HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Review

ros: Unique Control Zone touchpad; Beautiful design; Gorgeous display; Snappy backlit keyboard; Strong performance; Long battery life

Cons: Bottom runs a bit warm

The Verdict: The HP Spectre 13t-3000 Ultrabook packs a user-friendly touchpad, strong performance and long battery life in a beautiful design.

One of the chief complaints users have about Windows 8 is that its gesture controls aren't intuitive enough for first-time users. HP addresses that gripe head-on with the new Spectre 13t-3000 Ultrabook. Large areas on either side of the notebook's Control Zone touchpad make it easier to activate Windows 8's gesture-based Charms and Recent Apps menus. That's not all this $1,019 ultraportable has to offer, though. With the latest Intel Core i5 processor, a solid-state drive, beautiful 13-inch 1080p touch screen and a dead sexy design, the Spectre 13t is one of the best Ultrabooks money can buy.

HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook Review

Design

  Like many of HP's Ultrabooks, the Spectre 13t-3000 features a gorgeous, all-aluminum chassis. For the Spectre 13t, however, HP has added some panache, throwing in a truffle-brown-colored, brushed lid and base that are offset nicely by the notebook's champagne, brushed-aluminum keyboard deck. In the center of the lid, a reflective bronze HP logo adds a touch of class.

Open up the notebook, and the first thing to catch your eye will be the Spectre 13t's oversized Control Zone Touchpad. Developed to make it easier than ever to use Windows 8 gestures, without having to reach up to the touch screen, Control Zone features a standard touchpad flanked on its left and right sides by areas specifically designed for interacting with Windows 8's Recent Apps and Charms menus. (More on this later.)

Measuring 12.8 x 8.7 x 0.59 inches and weighing a scant 3.3 pounds, the HP Spectre 13t is a hair thinner, though a bit heavier than the 13-inch MacBook Air (12.8 x 8.9 x 0.11 - 0.68 inches and 3 pounds). At 12.6 x 8.8 x 0.54 inches, Samsung's ATIV Book 9 Plus is slightly smaller than both the Spectre 13t and Macbook Air, and weighs 3.2 pounds. Acer's Aspire S7 measures just 12.7 x 8.8 x 0.51 inches and weighs 3 pounds.

Display

 The Spectre 13t sports a beautiful 13.3-inch, 1920 x 1080-resolution HP Infinity touch screen display that's far sharper than the $1,099 MacBook Air's 1440 x 900 panel. The Acer Aspire S7 offers a 1920 x 1080, 13.3-inch display, while the $1,399 Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus comes with a Retina-like 3200 x 1800 QHD+ screen. If you want to shell out an extra $70, however, you can equip your Spectre 13t with an HP Vivid QHD Infinity display (2560 x 1440 pixels).

A trailer for "X-Men: Days of Future Past" looked considerably better when viewed on the Spectre 13t's 1080p display than it did on the MacBook Air. Fine lines in characters' faces were sharper on the HP, and colors appeared warmer. Skin tones also looked more natural, and blacks looked endlessly deep on the Spectre 13t. The MacBook Air's display looked washed out by comparison. Similarly, a high-definition image of a lush mountain landscape looked far greener and sharper on the HP.

With a display brightness of 254 lux, the HP Spectre 13t's screen barely outshined the ultraportable laptop category average of 249 lux, and was neck and neck with the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus (251 lux). The MacBook Air's display topped out at 263 lux, while the Acer Aspire S7 hit an impressive 329 lux.

The Spectre 13t's touch screen proved accurate and responsive during our time with the notebook.

Audio

As with many of HP's more-premium notebooks, the Spectre 13t-3000 comes loaded with the impressive Beats Audio software. Jay-Z and Kanye West's bass-heavy "No Church in the Wild" sounded excellent as it thumped through the Spectre's bottom-mounted speakers. We noted a similar experience while listening to Coheed and Cambria's "Mothers of Men," as guitar squeals and symbol crashes filled our conference room.

