HP Spectre x360 16 review: A big, beautiful convertible laptop

We were really wowed by its style and power and excellent keyboard. So what if hp took all of that goodness and just put it in a much bigger laptop thats? Basically, what the company is offering with the new spectre x, 360 16., its big, its beautiful, and this time it comes equipped with nvidias, rtx 3050 graphics. If youre looking for a notebook with a large screen that can flip into different orientations and has a decent amount of power for productivity work and some creative work, this is a pretty compelling option now. Whats weird about this computer is that hp doesnt really have much competition when it comes to big convertible. Pcs. Dell hasnt updated the xps 15 two in one in several years. Lg has some larger convertibles, but really those are about portability rather than power, or anything like that. It could just be that a lot of pc companies are just shying away from having heavy machines on the market, especially heavy machines that youre going to be twisting and turning in several directions. The x360 16 weighs 4.4 pounds, which is a lot more than the three pound 14 inch version of this laptop, its not too far off from the 4.3 pound macbook pro 16.. And honestly, i figure, if you want a big laptop, you assume its going to be a little heavier than some of the ultra is out there and at the very least its not as heavy as dells xps 17, which can go all the way up to 5.

5 Pounds depending on what you configure it with design wise, the spectre x360 looks a lot more glam than the dell xps line, which tends to be more minimalist. Both companies rely on all metal cases, they feel very premium, but hp just goes a little further to make it look more like jewelry. There are these nice metal accents around the edges even along the hinges theres a little bit of metal in there. Just the overall look of it really screams style. It screams. You know, pay attention to me compared to what dells doing which just tends to be a lot more laid back and to be honest, hp is really scaling back the sort of bejeweled look. It was going for before, with the spectrex 360 line, its a lot more understated, now its uh little things that make it look really cool. I like the way the edges of the computer kind of round off some of the corners, especially like below the screen, are cut off a bit too, which give it a nice really interesting style. Like many 16 inch notebooks weve seen recently, the x360 is actually replacing a 15 inch model. Hp was able to fit in a bigger screen by shaving off more of the bezels, and also going for a 16×10 display thats a little taller than the old 16×9 screen. That results in a screen – thats 22 millimeters taller with 11, more vertical viewing area according to hp, our review model featured a 4k plus oled monitor that really just looked beautiful, no matter what i was looking at, though, im just a sucker for oleds, deep, blacks and Eye popping colors, there are also 3k plus led screens available if you dont want to pay a premium for oled as great as the screen is its a little unfortunate that it doesnt have hdr or dolby vision like the xps line and theres no fast refresh rate Screen like microsoft, including the new laptop studio, and i think for some shoppers that alone may be a deal breaker, you know having hdr is really great if youre streaming a lot of video and you want those colors to pop a little more and having a fast Refresh rate screen is just really useful for smoothing and just doing about anything you know scrolling.

The internet looks so much nicer when the screen refreshes faster but id say if youre upgrading from an older laptop, you probably wont mind not having those features. This screen is still going to look a lot better than something four or five years old hps convertible hinge makes it easy to open up the x360 16 with just one hand, thats something i like in any laptop, and it doesnt take much effort to fold it Into a tent formation by pushing the screen all the way back, thats useful, if you just want to like, lay it on your lap, if youre on the couch or in bed or something you can also flip the keyboard to the bottom and kind of just have It hold up the screen to you. I found that really useful if im on the couch or im on a couch that has a nearby table thats a great way to put the screen in front of you and then you can just use the touchscreen. Its super convenient Music. Unfortunately, i didnt find the x360s tablet mode to be that useful. Now this is always a problem with the convertible laptop. You know if you turn a three pound laptop into a tablet: thats still going to be tough to use, but this is even bigger, and i found this just super hard to hold for a very long time. Even if i was using two hands its just kind of a joke, it looks ridiculous and maybe, in some cases, youd use this.

