HP Spectre x360 14 (2024)
introduction
The concept of convertible, or 2-in-1 PCs, has remained consistent over the past decade: Why purchase a tablet when your laptop can rotate a full 360 degrees, allowing you to use it as a large slate, or as a screen propped up without a keyboard in the way? Most manufacturers have moved on from this idea, but HP is still a strong advocate. While Windows never fully became the tablet-friendly platform Microsoft envisioned, there’s still significant value in having a device that can adapt to your needs.
That was my conclusion two years ago when I reviewed HP’s 16-inch Spectre x360, and now the company has introduced a smaller version, the Spectre x360 14. It boasts Intel’s latest processors with AI-enhancing NPUs (neural processing units), faster Intel Arc graphics, and a stunning 2.8K OLED display. Best of all, it remains functional as a tablet, unlike its larger counterpart.
HP Spectre x360 14
The HP Spectre x360 14 offers everything you’d desire in a 14-inch convertible notebook. It’s speedy and, even if you never plan to rotate its screen, the HP Spectre x360 14 remains an appealing premium laptop. For some, it might also serve as a more traditional alternative to Dell’s new XPS 14, which features an invisible trackpad and a capacitive function row. While that device looks impressive, adjusting to its unconventional features can take some time. The Spectre x360 14, however, is both stylish and familiar to anyone who has used a laptop before. (Its rotating screen takes just 10 seconds to figure out initially, while Dell’s invisible trackpad still confused me hours into testing.)
Design and Hardware
That familiarity might also be seen as a limitation for HP. The Spectre x360 14 includes everything expected in a premium laptop today: a sleek metal body, a stunning screen with ultra-thin bezels, and a generously sized trackpad with haptic feedback. However, it doesn’t look much different from the 13-inch Spectre x360 I reviewed in 2019. It would be refreshing to see HP take some major design risks, but it’s understandable why they stick with a successful design.
With the Spectre x360 14, HP focused on subtle updates. It features a wide 14-inch screen with a 16:10 aspect ratio, compared to the previous model’s 13.5-inch display with a squarish 3:2 ratio. Its trackpad offers customizable haptic feedback and is 19% larger, dominating the palm area. HP retained its excellent keyboard but enlarged the key caps by 12%, making them easier to hit. To streamline functionality, HP combined the power button and fingerprint sensor, and the laptop also supports Windows Hello facial recognition.
The ports remain unchanged. There are two USB-C ports along the right rear (including one on its distinctive cut-off corner), a drop-down USB Type-A port on the left, and a headphone jack on the corner. As usual, it would have been nice to see a built-in card reader, especially for a device aimed at creative professionals.
The Spectre x360 14 may resemble its predecessors, but HP claims it has been significantly revamped internally. It now supports 28-watt Intel Core Ultra CPUs, instead of the previous 14-watt options, and provides 10% more airflow than before. Impressively, these enhancements were achieved without increasing the device’s 17-millimeter height. Weighing in at 3.2 pounds, it’s slightly more portable than the 3.5-pound MacBook Pro 14-inch.
The Spectre’s 9-megapixel webcam is a major upgrade from the previous 5MP version. The new sensor features hardware-enabled low light adjustment through quad-binning, which combines data from four pixels into one. This enables cameras with smaller pixels to capture more light, resulting in a brighter image. During Google Meet and Zoom calls, the webcam produced a sharp image with vibrant colors. It almost resembled a mirrorless camera when I enabled Windows Studio Effects background blur, though it occasionally appeared overexposed in direct sunlight.
Video chats also sounded great through the laptop’s quad-speaker array, which includes two upward-firing tweeters along the keyboard and two woofers at the front. While there’s not much low-end compared to Apple’s MacBook Pro speakers, voices and music are surprisingly clear. The speakers can also get quite loud without distortion, which is impressive for such a slim system.
