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
Display Quality
While I'm overjoyed to be getting a series of notebooks in featuring panels with decent resolution and quality, I remain at least a little mystified by the IPS panels used in the Mythlogic Callisto 1512 recently reviewed and now the one in HP's Spectre XT TouchSmart. You'll see that while contrast and brightness are both excellent, color gamut is unusually low.
I'll take an IPS panel over a conventional TN panel any day of the week, even if it means sacrificing some of the color gamut, but it's still perplexing as to why that sacrifice is being made in the first place. Gradient testing reveals banding, but not a particularly significant amount and certainly competitive with entry-level desktop e-IPS panels. Subjectively at least, the panel on the Spectre XT is attractive and feels like where I wish notebook panels would start as opposed to being a premium item.
Battery Life
There's more bad news with the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart. HP rates the notebook for up to three hours and 45 minutes of battery life, which is a very unattractive number for a modern notebook with a 48Wh battery. Our testing unfortunately corroborates this; you can run the Spectre XT off the mains, but battery life will underwhelm.
Despite the full voltage processor, Mythlogic's Callisto 1512 pulls comparable or better battery life. Part of this certainly owes to the larger battery, but it doesn't really excuse how far behind the Spectre XT's normalized battery life is by comparison. Two hours of battery life in our "heavy" test isn't just bad, it's embarrassing.
Heat and Noise
I've repeatedly cited that one of the benefits of a larger chassis, even if it's still thin, is increased cooling capacity. You can put a full voltage chip in and work the cooling system over, or you can go ULV and benefit from the increased headroom by not having to run the cooling as hard. The HP Spectre XT opts for the latter.
You can see the Spectre XT is clearly tuned for acoustics before thermals. There's a healthy amount of thermal headroom on the Ivy Bridge processor still, but I appreciate how relatively quiet the notebook is even under load.
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protomech - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
The non-retina MBPs aren't terribly interesting, nor are they terribly competitive.Anandtech did review the non-retina MBP 15", and struggled to find anything to write about it.
"It’s pretty difficult to find things to write about the 2012 MacBook Pro hardware. You can essentially sum it up in one paragraph, or even one sentence if you try hard enough. The 2012 MBP looks exactly like the 2011 MBP, which looked exactly like the 2010 MBP, which looked exactly like the post-April 2009 MBP."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6037/the-2012-macboo...
stephenv2 - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
I really am going to stop reading any reviews by this author. Just like the case reviews, his personal opinions and biases are so strong and often things I don't agree with, it's impossible to get much useful information out his reviews.Commodus - Monday, May 27, 2013 - link
What exactly do you think is an unfair bias here? Gotta elaborate a little more than that.Besides, the benchmarks don't lie. It IS slower than most of the pack. It DOES have terrible battery life. Those aspects matter quite a bit. Is he going to pretend those problems don't exist just to humour you?
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
Bias towards or against what? If you don't like my work, that's fine, I can't please everybody, but you have to give me some kind of feedback I can actually use. Otherwise your post serves no purpose other than to publicly decry someone.Remember there are actual people producing this work, so when you go off and just post something like this it really serves no purpose other than to offend.
seapeople - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
I'm pretty sure he was auto-replying, as in, replying to himself. It makes much more sense that way.SirPerro - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
Why $170/$370 upgrades are "exhorbitant", "staggering" and "offensive" in this review and not even a "miserly decision" in the MBP one, taking into account that the same upgrades in the apple store are exactly $200/$400 for the MBP whose lack of SSD seems to be much more palatable?Please be consistent with the reviews. People out there have brains.
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
If I were the one handling Apple reviews, I think you'd find I'd gripe about those, too. ;)SirPerro - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
Good to know. I agree with all the adjectives in either case.andrewaggb - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
I agree with the crazy upgrade prices. I've often ordered stuff without upgrades and just bought the upgraded parts myself cheaper. Which is pretty ridiculous considering now I have two drives and two sets of ram....APPL - Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - link
I own this laptop.It is excellent save the usb 3 hd disconnect issues. I use it as a desktop replacement and am about to upgrade the HD to a Crucial M500 960GB in a monthish.
What is with all the haters?