But i think this laptop is more appealing to people who want to use different orientations, not necessarily the tablet mode and thats fine. You know you can get a tablet pretty easily. I think for most people having a bigger screen is just going to be the more useful feature on this laptop, so i dont mind giving up the tablet mode at all. It just makes it more useful for watching videos or doing some work and speaking of work typing up this review on the x360 just made me fall in love with hps full size keyboards all over again, they have a decent amount of key travel theres. A lot of room for me to spread my fingers out. It just feels super inviting its like a concert, piano thats, just begging to be played. My only complaint is that the keyboard is a little non standard. For some reason, hp included a fingerprint sensor in the lower right hand corner where the control key normally should be so thats there thats not on the power button like it is on most of their laptops and theyre, also just some specialized control buttons that uh youll Have to learn some function. Buttons youll have to learn where those are just pay really close attention to those icons. On the plus side, the touchpad is significantly larger than before, and its still super smooth and accurate to use. We reviewed the top end. Two thousand and thirty dollar configuration you get an intel core i7 eleven three.

Ninety eight processor, unfortunately theres no 12th gen support yet 16 gigabytes of ram nvidias, rtx 3050 gpu and a one terabyte nvme ssd, with 32 gigabytes of intel optane memory. The x360 had no trouble with basic productivity tasks, thats, not a huge surprise, given that hardware – and i appreciated just how peppy it made windows 11 feel it opened apps up swiftly and it didnt show any signs of slow down. As i piled on more and more browser tabs when it comes to general benchmarks, the x36016 performs similarly to last years, surface laptop 4 and the asus zenbook duo. I expected it a lot better, though, because this has a more powerful gpu. There should be better performance in there somewhere that rtx 3050 gpu is nvidias lowest end offering you know in the rtx line, but thats still a big upgrade over intels xc graphics. I found it really capable for playing 1080p games as well, so something like halo, infinite or boomerang x performed really smoothly, and you know thats a nice thing to have, especially in a productivity, laptop id say. The x360 is a good option. If you just want to play some games once in a while, maybe on a work trip where you dont want to lug over a gaming laptop too big screens come with huge energy demands. So i wasnt too surprised when the x360 only lasted 10 hours and 55 minutes during our battery test. Hp claims itll go up to 17 hours with mixed use performance, but its unclear how they tested that our benchmark relies on looping, hd video, so thats, not exactly stressful.

I wouldnt expect a 16 inch notebook to easily reach the 15 hours of battery life. That weve seen on smaller machines, though its a bit disappointing, but you know what the x360 still offers enough juice to power you through a workday it just doesnt, have as much as we see in some other ultra portables being flexible in more ways than one is Really one of the big selling points for any convertible and i think the x360 16 succeeds in that regard. I found it to be really great when im just lounging on the couch or, if i was sitting in bed and watching netflix or something and given just how important video calls are these days. The x360 16 is really well equipped with a 5 megapixel camera, along with some software features to you know, beautify your face or focus on you if youre moving around in different locations of the screen, its a much nicer camera than the 720p options, weve seen on A lot of hps and other laptops, so thats a nice thing to have you, know its nice to see cameras moving forward, especially as were relying so much on zoom and other platforms. There are also some nice privacy conscious features too. You can physically block the camera by hitting a button on the keyboard a little black and white thing, just pops up over the camera lens, and you can also disable the microphone as well, and you get a little pop up when that happens too.

I hope to see this on more laptops. I just find it really useful, especially when theres so many things to be paranoid about these days. Unlike many other style focused laptops. Hp also includes a wealth of ports on the x360. Youve got two usbc connections: one usb 3.0 type, a connection thats on a nifty little latch hp has been using that for a while theres full size, hdmi theres, a micro sd card slot. And yes, there is still a headphone jack, its really nice to see that hp isnt. Giving up on that like dell is with the new xps 13 plus. As much as i love our review models, oled screen, the better x360 16 deal is the led equipped 1700 model with the same cpu ram and rtx 3050 gpu. It has a smaller 512 gigabyte ssd, but you can always upgrade that down the line. If youre less concerned about gaming performance, the entry level 1500 model drops the rtx 3050 for intels xe graphics, as the only big screen convertible game in town hp could have easily phoned in the spectre. X360 16.. Instead, its given us a computer that can do a bit of gaming handle all the zoom calls, you need and look good while doing it stay tuned to engadget.

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