Switch off Beats, however, and audio sounds muddled. In fact, at one point, it sounded like we were listening to a smartphone rather than a laptop. So just keep Beats on. On the LAPTOP Audio Test, the Spectre 13 pumped out a steady 84 dB at a distance of 23 inches. That's just above the category average of 83 dB.

Keyboard

The HP Spectre 13t's keyboard provided consistently solid feedback throughout our testing. We experienced a good amount of travel and little to no flex. We're also fans of the keyboard's beautiful white backlighting, which evenly illuminated each key.

On the Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor test, we typed at a rate of 79 words per minute with a 1 percent error rate, about equal to our personal average. Our one gripe with the keyboard is the small size of its directional keys, which made navigating a bit of a chore.

Control Zone Touchpad

Using Windows 8 gestures via a notebook's touchpad can be a pain. The pad's small size limits space for swiping in from the left or right, making accessing the Charms and Recent Apps menus frustrating. To address this issue, HP and Synaptics equipped the Spectre 13t with a Control Zone touchpad. Despite its name, it's essentially a normal touchpad with two visually and tactilely distinctive wings on either side. It's designed to make using Windows 8 gestures more intuitive.

Performing gestures on the Control Zone is no different than it would be on a standard notebook. Users swipe in from the right to open the Charms menu, while a swipe in from the left opens the Recent Apps menu. In testing, however, HP said it found that the wings helped users more easily recognize how to use Windows 8 gestures. From a practicality standpoint, it makes more sense to direct users to the touchpad, rather than forcing them to use the touch screen exclusively or expecting them to know, without prompting, that they can use the touchpad for the same gestures.

 Control Zone offers more than not just improved usability. When you open the Charms menu, for example, you can now simply slide your finger up or down the right control zone to select the icon you want to open. Without this feature, you'd have to open the Charms menu, then move your cursor to the icon you want. It's a small, but welcome improvement.

Adding the Control Zones to the touchpad dramatically increased its size, to a whopping 5.5 x 2.6 inches. With such a large space between the user and keyboard, we figured we'd accidentally move the cursor more often. To prevent this, HP and Synaptic wisely chose to disable the cursor in the Control Zones. As a result, we noticed little to no issues with palm rejection during our time with the notebook.

Overall, we liked the larger touchpad and its enhanced functionality. Even Windows 8 veterans will appreciate how much easier it is to use gestures with the Control Zone compared to a standard touchpad.

Ports and Webcam

  As with many Ultrabooks, the Spectre 13t-3000 keeps ports to a minimum. On the right side, you get a single USB 3.0 port, full-size HDMI port, mini DisplayPort and power jack. On the left side is a second USB 3.0 port, combination microphone/ headphone jack, 2-in-1 SD Card slot and lock slot. Don't expect Ethernet or VGA.

The Spectre 13t's 720p webcam provided acceptable stills and video. Colors were accurate, and while we noticed some blurring, the lines in our shirt were still easy to make out.

Heat

The Spectre 13t proved itself to be a cool customer during our LAPTOP Heat Test (streaming a full-screen Hulu video for 15 minutes) reaching just 84 degrees Fahrenheit on the touchpad. The space between the G and H keys hit 94 degrees, falling just below our comfort threshold of 95 degrees. The bottom of the notebook, however, reached a somewhat toasty 99 degrees.

Performance

With a 1.6-GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-4200U processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB solid-state drive, the Spectre 13t is a lightweight speed demon. We opened multiple tabs in both Chrome and Internet Explorer, streamed music from Spotify and watched Netflix without any slowdown.

On the Geekbench 3 benchmark, the Spectre 13t scored 6,436. That's better than the Intel 1.3-GHz Core i5-4250U-powered MacBook Air 13-inch's score of 6,267, and well above the ultraportable category average of 4,559. The Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus, which packs the same processor as the Spectre 13t, scored a lower 4,150.

The Spectre 13t performed equally well on the PCMark 7 benchmark, hitting 4,806 and easily besting the ultraportable category average of 3,927. The ATIV Book 9 Plus pulled ahead of the HP with a score of 5,017, but the Acer Aspire S7 was higher still, with a score of 5,051.

