Cheaper, lighter and faster than a 13-inch MacBook Pro, with a longer-living battery and tons more features, the HP Spectre x360 13 continues to wow me. It has some advantages over its closer Windows competitors as well. The screen of HP’s stylish convertible flips out of the standard clamshell orientation into a “tent” for presentations, and it stands on its keyboard or flips all the way around to work as a tablet. This laptop retains the terrific design of its predecessors and improves on the basics.
The update to Intel’s eighth-generation Core i-series processors has boosted its battery life to a whopping 13-plus hours on our tests. Coupled with that processor’s jump to four cores from two, it performs significantly better than previous models for operations that use the processor. As more laptops adopt the newer processors its lead will diminish, of course. For instance, it slightly lags behind the also-excellent Lenovo Yoga 920 in almost all performance areas, except for battery life.
All that and value, too
Its price is pretty reasonable for what you get. While HP sells this $1,250 model on its site, as far as I can tell you can configure the lowest-end model and get it for $1,100, just without the web cam. That’s something to consider if you’re budget constrained. You can get it in the new Pale Rose Gold (pink) as well as the traditional Dark Ash Silver (copper and brown) or just plan old Natural Silver; you pay $10 extra for the two more exotic models, as well as a bizarre extra $1 for your CPU choice in the Rose Gold.
