HP and Dell pushing the boundaries of laptop design harder than Apple (well, pushing them harder in terms of what they can do rather than what their customers will accept). What is this world coming to.
Seems Apple is not able to get exclusivity on new CPUs anymore so for the lower end laptops they're usually on par with the competition in many regards and only ahead in a few (Thunderbolt, WiFi, keyboard...). The high-end products typically still have an edge everywhere...
Apple does not lead the enterprise sector in reliability. They don't have a single product that meets MIL 810 specifications. The Apple Watch isn't even waterproof for Christ sakes mine has broken twice in 9 months from water damage and the harshest environment it's exposed too is Chicago humidity and my OCD with washing my hands. When it's warranty is up it'll be the first watch I've ever owned that will require me to remove it before I load the dishwasher. Long story short, it barely deserves the name watch because it doesn't even work well as a watch.
Fact of life: Anything you wear on your person must be water proof, clothing, rings, earnings, glasses, shoes, hats, gloves, etc. I get these aren't electronics but electric watches have existed for century and almost all of them have been waterproof to varying degrees. Even those 1980's McDonalds happy mean watches were waterproof to 30ft, I know because I went swimming with one an entire summer.
Apple Watch is waterproof, more than enough. Apple actually encourages you to wash it in water if you have messed up Digital Crown I think. And there are many videos taking it to the swimming pool and other watery things... And things like washing hands should be perfectly OK.
Wow, that's awesome, I wonder why mine has broken twice if it's so durable. As a watch collector of rare Bulova's to everyday Nixon's and Fossil's I can't imagine what I'm doing wrong. After all, my Wakmann Chrono24, a timepiece famous for its notorious maintenance, has never failed on me at the track.
yet somehow the vibration Taptic motor and the speaker, on two separate occasions, were damaged by water according to Apple, yet both times they replaced it without question because after all, even Tim Cook famously stated he showers with it. It might break every time he does, but he still does it, as any modern and most antique watches should be able to survive.
Sarcasm aside, you are blatantly lying and need to stop spreading bullshit. Nowhere is it documented the Apple Watch should be submerged by Apple.
Like all Apple Mobile devices, the Watch is no exception and the recommended cleaning method is generally to dampen a cloth, wring it out, lightly wipe the device down, and dry. At no point is Apple on record the device should be intentionally splashed or submerged. They go as far to say you can wash your hands and cook while wearing it, which is precisely the behavior I exposed mine too. And it broke. Twice.
There are dozens of YouTube videos I encourage people who read your outrageously bogus post to view so they can witness just how fragile the wearable is. I'm not a Samsung fan, but I dropped the crap out of my SIII back in the day and it never broke. It was a glitchy phone running some crap software that when updated, usually broke more than it fixed, but it was durable.
And that was the point of my post. APPLE PRODUCTS ARE NOT KNOWN FOR THEIR DURABILITY. They are known for springing up unprecedented industries from phone repair shops, screen protector manufactured, to thousands if not millions of phone cases. These industries were virtually non existent until the iPhone came along. And yes, there were hundreds of phones like the iPhone before it with huge screens. Every WinCE device, dozens of Blackberry's, etc. The difference is they were durable.
One of my friends in Manhattan runs a repair shop and he exclusively deals in repairing MacBooks 2009-2015. Nothing else. Because they break so often, and are so expensive to fix, and Apple is generally so backed up with repair orders they can't even get them back to you in a week.
As I said, not a single MIL STD 810G specification is met by any Apple device ever produced throughout their entire history. Every other Tier 1 PC manufacturer, even Acer, EVEN Sony, has produced some sort of MIL spec device. And it's not because they sell to the military, it's because it's a good baseline for a reliable product. It's generally safe to say any laptop will be dropped or exposed to high temperatures at least once, and it should survive it.
If Bendgate wasn't obvious enough that Apple doesn't actually do any destructive evaluation before putting a product on the market, I don't know what will sway you away from your opinions that Apple actually makes durable gadgets.
On the other hand, HP has had a center in Plano Texas for 25 years that does destructive evaluation of products numerous times before the engineers finalize the design for production:
You can't disprove his "apple said..." by showing just one article about something apple said. "all swans are white" isn't true because you couldn't find a black swan. Here's the article he was referring to: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204639 and they specifically mention to use running water on the watch.
Guess he wasn't "blatantly lying and spreading bullshit" after all. Maybe you ought to stop?
Who mentioned enterprise and the necessity of milspec? I'm talking about how well the systems are manufactured such that keyboards, ports, screens, track pads remain in good shape after years of use. This is contrasted with lenovo, who have laptops that meet milspec, but the damn things fall apart after a couple of years. I notice you didn't say anything about battery life. Btw, I don't own, and don't plan on every purchasing, any Apple products. My experience with these two manufacturers comes from friends and business.