Thanks to its 128GB solid-state drive, the Spectre 13t booted Windows 8.1 in just 10 seconds. The Acer Aspire S7 was one second faster, while the ATIV Book 9 Plus was a second slower.

The Spectre's SSD also helped it transfer files at a breakneck pace, moving 4.97GB of mixed media files in just 32 seconds. That equals a rate of 159 MBps, which is faster than the category average of 111 MBps, as well as the Acer Aspire S7's 113 MBps and Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus' 127 MBps. That said, the MacBook Air handily beat all three notebooks with its impressive transfer rate of 242 MBps.

During the OpenOffice SpreadSheet Macro, the Spectre 13t matched 20,000 names to their corresponding addresses in 5 minutes and 30 seconds. The average ultraportable takes 6:40, while the MacBook Air 13-inch took 5:33. The ATIV Book 9 Plus was a bit quicker, at 5:13. Once again, though, the Aspire S7 took the crown, with a time of 5:12.

Graphics

 With its Intel HD Graphics 4400 integrated graphics chip, the HP Spectre 13t is primed for watching HD videos and playing basic Windows 8 games, but don't expect to run something like "Call of Duty." On the 3DMark 11 benchmark, the Spectre 13t pulled down a score of 943, while the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus scored a respectable 913, and the Aspire S7 scored 895. All three laptops easily beat the ultraportable category average of 713.

While playing "World of Warcraft," the HP Spectre 13t delivered an average of 28 frames per second with the graphics set to auto detect and resolution at 1366 x 768. That's not quite playable. The Acer Aspire S7 averaged 39 fps at the same resolution, while the ATIV Book 9 Plus hit 46 fps. The MacBook Air averaged 45 frames per second with the resolution set to 1300 x 812.

Battery Life

Thanks to its 4-cell battery and low-voltage, fourth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, the Spectre will last you all day, and you won't have to worry about finding an outlet. On the LAPTOP Battery Test, which involves continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi with the display brightness set to 40 percent, the Spectre 13t lasted an impressive 9 hours and 4 minutes. That blows away the ultraportable notebook category average of 6:35. This runtime also surpasses the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus' 8:06 and Acer Aspire S7's 8:53. The MacBook Air 13-inch, however, ran for a marathon 11:40.

Software and Warranty

 HP went relatively light on the software load for the Spectre 13t, which is a good thing. You get the standard array of Windows 8.1 apps, including the new Bing Food & Drink and Health & Fitness apps and Microsoft Office Home and Student.

The heavy hitter here is the included Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5. Regularly priced at $149, the software lets you adjust, enhance and organize your digital photos with ease. Unfortunately, unlike HP's older Envy notebooks, the Spectre 13t doesn't come with Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements.

HP provides customers with a one-year limited hardware warranty. See how HP fared in our Tech Support Showdown and Best & Worst Brand Report.

Configurations

The Spectre 13t starts at $999. At that price, consumers get a 1.6-GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-4200U processor, 4GB of RAM, a 128GB solid state drive and a 1080p display. The Smart Buy configuration, which costs $1,229 after a mail-in rebate, has the same processor, but 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 2560 x 1440-pixel screen.

Consumers can also customize the starting model with up to an Intel Core i7-4500U processor ($195), 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD ($150) and the 2560 x 1440 display ($70). Additionally, you can outfit the Spectre 13 with 802.11ac Wi-Fi, a $20 option.

HP Spectre vs. the Competition

 In some ways, the Spectre 13 surpasses the likes of Apple's $1,099 13-inch MacBook Air, offering a sharper and more vivid screen along with touch capability. However, the Air lasts much longer on a charge and boasts faster flash memory.

Samsung's $1,399 ATIV Book 9 Plus has a sharper display, but you can configure the HP with a higher-res panel, too. And the Spectre 13 offers a better keyboard. The Aspire S7 ($1,399), an Editors' Choice pick, is lighter and slimmer than the HP and offers faster performance, but it also costs $380 more.

