and right of the touchpad, but not enough so as to be a detriment as far as durability or usability are concerned. The display lid with its Gorilla Glass touchscreen is also quite sturdy and resists twists quite well given it's thickness. Moderately-heavy pushes induce some ripples on the display, however. The metal-encased 360° hinges are not nearly as convincing as the rest of the notebook and in our opinion not quite stiff enough to cope with the heavy display. While it takes two hands to open the lid, the display is actually quite easy to move once in it's in a normal laptop position. In fact, even the action of picking up the x360 can cause the display to swing backwards beyond a 180 degree angle. Tapping on the screen also introduces noticeable wobbles, so the laptop might not be the best choice for train rides and such. The edges of the convertible lack rubber bumpers of any kind, so in tent mode, the unit slides easily on smooth surfaces. Likely this was a design choice to preserve the upscale looks, but we fear that repeated use will scratch the finish in the long run. HP doesn't have an equivalent to Lenovo's lift’n’lock feature, so there's no frame to lock the keys in tablet mode. As good as the surfaces look, fingerprints are unfortunately an issue - even more so, as they aren't easily removed.

As mentioned in our introduction, HP shaved quite a few mm of the bezel, which now measure less than 5 mm each - 4.65 mm to be exact. The company calls the result a "virtually borderless micro-edge display". While the overall width of the notebook has decreased compared to the predecessor - see our size comparison below - the lower-edge bezel is very wide at 3.6 cm / 1.4 inches. so the convertible is slightly deeper, although only marginally so. The thickness has increased as well by about 1.8 mm, but in normal use this is hardly noticeable. The Spectre's footprint most closely matches that of the Dell XPS 15 width-wise, but it's once again deeper by about 1.5 cm (0.6 inches). Even so, for a 15-inch notebook, the HP convertible is exceptionally easy to slip into a bag and carry around.

Video conferencing is a mixed bag: while the audio is quite good thanks to dual array digital microphone, the picture quality of HP's "TrueVision FHD" camera leaves to be desired. The test picture on the right was taken in a room with a ceiling fan equipped with 3x 13W (60W equivalent) Sylvania Micro-Mini CFL Soft White light bulbs above and to the left of the notebook. Even though we wouldn't consider this a "low light" shot, the color noise is extremely pronounced - particularly in black areas. Color accuracy is also quite poor with orange rendered as red and the details in Pooh's fur are completely washed out.

As we mentioned in our intro, HP has made the 15.6-inch UHD UWVA eDP WLED-backlit IPS display with 4K resolution (3840 x 2160 pixels) the sole panel choice. Along with a manufacturer switch - the predecessor with 4K display used a panel from LG Philips, while the new Spectre x360 15 utilizes one from BOE - HP also decided to drop the PenTile-technology in favor of standard RGB , so we ought to see a better contrast ratio this time around. 

Thanks to the bonded glass screen combined with the ultra-high resolution, the icons and text are supremely sharp without any apparent graininess. The only caveat: the display doesn't always render older applications and even some newer ones appropriately, so text can be either next to unreadable or fuzzy around the edges because of the scaled view. This is a still somewhat common issue with UHD displays, however and not isolated to the review convertible. Our measurements show an average brightness of about 340 nits, so the new panel is a bit brighter than that of the predecessor, which reached 275 nits. The contrast ratio is better, too, but still far from great at 717:1. While we don't expect the Spectre to compete with the perfectly-black backgrounds of Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Yoga with OLED display, other panels do much better here. The display of the Yoga 910, for example, is marginally dimmer at 310 nits, but the contrast is essentially twice as high at 1400:1. Subjectively, the panel does look very good, however and the blacks are quite dark.

