HP’s flagship Spectre line has continually impressed us with its quality, style, and features. This latest iteration of its Spectre x360 15 is the best yet for this big convertible 2-in-1, which retains (and improves on) the charms of the 2019 model while being smaller and lighter. It’s also more powerful; our $1,849 review unit packs a six-core Intel Core i7 “Comet Lake” H-series processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX-class graphics, though it’s also available at $1,399 with a quad-core “Tiger Lake” chip if you don’t need all that oomph. Available with a stunning (and well-worthwhile) AMOLED 4K/UHD touch screen either way, the Spectre x360 15 is truly a first-class splurge. It earns our Editors’ Choice for being a large-screened convertible 2-in-1 without equal.
A Trimmer, But Still Cadillac-Size, Convertible
HP took a shaver to the Spectre x360 15 for 2020. It’s down to 4.23 pounds and 8.9 inches deep thanks to its smaller top and bottom display bezels, reductions of six-tenths of a pound and six-tenths of an inch over the 2019 model. It now bests even some elite non-convertible 15.6-inchers in those areas, such as the 4.5-pound, 9.1-inch deep Dell XPS 15 9500.
The Spectre x360 15’s other measurements stayed the same. Its 14.2-inch width is but a few tenths of an inch wider than its screen, while its 0.79-inch thickness is forgivable for a convertible 2-in-1 this large. (The XPS 15 9500 isn’t much thinner, at 0.71 inch.)
That said, the Spectre x360 15 is still a big slab when used as a tablet. Like most convertible 2-in-1s, its 360-degree functionality is best served on a solid surface, especially in its presentation mode…
This position is great for movie-watching. It’s also practical in airline coach or in the back of a car where you may not be able to fully unfold a traditional notebook.
The screen-rotating mechanics aside, the Spectre x360 15 remains the snazziest-looking 15.6-inch convertible 2-in-1 out there. The Nightfall Black and Copper Luxe accents of my model drew easy compliments. Customizable models on HP’s site also offer a nautical-sounding Poseidon Blue with Pale Brass accents theme.
Its looks are matched by quality. Its chassis and lid are made entirely from anti-glare-treated aluminum that hides fingerprints and resists flexing. Although the chassis isn’t a unibody design, the gaps between its parts are so small that they are hard to find by feel.
The attention to detail continues with the subtly concave sculpting of the palm rest, perfectly smooth chassis edges, and rear corners that look sharp but somehow aren’t. The rightmost corner holds one of the laptop’s two Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C) ports, with the other alongside on the right edge.
This location can also be beneficial since it angles at least one cord toward the rear. The Spectre x360 15 can be charged through either Thunderbolt 3 port, though it is necessary to connect the included 135-watt power adapter for full performance since Thunderbolt 3 tops out at 100 watts. The other connectivity over here comprises a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port (it supports 10Gbps transfers, which is nice to see versus the usual 5Gbps Gen 1 ports) and a microSD card slot.
Next to the Type-A port is a webcam kill switch, which isn’t an exaggeration. When it is switched off, Windows 10 no longer thinks the laptop has a webcam. For the privacy-conscious, this is arguably more secure than a physical shutter that merely blocks the view, assuming you remember to engage it.
Moving to the other side, the power button is on the left rear corner. I must admit that it took me a minute (okay…three minutes) to find it.
The merit of this location is that it’s less likely to be bumped by mistake in tablet mode than a side-mounted location. The left side also holds the power jack, an HDMI 2.0a video output, and an audio combo jack (headphone/microphone).
It’s an overall respectable level of connectivity, though I’d prefer another Type-A port. Inside, an Intel AX201 card covers the wireless bases with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 support.
AMOLED: You Can’t Unsee It
This Spectre x360 15’s most eye-catching feature is, without doubt, its AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) display. It is state-of-the art by any standard with its 4K/UHD (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) resolution and 10-point touch support.
The AMOLED technology is what truly sets this Spectre apart. Unlike traditional notebook screens or desktop monitors that use a backlighting unit, the pixels on this display are their own lighting sources. Black on the display looks like the display is turned off in those areas because indeed it is, at least for those pixels showing black. That characteristic is what gives this display an infinite contrast ratio.
It’s also super bright and colorful. HP rates it for a dazzling 400 nits and 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space that is used by cinema companies. Users of color-sensitive apps, such as Photoshop, will find the HP Display Control app useful for switching color spaces, including sRGB and Adobe RGB.