Verdict

 HP's $1,019 Spectre 13t-3000 has everything you want in an Ultrabook: a sleek design, fast performance and long battery life. And while you can always use the full HD touchscreen to navigate Windows 8.1, HP gives you an excellent alternative with its Control Zone touchpad. We also like this ultraportable's keyboard and sound quality. The only complaint we have is that the bottom of the Spectre 13 runs a tad warm. Overall, the HP Spectre 13 is a superior Windows 8 Ultrabook.

See more: Lenovo IdeaCentre Flex 20 Review

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Acer Chromebook C720P Review

Chromebooks are getting even closer to replacing standard laptops. The $300 Acer Chromebook C720P features a 10-point multitouch display, which can come in handy for scrolling Web pages, playing casual games and editing photos. Equipped with a 1.4-GHz Intel Celeron processor (based on the newest Haswell architecture) and a 32GB solid state drive, this version of Acer's Chromebook costs $100 more than the nontouch version. Find out if the delta is worth it.

Acer Chromebook C720P Review

The Chromebook C720P doesn't look or feel like the budget Acer notebooks we've previously reviewed. The company has refreshed the C7 Chromebook series' design language with a moonstone-white color and durable polycarbonate build, which is a welcome change from the tired brushed aluminum we've seen on the C720 and C710 Acer Chromebooks. If white isn't your style, Acer also offers this model in gray.

The C720P's white color reminds us of the $279 HP Chromebook 11, but it has a smooth matte finish, unlike HP's glossy plastic coating. HP's machine has a more premium look and feel, but Acer's isn't as susceptible to picking up dust. Acer outfitted the 11.6-inch display with a glossy black border, which serves as a nice contrast to the mostly white body. The keys below the display are also black.

Measuring 11.34 x 8.03 x 0.78 inches and weighing 2.98 pounds, the Acer C720P Chromebook is heavier, larger and thicker than the 2.2-pound, 11.7 x 7.6 x 0.7-inch HP Chromebook 11. It's also a bit bulkier than the 2.6-pound 0.75-inch thin non-touch-screen Acer C720 Chromebook ($199), which sports nearly the same dimensions. Nevertheless, the C720P is compact and easy to carry.

Ports

The Acer C720P offers an SD Card slot, a Kensington lock slot, a USB 2.0 port, a USB 3.0 port, a headphone jack and an HDMI port. The nontouch Acer C720 comes with the same selection of ports, but HP's offering features only a microUSB port for charging, one USB port and a headphone jack.

Display

The Acer C720P Chromebook's 11.6-inch 1366 x 768-pixel display may be touch-friendly, but the image quality could be better. Colors were noticeably washed-out when we watched a trailer for "Captain America: Winter Soldier." In fact, colors on the C720P's display looked almost entirely different than those on the HP Chromebook 11, which sports the same size and resolution. This was especially noticeable in red shades, seeing as the Marvel logo and Scarlett Johansson's hair lacked the fiery color seen on the Chromebook 11's screen.

Viewing angles are poor as well. When we turned the C720P to the left or right slightly, the screen was barely visible and appeared much dimmer. The HP Chromebook 11 wasn't any better.

The Acer C720P's display registered 161 lux on our light meter, which is way lower than the 256-lux ultraportable category average. The HP Chromebook 11 far outshines the C70P, with a reading of 267 lux, but the C720P's display is still brighter than the nontouch C720 Acer Chromebook (123 lux).

Audio

For a notebook of its size, the Acer C720P is capable of pumping out boisterous tunes. The touch-screen Chromebook reached 91 decibels on the Laptop Audio Test, which blows away the ultraportable category average (84 dB) and edges out the Chromebook 11 (89 dB). Overall, music sounded clear blasting through the C720P's bottom-mounted speakers. When listening to "Someday" by The Strokes, we could easily hear the bass line and appreciated the acute hi-hat in the background.

