From The Verge: HP has just announced several new laptops, including the Spectre x360 14 convertible, which brings some notable improvements compared to its already-impressive 13-inch predecessor: a 3:2 aspect ratio display, a 16 percent larger touchpad, quad speakers, and a Thunderbolt 4 port located in one of its diamond-shaped corners so you can plug in your all-in-one cable for charging, data, external monitors and peripherals even if the back or sides of the machine are blocked. There’s also a physical button you can press on the keyboard to block the webcam.
The three-pound HP Spectre x360 14 is equipped with Intel’s latest 11th Gen “Tiger Lake” processors, specifically up to a quad-core 28W Intel Core i7-1165G7 with Intel’s Xe integrated graphics onboard; just one step below the chip that impressed us in a recent Tiger Lake test. HP says the new laptop should be up to 34 percent faster than last year’s Spectre x360 13 model.
More impressively, it’s the first Spectre to include a 3:2 aspect ratio display with 20 percent more vertical real estate than the 16:9 screens we’ve had before — and you can pay for an OLED version of the 13.5-inch 3000 x 2000-pixel screen, too, though we’re not sure how much it costs. One of the biggest annoyances we had with its 13-inch predecessor was its 16:9 display, which my colleague Dan Seifert called “cramped” in his review.
HP also claims the new laptop is its “most intelligent PC ever,” and while we’d have to put that to the test, the smarts sound interesting. HP claims the Spectre can detect when it’s in a bag, and use Intel’s Dynamic Tuning to avoid the battery draining or overheating. The x360 14 also includes AI Noise Removal, which is supposed to eliminate background noise from communication apps like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and there’s an Auto Color feature that can automatically switch the screen’s color space between DCI-P3, Adobe RGB, and sRGB to theoretically make sure you’re looking at the most accurate colors. The company’s claiming up to 17 hours of battery life, but as little as 10 on the i7/OLED model.
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