It's funny you mention Lenovo. As they have slowly tanked what they purchased from IBM and completely embarrassed the Thinkpads nameplate they have actually lost most of their MIL STD accreditations. The current T series meets 4 of the 10 criteria. None for durability.
I mentioned lenovo as that's what I'm most familiar with, and they have a page that says "Selected ThinkPad models, including all X & T series, have successfully passed the following tests [eight tests are listed]". However, they don't say how many tests any particular model has passed. Regarding the spec itself, there doesn't appear to be any single test that corresponds to "durability"(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-810#MIL-ST... and if you keep reading, you'll see that for consumers, there is "no commercial organization or agency certifies compliance" add it's up to the vendors to either perform these tests themselves out through a contracted third party. My last point is that the spec seems to "only" be concerned about environmental fitness. This is an important point as this would mean that "durability" really comes down to matching the intended use cases with which tests the device had passed. Iow, all 29 tests of milspec 810g are about durability.
One day the mythical ARM-Mac will arrive (I expect before 2020) and at that point I also expect we will have the equivalent performance gap (at least in laptops) that we see with iPhones vs everyone else. But yeah, today, when you're using parts like everyone else, you get performance like everyone else.
The number that's conspicuously lacking the review is how long the battery lasts. My guess is that THAT is the Achilles heel. Apple has targets for battery life (which seem to be something like 1 day usage for all their devices under aggressive,but not extreme use) and I'm guessing that while they could have created something like this. they weren't willing to do so because of the battery life hit.
Apple is still the king in terms of battery life as far as I can tell. I think the Dell XPS 13 did give the MacBook's a run for their money in active use battery life but Apple's standby battery life is an order of magnitude better than anyone else. I have a 13" rMBP and I can close the lid on it while it's powered on and I can come back to it two weeks later the the battery will drop 5%. I have a Surface Book 4 that can lose 20% in one day's worth of standby. Other PC laptops aren't much better from what I've seen.
Disable connected standby and all the things that don't work on osx but do work on windows and you will get similar suspend drain for similar components. Not that connected standby is really useful, if i have my lid closed i'm not really interested on checking my email, intel and microsoft think otherwise though...
Good call on disabling connected standby. I forgot about that. I'll give that a try as I also don't see the utility in it. I'm still doubtful that the standby battery life will be as good as a MacBook though because I've seen the same battery drain issues on PC laptops that don't have connected standby capabilities.
I agree in my experience the battery life of a macbook pro is very often accurate with the official numbers when the computer is new (of course this goes down as the battery wear). I never had a windows laptop that been remotely close to the promised battery lifetime.
But then again this pattern is similar with their cellphones and tablets, the iOS devices can go months on standby and hardly drop, my windows tablet lasts around a week, my android tablet is dead within 2 days on standby.
I'm getting in vicinity of 8 hours out of Acer Travelmate P645s when light browsing, watching YT from Modern App... other single tasks... on wifi, screen toggling between 50 and 75%. I used it few times to work from home, also on wifi, and with multiple apps and windows open, I was in vicinity of 6 hours, give or take. I do have quite a few things open, and some of them - ConnectWise with 8 tabs open comes to mind - are probably not the most optimized software on this planet. Beside that, 2 browsers, Outlook, Skype for Business, Viber desktop, some smaller apps like KeePass sitting in the background... frequent opening, generating and closing of PDF, Word and Excel docs...
Acer promised 8-point-something hours, so I'm getting within the promise...
Surface Pro 3, the way I use it, can stretch up to 8 hours, though it is usually a bit shorter.
Most other Windows machines I have tried, though, were under-performing in terms of battery life.
HP and historically IBM built great enterprise products with the Elitebook and Thinkpad. But they were function over form. Apple simply made the industry pay attention to aesthetics, not quality or functionality. As an Apple user, I don't feel the least bit shy admitting there is genuine lack of functionality across Apples entire lineup, and it's all at the cost of aesthetics.
Simply but, what other laptop has THREE USB-C connections. You won't need a hub with this, ever. You don't even need USB or Thunderbolt peripherals with built in replicators.
So sometime in a year, HP figured out how to fit more than just one USB3.1type C in a thinner computer. They should be applauded. It was obviously too difficult for apple just one year ago. Innovation!
hahaha.. but seriously, the apple macbook uses a underpowered Core M Cpu line.. HP just did the same thing with real Core i5 parts, and added a couple extra ports to boot.
This looks actually rather fantastic... shocked it's an HP.
Dell and HP now have two very compelling solutions for ultra-portable yet fully functional laptops. The XPS might finally have a run for its money, assuming the reviews come in solid.
SO GLAD to finally see the windows laptop market turning around and putting out decent looking machines. I really think they have a great product here, can't wait to see some actual reviews of it!