One display improvement on this 2020 model is an anti-glare treatment for the Corning Gorilla Glass surface, but it’s not matte-surfaced like a TV. It still looks reflective (it is glass, after all), but the I-see-myself mirror effect that plagues most glass-surfaced screens is much reduced. The coating also does a better job of resisting fingerprints.
For artists and scribblers, the display has a passive digitizer that supports MPP 2.0 styli. Customizable models on HP’s website include one; strangely, my review model does not. But my model isn’t devoid of freebies; it includes a carry sleeve to keep the laptop protected in a backpack or case.
A Keyboard and Touchpad Done Right
Snappy feedback, a flex-free keyboard deck, and two levels of white backlighting make the Spectre x360 15’s keyboard a comfortable place. It gets bonus points for its four-column number pad, which has a standard layout with full-size keys.
Just above the keyboard are two of the laptop’s four Bang & Olufsen-tuned speakers, the other two projecting sideways from under the palm rest. It’s a great-sounding setup with lots of volume. Below, the buttonless touchpad provides a smooth, expansive surface and tactile clicking.
To its right is a built-in fingerprint reader that can also be used for Windows Hello biometric logins.
The Core Components: True Desktop-Replacement Power
My Spectre x360 15-eb0065nr review model has hardware that is rarely seen in a convertible 2-in-1. Its six-core, 12-thread Intel Core i7-10750H processor (featuring a 2.6GHz base clock, and up to a 5GHz turbo clock) is a 45-watt chip that would be at home in a gaming notebook. Meanwhile, its 4GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (Max-Q) graphics card provides enough oomph for 1080p gaming. (I’ll address the practicality of using this PC for gaming later.)
What if the Spectre x360 15’s design and AMOLED screen interest you, but you don’t need all that power? You’re in luck: HP offers the Spectre x360 15 (model 15t-eb100) with a quad-core, eight-thread Core i7-1165G7 “Tiger Lake” processor and integrated Intel Xe Graphics that are still quite capable. It starts at $1,399; adding the AMOLED display, 16GB of memory, and the 1TB solid-state drive/32GB Intel Optane storage combo of my Comet Lake-based review unit brings it to $1,679. (It also includes a stylus that, as I noted, did not come with my review model.) A one-year warranty is standard.
Besides being less expensive, the Tiger Lake model should run cooler and quieter (and offer better battery life) than my model, though that is largely educated speculation since I didn’t test it. (See some of our early testing of Tiger Lake here.) Oddly, it is listed as the same weight and thickness as my model, so it’s not as attractive as it could have been.
As for how the competition stacks up to the Spectre x360 15, it’s rather hard to say. HP appears to be the only vendor marketing a 15.6-inch convertible 2-in-1 with an AMOLED screen or a six-core H-class processor in the United States as I type this, let alone both in one machine. If the 360-degree functionality isn’t a must-have on your shopping list, the Dell XPS 15 9500 that I mentioned makes a good, albeit pricey, alternative. It commanded $2,234 on Dell’s site, but without an AMOLED screen. (The 500-nit-rated screen I mock-built it with is top-notch, though.)
For convertible 2-in-1 competition, Lenovo’s Yoga C740 (15-inch) is the closest I found, but it only loosely compares to the Tiger Lake version of the Spectre x360 15. It offers just a 1080p screen, a traditional 10th Generation Intel Comet Lake Core i7 chip, and less powerful Intel UHD Graphics for $1,249. Dell does a little better with its Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1 (7506), though it, too, tops out with a 1080p screen. With the same Core i7-1165G7 as in the base ($1,399 Tiger Lake-based) Spectre x360 15, it’s $1,058.
Testing the Spectre x360 15: A Unique Power Mix in a 2-in-1
It’s past time to put the Spectre x360 15 through its paces in our benchmarks. I compared it to the PCs whose basic specifications are listed below…
Most of these are non-convertibles since there just aren’t enough 15.6-inch convertible 2-in-1s to fill the charts. The Lenovo Yoga C740 (15-inch) that I mentioned earlier and the Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch) are the only two that use quad-core chips. The MSI Prestige 15 offers a rare six-core U-class chip (it’s rated for 15 watts, not 45 watts like the one in the Spectre x360 15), though the Dell XPS 15 is the one to beat, performance-wise; its Core i7-10875H is an eight-core monster that drove up the price of our $2,299 test model.