Although the laptop has an NPU-equipped processor powering features in Paint, ClipChamp, and Windows Studio Effects, the Spectre x360 14 isn’t technically classified as an “AI PC” by Intel and Microsoft. Why? It lacks a dedicated button for Windows Copilot. Personally, I haven’t found that key very useful on the XPS 14 and 16. Triggering Copilot from the taskbar or Windows sidebar is easy enough and doesn’t justify sacrificing a spot on the keyboard.
The HP Spectre x360 14 I evaluated performed similarly to other devices we’ve tested with Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H chip. It’s rapid and relatively effective, particularly compared to systems from two years ago. My assessment unit, which arrived with 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, was 30 percent quicker in the PCMark 10 benchmark compared to the Spectre x360 16 from 2022 (6,493 points, up from 4,785 points). This year’s Spectre also achieved 78 percent higher in the Cinebench R23 multi-core benchmark, a proof to the improvements Intel has made since its 11th-gen CPUs.
Geekbench 6 CPU
PCMark 10
Cinebench R23
3DMark Wildlife Extreme
HP Spectre x360 14 (Intel Core Ultra 7, 2023)
2,273/11,735
6,493
1,651/8,481
5,952
ASUS ZenBook 14 OLED (Intel Core Ultra 7, 2023)
2,240/10,298
6,170
1,599/7,569
4,827
Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (Apple M3, 2023)
3142/11,902
N/A
1,932/10,159
8,139
HP Spectre x360 16 (Intel i7-11390H, 2022)
N/A
4,785
1,515/3,722
N/A
The most apparent upgrade for the Spectre x360 isn’t AI intelligence; it’s Intel’s Arc graphics, which are significantly quicker than Intel’s older integrated graphics. In 3DMark’s TimeSpy Extreme benchmark, it nearly kept pace with NVIDIA’s RTX 3050 in the x360 16 (1,435 points compared to 1,730). That’s remarkable for a machine that’s considerably slimmer and lighter. Indeed, it’s no gaming rig, but I was still able to play Halo Infinite in 1080p at around 30 fps. I’m confident it would manage smaller indie titles just fine.
Thanks to the abundance of RAM and Intel’s Core Ultra chip, my evaluation model handled everything I threw at it without any noticeable deceleration. Throughout a typical workday, I juggle dozens of browser tabs, photo editing applications, YouTube streams, video conversations, Slack, and Evernote. The Spectre x360’s OLED display also made everything look fantastic, even if I was just gazing at words on a news site. It supports a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz, so scrolling through documents and sites was very smooth.
When I first tested a Spectre x360 five years ago, I immediately fell in love with its keyboard. Typing felt incredibly gratifying, thanks to a generous amount of key travel and feedback. It was one of those rare designs that almost felt like it was encouraging me to use it, like a finely tuned violin that’s simply urging you to play. Thankfully, HP didn’t tamper with any of that keyboard magic: The expansive new key caps are even more pleasant to use, and the actual typing experience is as superb as ever.
I have a few gripes about the Spectre x360’s new trackpad though. It’s sleek and precise for swiping, and its haptic feedback is indistinguishable from a trackpad that physically depresses. However, HP’s palm rejection software feels sloppy — occasionally, while typing furiously, my hand would brush the trackpad and shift the cursor to select another window. It occurred frequently enough that it became a creativity flow disruptor. I’m optimistic that this is something HP can resolve with a software update eventually.
As a convertible notebook, the Spectre x360 14 is considerably more practical than the 16-inch model. A gentle tap on the screen is all it takes to rotate it around the keyboard — it transforms into a tablet when fully turned around, or you can halt that process midway and rotate the Spectre for its “tent” mode. The 14-inch x360 excels at being a slate, simply because it’s lighter and easier to hold with one hand (although you’ll probably prefer to prop it on your lap for lengthier sessions).
Turning the screen was also less cumbersome, since the display was notably less wide. I utilized the tent configuration to view YouTube videos in bed, while on the sofa I occasionally folded the keyboard behind the Spectre, so I could utilize it like a large touchscreen with a stand. I value the adaptability of 2-in-1 convertibles more than the bendable OLED screens we’re observing on new machines. It’s more cost-effective to implement, and for my needs, convertibles are simply more practical.