Agreed, once you've gotten used to a laptop with one, it's weird going to one without. I bet once Apple gets on board, laptops without touch screens will be going extinct except in the ultra-budget market.
Could agree more, once you have had a laptop with touchscreen, you cant go back. Browsing long website is so much easier flicking the screen to scroll, as well as looking at photos and being able to swipe and zoom with your fingers.
Maybe it is just the complete incapability of MS / Synaptics / OEM to actually make the scrolling experience decent on windows-touchpad. MS used for years to treat touchpads as mice, making it impossible to offer proper scrolling support.
Personally I prefer very much scrolling with apple-touchpads.
I guess it might be better if you get modern Windows with Precision Touchpad, but unfortunately my corporate laptop is still stuck with win7.
I bought my Spectre x360 refurb last July and I couldn't be happier and this is looking a lot better suited for tablet use than mine (old was was 3+ lbs). If the fan is anything like mine, it gets really loud like a plane trying to take off when CPU load is high, but if you're using it just for office use it's likely the fan will never turn on, but the aluminum chassis do get warm since it works as a passive heatsink. Mine came with DP and HDMI ports, which I will sorely miss in this new one but that's the price for being too thin I suppose.
"HP has announced its new Spectre laptop - the world’s thinnest 13.3” notebook. Despite its miniature size, the Spectre uses Intel’s Core i5/i7 microprocessor, a PCIe-based SSD, a full-size keyboard as well as an advanced audio system developed by Bang & Olufsen. To build its new notebook, HP had to use a number of innovative technologies, although to make the system so small and thin it had to sacrifice upgradeability and serviceability. On top of it all, the HP Spectre comes across as very price competitive."
I don’t usually like to nitpick, but this whole opening strikes me as a bit weird.
First, Core i5/i7 and SSD is pretty much assumed for this kind of laptop. I guess Core i3 would be an option, but this spec alone (without noting _which_ core i5/i7 they use) doesn’t imply much at all about size or performance. The full-size keyboard is certainly notable, but that’s about it. An “advanced audio system developed by Bang & Olufsen” is pure marketing speak, and repeating it without any additional qualification brings into question the quality of any commentary in the rest of the piece.
Moving on, I would certainly assume this kind of computer sacrifices upgradeability and serviceability to achieve it’s size, but that’s not a good thing despite what the last sentence implies by transitioning with “on top of it all” (unless being price competitive is a bad thing). I might overlook this elsewhere, but it’s a pretty glaring error in the intro.
These are minor details on their own, but taken as a whole are examples of a trend I’ve noticed on AnandTech over the past year or so. I came to AnandTech in the past primarily for the in-depth hardware analysis, and lately most pieces read more like press releases than actual hardware reviews. Obviously a product announcement piece like this won’t get any in-depth analysis, but you can do better than simply repeating specs and HP’s marketing.
The i5/i7 is significant as one would expect the slower Core M to be used in such a power/heat constrained chassis. The PCIe SSD indicates high end storage vice SATA SSD, although the performance is much more gated by the flash type (3D MLC, 2D MLC, 2D TLC) than the interface. I do suspect the audio is pure marketing.
There're plenty of devices in the same weight class with Core-i7, like Dell XPS 13, Toshiba Portege, Asus Zenbook... All without fully sacrificing the serviceability...
Not for power and size constraint SSDs, that's still the same order of magnitude. The problem is: For a laptop the small plus in performance really doesn't matter and the NVMe protocol might add a few funny issues. In fact I'd rather have a good "old" fashioned mSATA SSD in a Windows machine...
I'm sure there's other considerations, but I'm wondering why we keep seeing new Skylake-based machines shipping with LPDDR3 instead of LPDDR4. They've gotta know they're leaving performance on the table especially on the iGPU side. Feels a bit like all those single-channel Carrizo machines.
Is it availability, cost/BOM, board complexity...?
Skylake only supports low power DDR3 variants. DDR4 needs to be full power. While DDR4 has higher perf/watt than DDR3, its absolute power might be more than LPDDR3/DDR3L.
Why build such a nice laptop but not offer a model that uses the iris graphics such as the 6650u, which is only $22 more (according to Wikipedia) than the 6600u and slots into the same tdp (though its ctdp is 2W higher)? Yes, it's clocked lower than the 6600u but it has higher turbo clocks. Why is no one using these iris+ chips?
Only a 1080p screen option -- ehh. I get that because of how thin it is that it needs to put a 1080p screen in there to make battery life acceptable, but honestly, this race for who can develop the thinnest device is getting ridiculous. Even Samsung smartened up and made the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge a bit thicker than last year's devices so they could put in a significantly larger battery. Guess what -- people are much happier as a result.
Was looking to potentially have this replace my Spectrex360, but I guess I'll be looking to see what else will come out.