When compared alongside the Chromebook 11, however, the C720P's music sounded shallow and compressed, whereas the Chromebook 11 blared tunes that were equalized more accurately. This was especially noticeable when we listened to Lady Gaga's ballad "Dope," since her drawling vocals sounded much more vibrant coming from the Chromebook 11 than from the C720P.

Touch-Screen Experience

 Chromebooks are tailored for content consumption and light productivity, and Acer hopes to make these tasks even more intuitive with a touch screen. Overall, the C720P's 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768-pixel touch display was responsive in everyday use, but it felt a bit strange to use touch to navigate an OS with such small icons. When you're accustomed to the sprawling tiled interface of Windows 8 on a touch-screen laptop, a Chromebook's tiny app menu feels cramped.

We enjoyed using the touch screen to play casual games such as "Angry Birds" and scrolling through websites, especially when using Chrome in full-screen view. However, some Chrome apps, such as "Bejeweled," aren't compatible with touch-screen displays, which means you'll have to use the keyboard and mouse.

The good news is that apps that do support touch work surprisingly well. The New York Times app displays news stories in a horizontal format, similar to the way Bing News looks in Windows 8. We swiped to the right to continue reading a multipage story and swiped to the left to return to the New York Times homepage. Swiping up from the bottom of the display triggers a small sidebar with the next three stories.

Pinching to zoom on the C720P's touch screen made it much easier to view precise locations in Google Maps. We also enjoyed swiping between photos when using the included 500px app.

Overall, Chrome OS has a lot of potential to grow into touch-screen displays, but we'd like to see more apps that support touch.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Acer C720P is a budget notebook at heart, and that is most evident in its keyboard. The keys on the island-style layout felt a little cheap and shallow, although we were pleased to see that the deck remained firm when we pressed down on the G and H keys. During the Typing Test KeyHero challenge, we typed 52 words per minute with an accuracy rate of 98 percent. This is about 10 WPM below our personal desktop average.

Like all Chromebooks, the C720P features a row of dedicated controls that blend in directly with the keyboard's letter keys. These controls include forward and back navigational buttons, a refresh button, display brightness, and sound controls.

The Acer C720P's 3.5 x 2-inch touchpad is the perfect size for its keyboard deck. The touchpad provided smooth, responsive scrolling and navigation, and we also appreciated the integrated click buttons' tangible feedback. The touchpad supports two-finger scrolling and pinch-to-zoom, in case you don't feel like reaching for the touch screen.

Heat

The Acer C720P stays relatively cool in most spots, but the bottom came close to uncomfortably hot during extended use. After streaming video on Hulu for 15 minutes, the touchpad reached only 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which is far below the 95-degree threshold we consider uncomfortable. The area between the G and H keys reached 85 degrees, but the underside registered a toasty 94 degrees.

Webcam

Don't count on snapping too many selfies with this Chromebook. The C720P's 1280 x 720p webcam took dark, noisy photos during our testing. Not only did images look pixelated, but our face looked shadowy and dim. At least the camera app comes with plenty of filters that can make pictures look a little better.

Chrome OS

Chrome OS is an operating system designed to rely heavily on Google's Chrome browser, meaning you'll need an Internet connection to get the full experience. The interface is very bare-bones: Upon logging in with your Google account, you'll be greeted with a plain desktop. In the bottom-left corner, you'll find the app-launcher icon and a shortcut to the Chrome browser, while the time stamp, battery and Wi-Fi indicators live in the lower-right corner.

Clicking the app-launcher icon triggers a small box that houses all of your Chrome apps. Pressing the box with the time stamp in the other corner of the display launches the Settings window for Chrome OS.

Chrome OS is an ideal choice for those who use their notebook primarily for Internet-related activities, such as checking email, working in Google Drive and browsing websites. And since apps live in the cloud and are heavily sandboxed, Chromebooks are extremely secure.

Apps

Chrome OS currently boasts 33,614 apps, according to ChromeOSApps.org, a website that keeps track of apps for the platform. This is far fewer than the more than 100,000 apps available for Windows 8.1.