Storage, Media, and CPU Tests
We’ll start with PCMark 10, our general system performance assessment that simulates web browsing, video streaming, and office productivity. The Spectre x360 15 blended with the others with a strong 4,786-point showing despite its resource-hungry 4K/UHD screen. (A 4K screen can be a suppressive factor on this test.) It also measured up in our PCMark 8 storage drive test, which stresses the performance of the primary system drive.
Next up is a pair of CPU-crunching tests: Cinebench R15 stresses all available processor cores and threads while rendering a complex image, while in our Handbrake test, we transcode a 12-minute 4K video down to 1080p.
The Spectre x360 15 could have done better in both tests; its Cinebench R15 score should be 15 to 20 percent higher, indicating that it may be throttling its performance for some reason. It did just fine in Handbrake, though.
Last in this section is our photo-editing test. We use an early 2018 release of Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud to apply 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG image, timing each operation and adding up the totals. This test is not as CPU-focused as Cinebench or Handbrake, bringing the performance of the storage subsystem, memory, and GPU into play.
Now things are back on track for the Spectre x360 15. Its 147-second finish didn’t faze the eight-core Dell, but it still offers plenty of performance for advanced photo editing.
Graphics Tests
We use two benchmark suites to gauge the gaming performance potential of a PC. In UL’s 3DMark, we run the Sky Diver (lightweight, capable of running on integrated graphics) and Fire Strike (more demanding, for high-end gaming PCs) tests, both DirectX 11-based. Unigine Corp.’s Superposition is the other; it uses a different rendering engine to produce a complex 3D scene.
The Spectre x360 15 scored high enough in 3DMark Fire Strike to suggest it’s capable of modern 1080p gaming, if not at maximum detail settings. The Superposition 1080p numbers confirm this, where it just cleared the bare minimum 30-frame-per-second (fps) mark for playability.
I also ran our typical 1080p gaming benchmarks on the Spectre x360 15 to gauge its real-world gaming prowess. In Far Cry 5’s built-in benchmark (DirectX 11), it averaged 55fps at Normal settings and 48fps at Ultra, while in Rise of the Tomb Raider (which we run in DirectX 12 mode), it averaged 71fps at Medium settings and 52fps at Very High.
Those numbers are more than playable, so the Spectre x360 15 can certainly serve as a casual gaming machine. However, I must stress that serious players won’t find it a substitute for a modern gaming laptop. Its AMOLED screen offers only a 60Hz refresh rate, which won’t provide the smoothness of the triple-digit refresh rates that are routinely found on gaming notebooks. It’s also expensive for this level of performance. If gaming is your primary goal, check out our gaming laptops guide for better options. Think of the gaming on our $1,849 unit as a nice side dish, not the main course.
A word on cooling before we move on. The Spectre x360 15’s fans send warm air out the left and right edges of the chassis. They ran frequently in my usage, even for general web surfing, though the fan noise is nonintrusive against the usual household background noise. The area just above the keyboard gets hot under the extended stress of benchmark testing, while the rest of the chassis (including the underside) gets warm, but not uncomfortably so.
Battery Rundown Test
For our last benchmark, we measure a laptop’s unplugged runtime while playing a locally stored video with screen brightness at 50 percent and audio volume at 100 percent. We use the notebook’s energy-saving rather than balanced or other power profile, turn off Wi-Fi, and even disable keyboard backlighting to squeeze as much life as possible out of the system.
The Spectre x360’s AMOLED screen, the 4K worth of pixels to push, and powerful hardware drain its large 72.9-watt-hour battery quickly; last year’s AMOLED model went for 14 hours and 9 minutes with a low-wattage Intel U-class processor. The Dell went for several hours more with the same class of hardware, though its 86-watt-hour battery helped, too. The Spectre x360 15’s time is still enough to get through the day and perhaps a little video streaming after hours.
Still the Classiest Big-Screen 2-in-1
The year-over-year changes for the Spectre x360 15 are subtle but game-changing for this big convertible laptop. Trimmer display bezels and a lower carry weight put it on par with some elite non-convertible 15.6-inchers, while more powerful hardware lets it act as a true desktop replacement.
The star of the show, however, continues to be the option for its AMOLED 4K/UHD touch screen, which, fortunately, is also available on the base model. A class act either way, the Spectre x360 15 stands almost by itself in the high-end, big-screen 2-in-1 market. It defines what that admittedly limited niche of laptops can aspire to. If you have the budget, and the appetite for a big, bold convertible, it doesn’t disappoint.