Would they use a full size slot on a soldered M.2 port (top right on the PCB shot)? It looks like it just breaks past the wall under the keyboard so it's a hassle to access.
It certainly looks like so. I would be genuinely surprised if HP had soldered the SSD given that there are no BGA PCIe SSDs in 512GB capacity available (yet) and going as far as integrating a controller+DRAM+NAND on the motherboard would require some serious engineering.
This. As long as PC laptops keep getting pumped out with 16:9 displays, I will keep passing on them. Not that privacy-invading Windows 10 sweetens the deal.
(I know, all of the above does mean I'm stuck with Apple laptops...)
Sorry but the gold is very ugly. Especially on the hinge. The new HP logo is tacky.
Thunderbolt and extra usb ports are a huge plus over the Macbook. That is probably the only thing better about this laptop. Unless there is a way to disable the fan.
I would be embarrassed to say my laptop had "Bang & Olufsen" sound.
Hating this thinness trend. It hurts performance due to thermal constraints, likely adds unnecessary fan noise if a fan is present, hurts battery life, causes problems adding sufficient ports, requiring dongle adapters for everything, and damages serviceability.
Thinness as a characteristic is a non-issue for many people at the levels we are seeing.
I'd rather have the Latitude 7370, even with it's CoreM CPU. In chassis this small both CPU's are going to be thermally limited, the Core M's are simply a little more honest about it. And Dell has a history of being more serviceable, so I'm betting it's going to have a replaceable M2 SSD. The 7370 also offers an optional QHD+ touchscreen if you don't want 1080p non-touch. 3 other HUGE factors for portability is the much smaller bezel on the 7370 making the actual size of the laptop more noticeably smaller than simply being 4mm thinner, the on-board USB3-A port in addition to 2x USB-C/thunderbolt allows you to use TODAY's devices without an adapter, and finally 2x2 wireless with 4x4 availability for LTE modem integration. While this is a nice step up for HP, I think Dell's got them beat this time around.
Anton, good article, but you missed a couple of models in your table: the lightest laptop (Lenovo Lavie) and the X1 Carbon - the top business ultra-thin notebook. Is this HP's halo product?
If Apple would only update the MacBook Air. Although the current configuration is now ancient, the 13in MacBook still can hold it's own with a good combination of speed and all day battery life.
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xthetenth - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
HP and Dell pushing the boundaries of laptop design harder than Apple (well, pushing them harder in terms of what they can do rather than what their customers will accept). What is this world coming to.jaggedcow - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
It's great that other companies are pushing the envelope on design, not just specs.vanilla_gorilla - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Finally. Love Apple or hate them, they forced the entire industry to build premium products.NicodemusMM - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Only if your interest is aesthetics. Apple computer performance hasn't threatened another manufacturer in a very long time.Daniel Egger - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Seems Apple is not able to get exclusivity on new CPUs anymore so for the lower end laptops they're usually on par with the competition in many regards and only ahead in a few (Thunderbolt, WiFi, keyboard...). The high-end products typically still have an edge everywhere...tuxRoller - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Other than battery life and reliability, presumably.Samus - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Apple does not lead the enterprise sector in reliability. They don't have a single product that meets MIL 810 specifications. The Apple Watch isn't even waterproof for Christ sakes mine has broken twice in 9 months from water damage and the harshest environment it's exposed too is Chicago humidity and my OCD with washing my hands. When it's warranty is up it'll be the first watch I've ever owned that will require me to remove it before I load the dishwasher. Long story short, it barely deserves the name watch because it doesn't even work well as a watch.Fact of life: Anything you wear on your person must be water proof, clothing, rings, earnings, glasses, shoes, hats, gloves, etc. I get these aren't electronics but electric watches have existed for century and almost all of them have been waterproof to varying degrees. Even those 1980's McDonalds happy mean watches were waterproof to 30ft, I know because I went swimming with one an entire summer.
Notmyusualid - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
I've dropped my Gear S2 into a jacuzzi, fished it out, and its fine to this day.GC2:CS - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Apple Watch is waterproof, more than enough. Apple actually encourages you to wash it in water if you have messed up Digital Crown I think.And there are many videos taking it to the swimming pool and other watery things... And things like washing hands should be perfectly OK.
Samus - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
Wow, that's awesome, I wonder why mine has broken twice if it's so durable. As a watch collector of rare Bulova's to everyday Nixon's and Fossil's I can't imagine what I'm doing wrong. After all, my Wakmann Chrono24, a timepiece famous for its notorious maintenance, has never failed on me at the track.yet somehow the vibration Taptic motor and the speaker, on two separate occasions, were damaged by water according to Apple, yet both times they replaced it without question because after all, even Tim Cook famously stated he showers with it. It might break every time he does, but he still does it, as any modern and most antique watches should be able to survive.
