The Spectre series is undoubtedly the high-powered group of computers in HP’s line of personal laptops. The HP Spectre XT TouchSmart is the latest model designed for the upcoming Windows 8 OS. As its name indicates, the display (15″) is a touch screen with which users can perform the various gestures that Windows 8 now supports.
The first thing that popped right away is the display. It is a beautiful 15.6″, 1080p IPS display. We were able to see from a distance that it uses the IPS technology because both the colors and the view angles were quite extraordinary.
With an IPS display, there is very little color and brightness distortion at an angle
This is definitely something that graphic designers and photographers can use. We haven’t been able to compare it side by side with the Macbook Pro’s Retina display that we have at the office, but we wouldn’t be surprised if this one was better — except for the resolution, which is higher on the Retina display.
The chassis design is high-quality as well. It is made of aluminum and feels very solid. At 4.77lbs, it’s not a “light” laptop by today’s standards. However, a Macbook Pro 13″ weighs 4.5Lbs, so we don’t think that people will complain – far from it.
Professionals will appreciate the presence of an Ethernet port, along with HDMI and Thunderbolt – this is the first time that HP uses Thunderbolt (a super-fast data port) on one of its laptops. With it, users can connect to external hard drives with a speed that matched the internal disk. That way, they can have both the storage capacity and the performance, while keeping the computer thin and light.
At order time, this computer can be ordered with the latest Intel Core processors, although HP is staying discreet about which options users will ultimately have. We’ve been told that this will be decided closer to the Windows 8 launch.
We are pretty impressed with the build quality of this laptop, but the star of the show is without a doubt its 15″ IPS display (1080p). Now, we’ll need to see what the battery life and the performance looks like, but this is a very promising computer.
