HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook 2016 Edition – First Look

WOW…Just Wow!

Back in the day which feels like a lifetime ago (and it was in tech terms) I got a MacBook Pro. That was the first of the unibody Macbooks, way back in 2008. It was beautiful, a design masterpiece, and it’s something which Apple has tweaked and changed over the past few years, but the general design remains the same. Back then it was probably the best looking laptop on the market, and I fancied trying out OSX too…I was not much of a fan, and put Windows on it, and it was still the best Windows offering at the time; Well there may have been a VAIO but I’d already had one of those and wanted a changed.

Fast forward to now and Apple still have the same design, not that it’s bad but it looks a bit dated, and other manufacturers have stepped up their game, and are producing amazing machines for Windows. There’s the Dell XPS with it’s infinity display, The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, both have impressed me, and now there is this from HP…

Last week Hewlett Packard showed off their brand new HP Spectre 13 and it looks amazing! HP are calling this the thinnest laptop on the market, and it looks simply stunning. The design looks original, sleek and like an ultramodern piece of art, rather than a computer. It looks almost like a blade, like it could cut you, and is a blend of black and golden colours, or copper which HP are calling it. Made from aluminium and carbon fibre it looks simply beautiful. It has Bang and Olufsen sound which you can hear through the stylish speaker grates, and even the HP logo has had a makeover; Gone is the HP in a circle which looks dated, and in comes an edgy HP logo which sits well on the back of the lid of the laptop.

The keyboard is a modern Chiclet style which I actually am not a fan of, but that’s the way the world has gone. It’s backlit which always helps, and like everything else in this laptop, it’s stylish. It comes with a glass trackpad too which is something which I like, a good Windows trackpad has been the downfall of many laptops of the past. They said that the design is based on a piece of jewellery, and that’s something which comes across as soon as you see this. Laptop hinges are usually really ugly if they’re exposed such as this one is, but the colour and metallic design actually adds to this.

As for power it’s no slouch. There’s i5 and i7 CPU options available, with up to 8GB RAM , so blows the MacBook out of the water which uses the M series of processors. The hard drive is a PCIe SSD drive which are usually really fast and go to up 512GB. The screen is a full HD 1080p screen, and comes with three USB-C type ports on the back. Sadly the spec does not go up any further, with the Dell XPS offering 16GB of RAM, this is a real shame, hopefully it may get that option in the future.

There’s no UK pricing on this yet, but it’s set to be released in May with pre-orders being taken in April. It’s around $1169, so you should see them coming in at under £1000, my guess would be starting at £899.