Sarcasm aside, you are blatantly lying and need to stop spreading bullshit. Nowhere is it documented the Apple Watch should be submerged by Apple.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204522
Like all Apple Mobile devices, the Watch is no exception and the recommended cleaning method is generally to dampen a cloth, wring it out, lightly wipe the device down, and dry. At no point is Apple on record the device should be intentionally splashed or submerged. They go as far to say you can wash your hands and cook while wearing it, which is precisely the behavior I exposed mine too. And it broke. Twice.
There are dozens of YouTube videos I encourage people who read your outrageously bogus post to view so they can witness just how fragile the wearable is. I'm not a Samsung fan, but I dropped the crap out of my SIII back in the day and it never broke. It was a glitchy phone running some crap software that when updated, usually broke more than it fixed, but it was durable.
And that was the point of my post. APPLE PRODUCTS ARE NOT KNOWN FOR THEIR DURABILITY. They are known for springing up unprecedented industries from phone repair shops, screen protector manufactured, to thousands if not millions of phone cases. These industries were virtually non existent until the iPhone came along. And yes, there were hundreds of phones like the iPhone before it with huge screens. Every WinCE device, dozens of Blackberry's, etc. The difference is they were durable.
One of my friends in Manhattan runs a repair shop and he exclusively deals in repairing MacBooks 2009-2015. Nothing else. Because they break so often, and are so expensive to fix, and Apple is generally so backed up with repair orders they can't even get them back to you in a week.
As I said, not a single MIL STD 810G specification is met by any Apple device ever produced throughout their entire history. Every other Tier 1 PC manufacturer, even Acer, EVEN Sony, has produced some sort of MIL spec device. And it's not because they sell to the military, it's because it's a good baseline for a reliable product. It's generally safe to say any laptop will be dropped or exposed to high temperatures at least once, and it should survive it.
If Bendgate wasn't obvious enough that Apple doesn't actually do any destructive evaluation before putting a product on the market, I don't know what will sway you away from your opinions that Apple actually makes durable gadgets.
On the other hand, HP has had a center in Plano Texas for 25 years that does destructive evaluation of products numerous times before the engineers finalize the design for production:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/backstage-a...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OB636LzaBA
contact_feanor - Sunday, May 8, 2016 - link
You can't disprove his "apple said..." by showing just one article about something apple said. "all swans are white" isn't true because you couldn't find a black swan.Here's the article he was referring to: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204639
and they specifically mention to use running water on the watch.
Guess he wasn't "blatantly lying and spreading bullshit" after all. Maybe you ought to stop?
tuxRoller - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
Who mentioned enterprise and the necessity of milspec?I'm talking about how well the systems are manufactured such that keyboards, ports, screens, track pads remain in good shape after years of use. This is contrasted with lenovo, who have laptops that meet milspec, but the damn things fall apart after a couple of years.
I notice you didn't say anything about battery life.
Btw, I don't own, and don't plan on every purchasing, any Apple products. My experience with these two manufacturers comes from friends and business.
Samus - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link
It's funny you mention Lenovo. As they have slowly tanked what they purchased from IBM and completely embarrassed the Thinkpads nameplate they have actually lost most of their MIL STD accreditations. The current T series meets 4 of the 10 criteria. None for durability.tuxRoller - Saturday, April 9, 2016 - link
I mentioned lenovo as that's what I'm most familiar with, and they have a page that says "Selected ThinkPad models, including all X & T series, have successfully passed the following tests [eight tests are listed]". However, they don't say how many tests any particular model has passed.Regarding the spec itself, there doesn't appear to be any single test that corresponds to "durability"(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-810#MIL-ST... and if you keep reading, you'll see that for consumers, there is "no commercial organization or agency certifies compliance" add it's up to the vendors to either perform these tests themselves out through a contracted third party. My last point is that the spec seems to "only" be concerned about environmental fitness. This is an important point as this would mean that "durability" really comes down to matching the intended use cases with which tests the device had passed. Iow, all 29 tests of milspec 810g are about durability.
name99 - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
One day the mythical ARM-Mac will arrive (I expect before 2020) and at that point I also expect we will have the equivalent performance gap (at least in laptops) that we see with iPhones vs everyone else.But yeah, today, when you're using parts like everyone else, you get performance like everyone else.
