If you’re looking for a modern laptop-tablet hybrid, with excellent battery life, and a powerful processor then the HP Spectre X360 is for you. Today we’ll talk about one model in particular, the X360 13-4003, the second most powerful X360 model on the market. Powered by a Intel® Core™ i7-5500U 2.5 GHZ CPU, the HP Spectre X360 13-4003 is one of the highest performing X360 models to date. Weighing 3 pounds, it rivals the Mac Book Air but packs a lot of power under the hood as well.
Source: notebookreview.com
A Ghost of a Chance Against Apple
However, the best part is that it has a touchscreen and reversible hinges which make gives the laptop two modes: tablet or laptop. It’s ideal for people who enjoy the portability of tablets but want the raw power that laptops bring to the table. This device is the best of both worlds. Let’s dive in and see what it’s all about. If you’re interested in buying one of these babies, continue reading because we’ll let you know what to expect.
Keep in mind in this review we will be discussing the features and specs of the X360 13-4003 model, other X360 models have different features and specs.
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- This Certified Refurbished product is factory refurbished, shows limited or no wear, and includes all original accessories plus a 90 day warranty
- 5th Gen Intel Core i7-5500U processor
- 8GB LPDDR3 SDRAM, Note: Optical drive not included
- 13.3" LED-backlit touch-screen display
- 256GB solid state drive
Design
Designed with an aluminum one piece chassis, this laptop is extremely durable and looks sleek, modern, and polished. The sides of the laptop are smoothed out with perfect corners and polished, it reflects sunlight, and looks gorgeous. The main color is silver. The weight of the device depends on which components are selected prior to shipping but the average weight of these models is in between 3 and 3.5 pounds.
Features
The HP Spectre X360 includes many cool features. For starters, it has a touchscreen and foldable hinges, the screen folds backwards, converting the laptop into a tablet mode. This is definitely the most significant feature. There are other features as well, such as backlit keyboard, HDMI port, SD Card Slot, 3 USB 3.0 Ports, Bluetooth, a webcam, and volume controls. There are a lot of features packed into this modern laptop-tablet hybrid. There are four screen placement modes: stand mode, “tent” mode, laptop mode, and tablet mode.
- Excellent battery life
- >Extremely light, weighing only 3 pounds
- Beautiful high definition screen.
- Small and easy to take with you on your travels.
- The internal speakers are not very high quality
- The RAM is soldered onto the motherboard
- In tablet mode, the keyboard can be bothersome
Durability and Security
All Spectre X360 models are built with a one piece aluminum chassis and most of the internal components are soldered to the motherboard for maximum durability. Windows 8 operating system provides excellent security against viruses and a free trial of MacAfee antivirus is installed on the device as well.
Keyboard
A white black light illuminates each letter on the keyboard and each key is soft and sensitive; extremely convenient for office work. The keys are also damp and don’t produce much sound when pressed. Everything is smooth and sensitive to the touch. On that note, we noticed that the track pad is slightly over-sized and does serve much of a purpose. Still, there’s plenty of room on either side of the laptop’s track pad to rest one’s palms. However, we did notice that occasionally users accidently pressed the right mouse click button, it’s sensitive, and easy to trigger due to the size of the track pad. You should also know that this keyboard is a standard sized laptop keyboard; it does not have a number pad.
Display and Audio:
The screen is 13.3” and the maximum resolution is 1920 x 1080 which is excellent for the laptop’s size. However, we did notice that some of the desktop icons are a little small and difficult to see, a problem that can be solved by increasing the size of the desktop icons. But the high definition is beautiful, and watching HD movies is no problem, and the color configuration is great as well. The colors are bright and vivid, excellent for artists; even games seem to have more color than usual. A thin layer of glass covers the screen to reduce glare and protect the screen from damage, the touchscreen is sensitive and responsive as well. There are a few digital drawing apps included that allow you to test the touchscreen; we noticed that the touchscreen works just as good as an iPhone 6.
Ports and Webcam
There are 3 USB ports and a 1.3 Megapixel webcam. We tested a few Skype calls and the quality is excellent. The microphone is also responsive and we had no problems.
Performance
This model, the X360 13-4003 is one of the higher end models when it comes to performance. It uses a powerful Core™ i7-5500U 2.5 GHZ processor and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM which allows for lightning fast performance. But it is important to keep in mind that the RAM is soldered to the motherboard which means it is not upgradable, which is not a problem because 8GB is plenty for a laptop. It also has a 256 SSD hard drive. In a nutshell, the performance when it comes to tasks like web browsing and media, the performance is excellent. Watching high definition videos on YouTube is not as smooth as we expected it would be, and the laptop heated up slightly, but in all it worked fine. It’s understandable because this device does not have a graphics card. There are also only a few programs that are pre-installed which allows for fast boot times.
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Graphics
Even though this device does have a powerful CPU and 8 GB of RAM, it is not a gaming laptop. It does not have a dedicated graphics adapter because dedicated graphics adapters tend to weigh more, produce more heat, consume more energy, and require significant space. Generally speaking ultrathin notebooks don’t include dedicated graphics adapters due to these reasons. Therefore, gaming capabilities are limited, but if you are not a hardcore gamer then you will notice that you can run some games on medium to low settings. We tested Skyrim and got around 20 frames per second with medium settings. The graphics adapter is Intel HD 5500 internal graphics.
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Battery Life
We already mentioned that the batter life is excellent, on battery-saving mode; the battery can last for around 12 hours. When in use, the battery tends to die after about 6 hours.
Software and Warranty
Thankfully HP did not include a package of random programs. You will notice that MacAfee is installed, a few art programs, Netflix, Skype, and a few other smaller programs. All HP laptops are given a 1 year hardware warranty so if you damage the laptop within that time frame you can repair it for free.
All in all this laptop is excellent and well worth the price if you need a powerful, light, and modern laptop. The only downside is that it can’t run most games at a playable frame rate which is a shame but it is still light and perfect for other uses. So if you’re looking for a laptop to buy this one is highly recommended, we loved it.
