HP have absolutely smashed it out of the park with this design. The Spectre X360 is an absolutely gorgeous device, one of my favourite laptops I’ve ever used. The combination of it’s thin and light asthetics, combine with the black and copper finish just works so well together.

Something I’ve never thought to cover in a review before is the font used for the keyboard. Thin, light and large, the font used on keys looks incredibly modern, to the point where I look at regular keyboards now and they all look unnecessarily bold.

For a device that folds back on itself (the 360 part of the X360), the hinges look and feel incredibly strong. Manufacturers all have different approaches to hinge design and I feel like I could open, close, and flip this device a million times and it’d still be fine. Given the X360 lineup of convertibles from HP don’t come with a real premium, over traditional laptops, you’d be crazy not to go for the X360.

The regular lineup of X360 Elitebooks are really nice machines, but you could easily make those across the board room table envious when you walk in with the Spectre, it’s just stunning.

So thin is the design of the laptop, that the full-sized USB-A port on the left of the body actually has to fold out to accept a USB device (USB key, bluetooth dongle, mouse etc).

A laptop’s design is important, but if you front up the cash to buy a new laptop after a few years, you’ll be looking for a significant boost in performance.

Thankfully HP understands this requirement well and chose to include one of the best mobile processors in the businesss. Hiding inside this thin and light body is the incredibly powerful 10th-gen Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU running at 1.30GHz with 4 cores and 8 threads, it can turbo all the way up to 3.9GHz.

Combined with 16GB of DDR4-3200 and Intel Optane 500GB SSD, this thing is lightning fast to boot, wake from sleep and to get day-to-day tasks done. Can you beat it with a dedicated PC with RTX graphics, sure, of course, but if you want portability without making massive sacrifices on performance or battery life, then look no further.

The PCMark10 score on the Spectre X360 was very impressive, landing an overall rating of 3,256.

With the design and performance incredibly impressive, its also really important to check out the features on offer. Often your must-have list needs to be adequately met, or a device consideration will end right here. If a laptop can tick the right boxes for you, it will likely be the trigger that gets you to upgrade from your current laptop.

Thankfully HP have packed this device with a great linup of features that will mean it appeals to a really broad audience of users.

• 13% reduction in size from last year’s model while increasing power.
• HP’s first 4K OLED 13-inch diagonal display with True Black HDR.
• Verified to the target specification and key experiences of Intel’s “Project Athena” Innovation program.
• Double the performance of the previous gen, enabled by HP’s first convertible featuring a quad-core 10^th Gen Intel Core processor with Iris Plug Graphics.
• 22 hours of battery life.
• HP Webcam Kill Switch keeps users safe with a physical on/off switch to electrically turn off the webcam when not in use.
• Micro SD Card slot
• 2x USB-C Thunderbolt 3 – power in, power out (charge your phone while laptop sleeps).
• Windows Hello (Fingerprint and Face Unlock)
• Backlit keyboard

My complaints here are extremely limited. Despite the absolutely stunning display, the webcam remains a dismal 1MP camera that does just 720p video. So bright, so vibrant, this laptop display could be a brilliant web conferencing device, but with that webcam, the video quality is dissapointing. Please HP, upgrade the front-facing camera.

While most of the time I use laptops on the desk, I occasionally use them on my lap. As a bi-product of making the device so thin, it exhausts heat out the bottom of the device, which can be pretty warm on your knees. It’s also not major, but something to be aware of.

The Spectre x360 13″ is available via HP.com and retailers like JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys and Harvey Norman with a starting price of $1,999.00 with the top end model goes right up to A$2,999.00.

Obviously this device is at the higher end of the laptop price range, but given the features and design on offer, I think that price is justified, this is the flagship of the X360 and Elitebook lineup and I just want one.

There is also a 15″ version available for those that like a larger display.

Without a shadow of a doubt, I’d recommend this laptop to anyone. Obviously we’re talking about a premium product so the price tag won’t come in under everyone’s budget. If you can either find the dollars yourself, or convince your boss that you need this for your next device, then do what you have to, this laptop is easily one of the best I’ve ever spent time with.

From the design, to the long feature list and that great performance and killer battery life, there’s just so much to love here. Yes I wish the webcam was higher quality, but in the scheme of things to complain about, this is a fairly small one.

This laptop is great for those who prioritise thin and light portability, but also care about the design of the device you use. The convertible X360 flip around display enables the use of this in more locations. For those who travel on planes, busses, trains, or in the back of car, you’ll appreciate being able to flip the keyboard around and firing up Netflix on the touchscreen.

When it comes time to get the serious business done, be it office documents or video and photo editing, this device is incredibly capable and being able to do that work over multiple days on a single charge is almost unheard of. HP designers and engineers need a collective pat on the back for your hard work on this one.