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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arthur449 - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
Experience is subjective, you're right.I'm not saying that I can quantify experience with a number. (Uhh, I rate this laptop a 6.5 on the User Experience Index.) In 20 years, I can count on one hand the number of laptops I've bought or set up for coworkers, friends, or family that had an acceptable amount of included software pre-installed. Acceptable in this case means the computer didn't grind to a halt on startup while it loaded Horton Speedy Disk, Extra Discount Firewall with Extra Popups, Super Unnecessary Manufacturer Splash Screen to tell me when I've pushed a button to disable wireless, etc. All of them with very few exceptions did this, and the addition of an SSD is the most effective throw-money-at-it solution.
Oh, and for the record, the HP dm1z is the first PC that came to mind with an acceptably low amount of bloatware. And it was a netbook.
Scott66 - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
One reason I love Apple machines. Very little bloatware especially once they got rid of the trial version of Office.I used a Momentus Hybrid drive in an old macbook and it added a few more years of usability and much more storage.
Peskarik - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
4GB of RAM IS necessity. Hello.Flunk - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
I think if you take in that this is a $1299.99 system it is a necessity. There are a lot of systems you can get around the $1000.00 mark that ship with 128MB SSDs. This system is certainly not trading on it's high CPU or GPU performance so it really needs that SSD to justify the high price. You can get a computer that will perform as well as this for $400. Premium casing isn't worth $899.99 to most consumers.andrewaggb - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
much rather have a 256gb ssd. And get rid of the bloatware. They need to take you to a screen in a setup process where you can check which items you want installed or not installed. Or make a real uninstall page where I can check off 20 metro apps and 10 desktop apps and uninstall them all at once. I had to setup 9 lenovo windows 8 laptops last weekend and it was painful removing all the crap one piece at a time.Egg - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
I think hughlle was being ironic.wanderer000 - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
4GB is a necessity to properly run Windows 8. Ram usage on my desktop is high for Win8, I can't imagine how slow it'd be on a laptop with anything under 4GB. That point btw is the last stop before 64-bit becomes a necessity, because 32-bit can't handle anything over 4GB of RAM. Times change as do positive out-of-the-box experiences.That being said, something that doesn't change is the factor of not having to manage software in the background. This is always a point in that section, as is low noise and heat. So in regards to that, yes. An SSD should be mandatory in a PREMIUM product nowadays.
kkwst2 - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
Maybe for you. My "necessity" is at least a 256GB SSD plus at least a 500GB, preferably a 1TB HDD. That is why I have stuck with the Thinkpad T-series despite the crappy screens and poor battery life. If you could configure this with a 256GB SSD in the mSATA slot plus the HDD, that would be ideal for me. The battery life is still an issue, but I can deal with that more than I can the lack of storage. I need the HDD for all my data files. Won't fit on even a 256 SSD.hughlle - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
I happily run all OS's on my old shuttle with two gb of ram. Sure it's not as fast as with 4gb but it still does the job just fine. I happily use my parents bloatware ridden pcs with old mechanical drives and they work just fine too.I am not arguing that an ssd or more ram should be mandatory for an expensive product, that is just common sense, like a £100,000 car should have a big engine etc. I'm just stating that the term necessity is wrong. There is no requirement for these things, but rather it is just highly recommended for you to have them, but i have neither and the machines work just fine, so clearly it is not a case of HAVING to have these better components just that it makes more sense.
Solandri - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
I actually prefer the mSATA cache SSD + 2.5" HDD configuration. It gives you the most flexibility, provided the notebook is designed so you can easily swap out these parts.- If you like it as is with a cache SSD, use it as is.
- If you don't like the HDD, you can replace it with a SSD.
- If you like the HDD but want a bigger SSD, just replace the cache SSD with a larger mSATA SSD and configure it as your boot drive.
- If you want large capacity SSD, replace both the mSATA SSD and 2.5" HDD with large capacity SSDs. That'll give you nearly 1 TB of storage for a reasonable price.
The single SSD design limits your options and your max storage capacity. It's much better to have both mSATA + 2.5" storage bays.