The Chrome app store includes such household names as "Bejeweled," The New York Times and "Angry Birds," which we used during our testing. The Chrome Web Store offers apps in various categories, including Business Tools, Education, Lifestyle, News & Weather, Games and Utilities.

Some apps that you'll find in the Chrome Web Store, however, aren't compatible with the OS. When we searched for "Plants vs. Zombies" and "Need for Speed," we were greeted with an error message that said "installation not enabled," meaning they're not Web apps that work with Chrome OS.

Many Chromebook apps live in the Chrome Web browser, but others are capable of running on the desktop in their own separate window. These packaged apps, which were introduced toward the end of 2013, make Chrome OS feel more like a traditional operating system. These apps include "Tank Riders," photo-viewing app 500px and the to-do list app Any.do.

Offline and Desktop Experience

Chromebooks work best when you're connected, but Google has made an effort to expand the platform's offline functionality. The "For Your Desktop" section of the app store contains 34 apps that are capable of running in a separate window outside the browser.

You can access these apps easily without an Internet connection, but in some cases, the experience may be limited. Some apps, such as "Angry Birds," worked seamlessly while offline, but 500px only offers the photo-stream Flow feature in offline mode.

It's also important to note that you'll have to either log in or allow access to certain apps before they'll work offline. For example, Google Drive and Gmail won't work offline unless you grant them permission beforehand.

Performance

The Acer C720P's 1.4-GHz Intel Celeron 2955 processor with 2GB of RAM and its 32GB SSD were more than enough for casual tasks. We launched six apps in the Google Chrome browser, played "Angry Birds" and launched four packaged apps without experiencing any lag.

It took the Acer C720P only 8 seconds to boot Chrome OS, which is faster than the Chromebook 11, which took 11 seconds. The Chromebook 11 uses a 1.7-GHz Samsung Exynos 5250 with 2GB of RAM and features a 16GB hard drive. The nontouch Acer C720, which runs a 1.4-GHz Intel Celeron 2955U with 4GB of RAM and a 16GB SSD, also booted Chrome OS in 8 seconds.

The Acer C720P transferred 5GB of mixed media files in 3 minutes and 43 seconds, equaling a rate of 22.8 MBps, while the HP Chromebook 11 couldn't even complete the same task. After 15 minutes and 12 seconds, it gave up with 168 items remaining.

Acer's touch-screen Chromebook performed favorably in Peacekeeper, a synthetic browser benchmarking test. The C720P scored 2,749, which outshines the ultraportable category average (1,993) and the HP Chromebook 11 (1,134), although Acer's nontouch C720 scored a bit higher (2,955).

The C720P also completed the Sunspider Javascript test in just 343.3 milliseconds, which is much quicker than the HP Chromebook 11 (679 ms) and the ultraportable category average (512 ms).

Battery Life

The Acer C720P Chromebook lasted 6 hours and 18 minutes while continuously streaming video on Hulu with the display brightness set to 40 percent. This is much longer than the HP Chromebook 11's battery life during the Peacekeeper Web-based battery test with its display brightness set to 40 percent (3:54). We will update this review once we've had a chance to run additional battery tests.

Verdict

The $299 Acer C720P Chromebook is one of the least-expensive touch-enabled notebooks available, offering an attractive design, plenty of ports and long battery life. Those who primarily use their computer for surfing the Web and light productivity will have no issues replacing their everyday laptop with this budget-friendly machine. However, although $299 is a good price for a touch-screen laptop, Google's Chrome OS and app selection aren't as touch-friendly as what you get on Windows 8.1. We were also disappointed with the C720P's limited viewing angles.

Among Chromebooks, the Acer C720 without touch is still the best deal, at $199. You get the same Haswell-based Pentium CPU and long endurance, just without touch. The $279 HP Chromebook 11 (also nontouch) is more stylish than the Acer and has a more vibrant screen, but that ARM-based system isn't as fast or long-lasting as the C720P. Those looking for a larger canvas should check out the $299 Toshiba Chromebook, which has a bigger 13-inch display, but overall, the Acer C720P is a good value.

See more: Dell XPS 13 (2014) Review

 

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