HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook Review
by Dustin Sklavos on May 27, 2013 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- HP
- Ivy Bridge
- Spectre
- Ultrabook
Conclusion: The PC Compromise
My esteemed colleague Brian Klug tweeted recently that PC manufacturers can't seem to produce anything that doesn't have some horrible flaw. Everything could be perfect except for one thing that was cheaped out on, and it threatens to bring the whole thing down, and unfortunately his assertion holds water here. The Spectre XT TouchSmart has the makings of a solid ultrabook, but it's let down by miserly decisions on HP's part.
The frustrating thing is that the shortcomings could've largely been avoided. If you gut the Spectre XT TouchSmart, you have an attractive shell, a practical and inobtrusive cooling system, a solid speaker system, great clickpad, workable keyboard, and a beautiful display. From a purely physical standpoint, this notebook is aces. I'm not sure what could really be done to improve the battery life, but that's something I think I'd be willing to take on the chin if it meant everything else was stellar. I'm not a big proponent of Thunderbolt, but the inclusion is going to at least raise an eyebrow for someone.
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Yet it seems like a bean counter took this beautiful shell and just fouled the whole thing up to save a couple bucks here and there. The unit we've tested is a retail configuration, but it's buried in software bloat. HP's Support Assistant seems like a good idea but the execution is a little bit lacking and worse, it's intrusive. You get a free 2-year subscription to Norton, which may or may not be your cup of tea, and I keep wishing WildTangent would just disappear. I'm not sure the bloat is responsible for the system's overall poor hardware performance, either.
Even if a clean reformat would correct the CPU performance issue, you still have to contend with the dire storage subsystem. I'm not a fan of SSD caching and at this price, the Spectre XT should be shipping with a 128GB SSD minimum, full stop. If it were easy to just pop the notebook open and upgrade these things, that would be wonderful, but it's not.
If you're attracted to the Spectre XT TouchSmart, your best bet is going to be doing a custom configuration on HP's site, but even then the upgrade prices are exorbitant. $75 to go to 8GB of DDR3 isn't too bad, but $170 for a 128GB SSD and a staggering $370 for a 256GB SSD is just offensive. I can't help but get the persistent feeling that this was a solid product systematically ruined by a bean counter. The old adage that there are no bad products, only bad prices is certainly true here, but it's compounded by a series of cuts that undermine the product itself every step of the way. Hopefully the Spectre XT TouchSmart is refreshed when Haswell arrives with a more sensible configuration.
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whyso - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
This review is of rather poor quality. Anandtech you need to look at clock speed and throttling. You comment that the cpu benchmarks are unusually low so open cpu-z and look at the clockspeed during the test that is unusually low. Also would be really nice to have you run furmark + prime and report the speed of the cpu + gpu and temperature.tipoo - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
"I've checked clocks, run tests multiple times, but in the end still been left with a notebook that's just slower than it should be."jeffkibuule - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
This leads to a serious question, if PC manufacturers could ever build a laptop as well designed as a retina MacBook Pro, would people shell out the extra cash to buy it? They keep saying no, but I wonder if that's really true. The product managers really need the power to say "No, this is shit, try again" instead of having to meet arbitrary deadlines.tipoo - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
I really don't know the answer to that, currently Apple does own the high end market. It's a chicken and egg thing, do high end PCs not sell well and that's why no one will make a well thought out one, or will no one buy a high end PC laptop because there are few good offerings?andrewaggb - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
The fact that the retina mbp's sell well indicates there is a market for high end laptops. And most software still runs on windows so it's impossible that there is no market for high end windows pc's.The market is crowded with average-ness. Make a good product and market it so people are aware you've made something worth buying. Works for Apple and Samsung....
tipoo - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
There's a market, sure, but the unsure thing is if anyone could dislodge Apple from it. Samsung did that in smartphones, but look what that took, they had the most costly marketing campaign for smartphones period, as far as I know. The PC market has had shrinking margins for years, plus the sales are in decline, while I don't think it will die soon or ever I suspect the heads of these companies would look at that and find it too big a risk to sink lots of R&D, new manufacturing cost, and marketing into. A booming market like smartphones, sure.FreeAintFree - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
Anyone wanna bet HP farmed the design of this out entirely to the OEM. With final approval by accountants. OEM instructions: "Hit this price point and be sure to factor in the payments from these bloatware vendors". Pathetic and deserves to sit on the shelves and collect dust.Gunbuster - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
Why don't you take any laptops apart anymore? There is no longer any "In" to the "In and around" page...tipoo - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
He did say it wasn't serviceable, maybe they use some crazy screws or glue? I'd like elaboration on that too. With some internal mods some of the problems would be helped, namely the hard drive speed.ananduser - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
I hate to bring Apple up Dustin, but you should review the 1200$ 13" MBP. First of all I believe that this is the only Apple unit that Anandtech never reviewed. Secondly I would wish to read your opinion(rather if it is at least as stern) on a 1200$ 13" laptop with a 5400rmp HDD and 1280x800 TN panel.