The dual-core i7-7500U (2.7 GHz, up to 3.5 GHz, 4 MB cache, TDP 15 watts) is used in a lot of different mid to higher-end notebooks and convertibles and our sample generally performs as expected. The CPU handles common office and multimedia applications with aplomb and doesn't shy away from heavier processing tasks, either. During the Cinebench R15 multi-test, the processor cores operated at Turbo frequency of 3.1 - 3.5 GHz. Interesting is the fact that the Lenovo Yoga 910, which is equipped with the same CPU but suffers from a more pronounced drop in the Turbo frequency to 2.7 - 2.8 GHz, actually has a slightly higher multi-core score than the review convertible. The Spectre x360 15 outperforms the predecessor with previous-generation Core i5 CPU by roughly 10 and 20 percent for single and multi-core, respectively; systems with a 6th-generation i7 CPU like the Core i7-6500U are roughly 10 % slower.

Performance of the SSD - a Toshiba XG4 NVMe THNSN5512GPUK - is great across the board. The capacity of 512 GB should be sufficient for most users, but for those requiring even more storage, HP also offers an upgrade to a 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD for an additional $200. We did encounter an issue with the tool AS SSD, which recorded excellent read, but sub-par write rates. We repeated the test several times with near-identical outcome. While we have provided the results below, we need to urge our readers to take the write rates in particular with a grain of salt, as they are quite obviously wrong.

The HP Spectre x360 15 is mostly inaudible during idle, as the fans are not running at all, although they do sometimes turns on for no apparent reason with the noise level then jumping to 36 dB. Subjected to medium and high loads, the fan reaches a maximum of almost 43 dB, so the 2017 edition of the Spectre x360 is a bit noisier than the predecessor. Overall, the system is well behaved, although the fan noise during prolonged loads can get annoying after a while. The Dell Inspiron 15 convertible with integrated GPU only tops out at 36 dB, the XPS 15 with much more potent hardware and dedicated reaches an uncomfortable 48 dB under full load.

The sound produced by the two stereo speakers - found under perforations to the left and right of the keyboard -  isn't exactly a revelation. The speakers are sufficiently loud for an average-sized room, but the sound quality is unfortunately lacking. Although the highs are decent enough and not overly tinny, the lower frequencies are less pronounced while bass is barely detectable at all. The "Bang & Olufsen Audio" app lets the user adjust some basic settings, but in our opinion the tweaks only have a fairly minimal effect. We recommend external speakers or headphones for extended listening sessions. For movies and video clips, the speakers are usuable enought, but there is no question that the Spectre can't compete with a full-sized multimedia laptop.

HP's newly redesigned 15.6-inch Spectre x360 picks up where the smaller 13.3-inch brother left off. The CNC aluminum chassis is sturdy and feels as good as it looks, despite the fact that it's slightly thicker than before. The updated hardware with Kaby Lake i7 processor and 512 GB M.2 SSD is powerful and also reasonably future-proof. The larger-capacity battery copes well with the increased power requirements and the battery life has improved compared to the predecessor. The 4K panel - now standard RGB instead of PenTile - is bright and vivid, the input devices are decent and the Active Pen makes jotting down notes a pleasurable experience. One of the biggest news is the move to a dedicated GPU, which should appeal to users interested in the occasional gaming session in addition to productivity tasks.

We have comparatively little to complain about: the bonded glass display lid is heavy, so the hinges don't hold it as securely as we would like. There are no protective bumpers of any kind surrounding the base unit or the display, so the convertible slides around on smooth surfaces and the aluminum edges will likely scuff and scratch if the convertible is used in tent mode on less-than-ideal surfaces. 4K displays still suffer from scaling issues at times and not every user needs or wants that high of a resolution, so it would've been nice for HP to offer a Full-HD or WQHD panel at least as an option. Last but not least, a 15.6-inch convertible is large and heavy even if does feature ultra-slim bezels, so its usefulness as a tablet might be somewhat limited.

We can't find many faults with the HP Spectre x360 15. It's a solid, well-performing 2-in-1 and as such one of the best choices when considering a large convertible.