The number that's conspicuously lacking the review is how long the battery lasts. My guess is that THAT is the Achilles heel. Apple has targets for battery life (which seem to be something like 1 day usage for all their devices under aggressive,but not extreme use) and I'm guessing that while they could have created something like this. they weren't willing to do so because of the battery life hit.
mrvco - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
It says HP claims 9H 30M, but they are derating the proc by an unspecified amount to get that number.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
You're forgetting history. Not all macbooks have had amazing battery life compared to the competition.sphigel - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Apple is still the king in terms of battery life as far as I can tell. I think the Dell XPS 13 did give the MacBook's a run for their money in active use battery life but Apple's standby battery life is an order of magnitude better than anyone else. I have a 13" rMBP and I can close the lid on it while it's powered on and I can come back to it two weeks later the the battery will drop 5%. I have a Surface Book 4 that can lose 20% in one day's worth of standby. Other PC laptops aren't much better from what I've seen.setzer - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Disable connected standby and all the things that don't work on osx but do work on windows and you will get similar suspend drain for similar components.Not that connected standby is really useful, if i have my lid closed i'm not really interested on checking my email, intel and microsoft think otherwise though...
sphigel - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Good call on disabling connected standby. I forgot about that. I'll give that a try as I also don't see the utility in it. I'm still doubtful that the standby battery life will be as good as a MacBook though because I've seen the same battery drain issues on PC laptops that don't have connected standby capabilities.Naiw - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Actually Mac OS X has a feature called "PowerNap" that is pretty much equivalent to connected standby, it don't affect battery life noticeably.Naiw - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
I agree in my experience the battery life of a macbook pro is very often accurate with the official numbers when the computer is new (of course this goes down as the battery wear).I never had a windows laptop that been remotely close to the promised battery lifetime.
But then again this pattern is similar with their cellphones and tablets, the iOS devices can go months on standby and hardly drop, my windows tablet lasts around a week, my android tablet is dead within 2 days on standby.
zeealpal - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
I don't know, my Asus UX305FA generally gets around 10 hours use for me, without having to absolutely kill the brightness.This is just general video, word online work, not CPU intensive of course. But I do get your point most devices don't last as well.
My old Lumia 1520 also did exceptionally well for standby, but that OS was a lot more locked down than Android/Desktop Windows.
My S6 on the other hand, I feel like I may as well have it on all the time as the battery does still seem to go down ha
Speedfriend - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
After removing a few apps, my little Asus tablet now lasts almost as long as my iPad on standbynikon133 - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
I'm getting in vicinity of 8 hours out of Acer Travelmate P645s when light browsing, watching YT from Modern App... other single tasks... on wifi, screen toggling between 50 and 75%. I used it few times to work from home, also on wifi, and with multiple apps and windows open, I was in vicinity of 6 hours, give or take. I do have quite a few things open, and some of them - ConnectWise with 8 tabs open comes to mind - are probably not the most optimized software on this planet. Beside that, 2 browsers, Outlook, Skype for Business, Viber desktop, some smaller apps like KeePass sitting in the background... frequent opening, generating and closing of PDF, Word and Excel docs...Acer promised 8-point-something hours, so I'm getting within the promise...
Surface Pro 3, the way I use it, can stretch up to 8 hours, though it is usually a bit shorter.
Most other Windows machines I have tried, though, were under-performing in terms of battery life.
Samus - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
HP and historically IBM built great enterprise products with the Elitebook and Thinkpad. But they were function over form. Apple simply made the industry pay attention to aesthetics, not quality or functionality. As an Apple user, I don't feel the least bit shy admitting there is genuine lack of functionality across Apples entire lineup, and it's all at the cost of aesthetics.Simply but, what other laptop has THREE USB-C connections. You won't need a hub with this, ever. You don't even need USB or Thunderbolt peripherals with built in replicators.
Flunk - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
I'm surprised the price is so reasonable and they've fit 3 ports on it as well. It really make Apple look incompetent.nandnandnand - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
I suppose USB Type-C ports are closer together than regular USB. Maybe we could see up to 4 of them on regular 15.6" laptops.Cygni - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
You do realize that the new MacBook has been on sale for a year, right?cycomiko - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
So sometime in a year, HP figured out how to fit more than just one USB3.1type C in a thinner computer. They should be applauded. It was obviously too difficult for apple just one year ago.Innovation!
jasonelmore - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
hahaha.. but seriously, the apple macbook uses a underpowered Core M Cpu line.. HP just did the same thing with real Core i5 parts, and added a couple extra ports to boot.mrvco - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
That is heavier and has a larger footprint. Why isn't this HP being compared to a 13" MBA?shadarlo - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
This looks actually rather fantastic... shocked it's an HP.Dell and HP now have two very compelling solutions for ultra-portable yet fully functional laptops. The XPS might finally have a run for its money, assuming the reviews come in solid.
Spectrophobic - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Glad they didn't go for unnecessary resolutions for a flagship device. Let's just see how it performs in tests.Would've been nice if they we're offered with 16 GB memory as well...