The Spectre x360’s primary drawback is battery life: It endured five hours and ten minutes in the PCMark 10 Modern Office test, whereas the ZenBook 14 OLED persisted for 12 hours and 43 minutes. There’s a trade-off for maintaining its frame so slim, after all. During real-world testing, it typically required recharging around six hours into my workday.
When I first tested a Spectre x360 five years ago, I immediately fell in love with its keyboard. Typing felt incredibly gratifying, thanks to a generous amount of key travel and feedback. It was one of those rare designs that almost felt like it was encouraging me to use it, like a finely tuned violin that’s simply urging you to play. Thankfully, HP didn’t tamper with any of that keyboard magic: The expansive new key caps are even more pleasant to use, and the actual typing experience is as superb as ever.
I have a few gripes about the Spectre x360’s new trackpad though. It’s sleek and precise for swiping, and its haptic feedback is indistinguishable from a trackpad that physically depresses. However, HP’s palm rejection software feels sloppy — occasionally, while typing furiously, my hand would brush the trackpad and shift the cursor to select another window. It occurred frequently enough that it became a creativity flow disruptor. I’m optimistic that this is something HP can resolve with a software update eventually.
As a convertible notebook, the Spectre x360 14 is considerably more practical than the 16-inch model. A gentle tap on the screen is all it takes to rotate it around the keyboard — it transforms into a tablet when fully turned around, or you can halt that process midway and rotate the Spectre for its “tent” mode. The 14-inch x360 excels at being a slate, simply because it’s lighter and easier to hold with one hand (although you’ll probably prefer to prop it on your lap for lengthier sessions).
Turning the screen was also less cumbersome, since the display was notably less wide. I utilized the tent configuration to view YouTube videos in bed, while on the sofa I occasionally folded the keyboard behind the Spectre, so I could utilize it like a large touchscreen with a stand. I value the adaptability of 2-in-1 convertibles more than the bendable OLED screens we’re observing on new machines. It’s more cost-effective to implement, and for my needs, convertibles are simply more practical.
The Spectre x360’s primary drawback is battery life: It endured five hours and ten minutes in the PCMark 10 Modern Office test, whereas the ZenBook 14 OLED persisted for 12 hours and 43 minutes. There’s a trade-off for maintaining its frame so slim, after all. During real-world testing, it typically required recharging around six hours into my workday.
Pricing and the competition.
The Spectre x360 14 presents a solid value proposition for a premium convertible, commencing at $1,450 with an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. Currently, that setup has been discounted by $300, making it an even more compelling choice. (Kudos to HP for omitting a paltry 8GB RAM option, which would likely cause headaches for most users.) For $1,900, you can upgrade to a Core Ultra 7 155H chip, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD.
If you’re in the market for other top-tier convertible laptops, your choices are somewhat restricted. Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1 is still equipped with older 12th-gen Intel chips, and for more contemporary alternatives, you’ll need to explore the mid-range Inspiron and Latitude series. We’re eagerly awaiting the update of Lenovo’s Yoga lineup to newer Intel chips. Although we haven’t assessed Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 360, it lacks the elegance of HP’s design.
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 is technically a convertible (its screen slides forward instead of flipping around), but it starts at $1,900. At that price point, opting for the x360 14 with its superior hardware would likely be a more advantageous choice over the Surface model with its distinctive screen design.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the HP Spectre x360 14 emerges as a compelling premium convertible option with its powerful performance, excellent keyboard, and versatile design. The keyboard retains its satisfying typing experience, while the trackpad could benefit from improved palm rejection software. As a convertible notebook, the Spectre x360 14’s flexibility shines, offering various modes for different use cases.
Despite its strengths, the Spectre x360 14 does face challenges, particularly in battery life compared to some competitors. However, with a starting price of $1,450 and configurations that offer significant value, it remains a competitive choice in the high-end convertible laptop market.
When considering the competition, options like Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1 and Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 present alternatives with their own strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, the Spectre x360 14 stands out for its blend of performance, design, and pricing, making it a strong contender for users seeking a premium convertible laptop experience.
