In the tightly-contested world of consumer tech, even the slightest mis-step can cost a company in anything from cash money to reputation to fans. So when Apple showed off its latest generation of Macbooks recently and even Apple fanboys yawned, it was inevitable that another company would step into the void with a product of their own that would excite like the Macbook was supposed to.
In this instance, that “another company” is HP, and that product is the new HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook. I was at HP’s annual Channel Partner Awards last night, where HP’s country manager John Geypen showed off the Spectre to a group of journalists before the main event got underway.
While I like to think I am immune to the hype machine, even I was impressed with what I saw: an incredibly thin, beautifully-styled Windows 10 Ultrabook. It weighs just over a kilo, too, which in the world of laptops is desirable, but difficult to pull off while still maintaining internals that make the computing experience worth a damn.
When I picked it up it was so light I couldn’t help but wonder if I was holding a factory sample that hadn’t had its battery fitted yet. But no, it was the full retail model, made all the more surprising by John Geypen’s assertion that the Spectre 13 will offer at least 8 hours of intense usage (longer if it’s not pushed as hard).
Passive cooling
Part of the reason the Spectre 13 is so thin and lightweight is down to the work Intel has done on its 7th-generation laptop processors, which are so power-efficient that they don’t need to be cooled by fans attached to aluminium or copper heatsinks, and can instead be simply passively cooled. That means less space is needed inside the chassis to keep the processor running cool, something that enables incredibly slim designs.
And because Intel’s latest-gen Core i5 and i7 processors are so fast and the Spectre’s chips are complemented by a maximum of 8GB of DDR4 RAM and up to 512GB of solid-state storage, the overall performance of the top models can be reasonably expected to be nothing short of excellent. The one I got to use briefly sure seemed to fly through Windows at top speed.
Of course, because it’s part of HP’s Premium line of products (complete with the awesomely-redesigned HP logo that goes on all of the company’s swishest products), it also has super-fast AC-class WiFi connectivity. Nice.
The Look
But it’s really the Spectre’s looks that you’ll remember long after you’ve read its specs, and it’s on that score that it has Apple’s Macbooks on the back foot. In addition to incredible slimness, the Spectre is copper-accented, giving it a very warm look and a nicely solid feel.
And the screen’s hinges are a work of art all their own, as they use pistons to support the display as it slides open and closed. Clearly, HP’s designers put a lot of thought into this laptop, and it shows in the little touches that contribute to a whole that – at this early stage in my relationship with it, certainly – suggests that the overall system is easily greater than the sum of its individual parts.
November Arrival
The Spectre 13 is expected to arrive in South Africa in mid-November, and carry a starting price tag of R29 999. Admittedly that’s a lot of money, but if you’re in need of an Ultrabook that’s pretty, powerful and which won’t weigh you down on long trips, it’s likely to be well worth the expenditure.
I’ll push HP for a review unit as soon as possible so Brendyn and I can test the Spectre 13 thoroughly for ourselves. I can’t wait to see if the reality lives up to its (very good) first impressions.