ImSpartacus - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Yeah, I like the restraint. Other company's could learn from.extide - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
SO GLAD to finally see the windows laptop market turning around and putting out decent looking machines. I really think they have a great product here, can't wait to see some actual reviews of it!JoyTech - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
I absolutely love the new HP logo. Awesome!mortsnort - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Needs a touchscreenTheWrongChristian - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Like a hole in the head. If you're buying a laptop, use it like a laptop, not a tablet.My 2p anyway.
The Saint - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Agreed, once you've gotten used to a laptop with one, it's weird going to one without. I bet once Apple gets on board, laptops without touch screens will be going extinct except in the ultra-budget market.Speedfriend - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Could agree more, once you have had a laptop with touchscreen, you cant go back. Browsing long website is so much easier flicking the screen to scroll, as well as looking at photos and being able to swipe and zoom with your fingers.zepi - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Maybe it is just the complete incapability of MS / Synaptics / OEM to actually make the scrolling experience decent on windows-touchpad. MS used for years to treat touchpads as mice, making it impossible to offer proper scrolling support.Personally I prefer very much scrolling with apple-touchpads.
I guess it might be better if you get modern Windows with Precision Touchpad, but unfortunately my corporate laptop is still stuck with win7.
SteelRing - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
I bought my Spectre x360 refurb last July and I couldn't be happier and this is looking a lot better suited for tablet use than mine (old was was 3+ lbs). If the fan is anything like mine, it gets really loud like a plane trying to take off when CPU load is high, but if you're using it just for office use it's likely the fan will never turn on, but the aluminum chassis do get warm since it works as a passive heatsink. Mine came with DP and HDMI ports, which I will sorely miss in this new one but that's the price for being too thin I suppose.Meteor2 - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Converters give you those ports back.3x USB-C, two providing Thunderbolt 3, is awesome.
stanleyipkiss - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
It looks chintzy.chaos215bar2 - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
"HP has announced its new Spectre laptop - the world’s thinnest 13.3” notebook. Despite its miniature size, the Spectre uses Intel’s Core i5/i7 microprocessor, a PCIe-based SSD, a full-size keyboard as well as an advanced audio system developed by Bang & Olufsen. To build its new notebook, HP had to use a number of innovative technologies, although to make the system so small and thin it had to sacrifice upgradeability and serviceability. On top of it all, the HP Spectre comes across as very price competitive."I don’t usually like to nitpick, but this whole opening strikes me as a bit weird.
First, Core i5/i7 and SSD is pretty much assumed for this kind of laptop. I guess Core i3 would be an option, but this spec alone (without noting _which_ core i5/i7 they use) doesn’t imply much at all about size or performance. The full-size keyboard is certainly notable, but that’s about it. An “advanced audio system developed by Bang & Olufsen” is pure marketing speak, and repeating it without any additional qualification brings into question the quality of any commentary in the rest of the piece.
Moving on, I would certainly assume this kind of computer sacrifices upgradeability and serviceability to achieve it’s size, but that’s not a good thing despite what the last sentence implies by transitioning with “on top of it all” (unless being price competitive is a bad thing). I might overlook this elsewhere, but it’s a pretty glaring error in the intro.
These are minor details on their own, but taken as a whole are examples of a trend I’ve noticed on AnandTech over the past year or so. I came to AnandTech in the past primarily for the in-depth hardware analysis, and lately most pieces read more like press releases than actual hardware reviews. Obviously a product announcement piece like this won’t get any in-depth analysis, but you can do better than simply repeating specs and HP’s marketing.
voicequal - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
The i5/i7 is significant as one would expect the slower Core M to be used in such a power/heat constrained chassis. The PCIe SSD indicates high end storage vice SATA SSD, although the performance is much more gated by the flash type (3D MLC, 2D MLC, 2D TLC) than the interface. I do suspect the audio is pure marketing.Daniel Egger - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
There're plenty of devices in the same weight class with Core-i7, like Dell XPS 13, Toshiba Portege, Asus Zenbook... All without fully sacrificing the serviceability...Meteor2 - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
There's a world of difference between 'just' a SSD and a PCIe SSD.Daniel Egger - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Not for power and size constraint SSDs, that's still the same order of magnitude. The problem is: For a laptop the small plus in performance really doesn't matter and the NVMe protocol might add a few funny issues. In fact I'd rather have a good "old" fashioned mSATA SSD in a Windows machine...fazalmajid - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
And also whether the PCIe SSD is just emulating a HBA or if it implements NVMe. The MacBook is NVMe, not all other Macs are (ahem, Mac Pro)MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
I'm sure there's other considerations, but I'm wondering why we keep seeing new Skylake-based machines shipping with LPDDR3 instead of LPDDR4. They've gotta know they're leaving performance on the table especially on the iGPU side. Feels a bit like all those single-channel Carrizo machines.Is it availability, cost/BOM, board complexity...?
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Skylake only supports low power DDR3 variants. DDR4 needs to be full power. While DDR4 has higher perf/watt than DDR3, its absolute power might be more than LPDDR3/DDR3L.ingwe - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Interesting. I had no idea.The Saint - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Word of warning, HP uses DRM on its USB Type C ports to prevent non-HP USB chargers from charging their laptops.tuxRoller - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Why build such a nice laptop but not offer a model that uses the iris graphics such as the 6650u, which is only $22 more (according to Wikipedia) than the 6600u and slots into the same tdp (though its ctdp is 2W higher)? Yes, it's clocked lower than the 6600u but it has higher turbo clocks.Why is no one using these iris+ chips?
Daniel Egger - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Expect for the price and the Gorilla Glas (glare, I presume) a very smexy device.FlyBri - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Only a 1080p screen option -- ehh. I get that because of how thin it is that it needs to put a 1080p screen in there to make battery life acceptable, but honestly, this race for who can develop the thinnest device is getting ridiculous. Even Samsung smartened up and made the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge a bit thicker than last year's devices so they could put in a significantly larger battery. Guess what -- people are much happier as a result.Was looking to potentially have this replace my Spectrex360, but I guess I'll be looking to see what else will come out.
T1beriu - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
You should mention the screen's diagonal in the chart.Danvelopment - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Would they use a full size slot on a soldered M.2 port (top right on the PCB shot)? It looks like it just breaks past the wall under the keyboard so it's a hassle to access.I just can't believe how tiny that PCB is.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
It certainly looks like so. I would be genuinely surprised if HP had soldered the SSD given that there are no BGA PCIe SSDs in 512GB capacity available (yet) and going as far as integrating a controller+DRAM+NAND on the motherboard would require some serious engineering.ruthan - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Without integrated LTE model still not deal, i dont even see microSD slot in description.And brilliant display probably means, glossy like hell..
Is display also touchscreen?
Nintendo Maniac 64 - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
They've clearly made thinness a priority, yet they didn't use an OLED screen like they did on the Spectre x360?O...k...
chadwilson - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
..... aaaaaand the display sucks. Seriously PC manufacturers, why do you keep putting crap panels in flagship models?jsntech - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
This. As long as PC laptops keep getting pumped out with 16:9 displays, I will keep passing on them. Not that privacy-invading Windows 10 sweetens the deal.(I know, all of the above does mean I'm stuck with Apple laptops...)
p1esk - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Ugly huge bezels... Otherwise, looks decentrasriniv - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Maybe thin, but watch out for the bloatware that HP will load on this. I would stick to the Mac or the Microsoft Surface.MarkieGcolor - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
Sorry but the gold is very ugly. Especially on the hinge. The new HP logo is tacky.Thunderbolt and extra usb ports are a huge plus over the Macbook. That is probably the only thing better about this laptop. Unless there is a way to disable the fan.
I would be embarrassed to say my laptop had "Bang & Olufsen" sound.
poohbear - Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - link
No touchscreen? not very futur proof without that.Burns101 - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
eGPU?iwod - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Sacrifice WiFi so only 1x1 802.11ac? Even iPhone can do 2x2 802.11ac.Noise of the Cooling will be a concern for me. Wait till this is checked out.
Also not mentioned was Macbook is still lighter, dispirit being thicker.
Personally it is not quite Macbook yet, but definitely a very decent piece of engineering from HP.
Klug4Pres - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Hating this thinness trend. It hurts performance due to thermal constraints, likely adds unnecessary fan noise if a fan is present, hurts battery life, causes problems adding sufficient ports, requiring dongle adapters for everything, and damages serviceability.Thinness as a characteristic is a non-issue for many people at the levels we are seeing.
c4v3man - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
I'd rather have the Latitude 7370, even with it's CoreM CPU. In chassis this small both CPU's are going to be thermally limited, the Core M's are simply a little more honest about it. And Dell has a history of being more serviceable, so I'm betting it's going to have a replaceable M2 SSD. The 7370 also offers an optional QHD+ touchscreen if you don't want 1080p non-touch. 3 other HUGE factors for portability is the much smaller bezel on the 7370 making the actual size of the laptop more noticeably smaller than simply being 4mm thinner, the on-board USB3-A port in addition to 2x USB-C/thunderbolt allows you to use TODAY's devices without an adapter, and finally 2x2 wireless with 4x4 availability for LTE modem integration. While this is a nice step up for HP, I think Dell's got them beat this time around.jbwhite99 - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Anton, good article, but you missed a couple of models in your table: the lightest laptop (Lenovo Lavie) and the X1 Carbon - the top business ultra-thin notebook. Is this HP's halo product?chenedwa - Sunday, April 10, 2016 - link
If Apple would only update the MacBook Air. Although the current configuration is now ancient, the 13in MacBook still can hold it's own with a good combination of speed and all day battery life.