Table of Contents
amazon HP Envy Spectre XT reviews
Advantage:
+ Thin and light design
+ Speed and responsive handling
+ Touchpad good quality.
Disadvantages:
– Low screen resolution, viewing angles are narrow
– Design is not unique, much like the MacBook Air.
Design
Envy Spectre XT creates superior experiences for users thanks owned aluminum lid and chassis are all made of metal. Thin chassis that weighs just 1.39 kg, the thickness at the thickest point is 17.7 mm and 14.5 mm thinnest point. The interior features the same aluminum casing with scratch cover, HP logo also has the same tone monochrome style of Ultrabook.
Above the keyboard is a row grille, along with the power button and the Beats Audio logo. HP said that two of the four speakers of this laptop is placed beneath the grille. It is a feature designed to help differentiate Spectre XT with other ultra-thin laptops like the Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Air.
Backlit chiclet keyboard chassis sink slightly. It was a typical HP keyboard, which means the function keys when activated by the Fn key will be used to adjust the multimedia functions, change screen brightness and turn off the wireless connection. The layout of the keyboard keys and the distance is quite reasonable, however slight keyboard flex.
Although the named Spectre, Spectre XT, but not equipped with protective glass Gorilla Glass which is featured on the Envy 14 Spectre. In fact, the only parts made of glass on the Spectre XT is the touchpad was named Imagepad HP. The glass touchpad is present on most of the HP Envy ultrabook. The physical layer of the glass significantly improved surface smoothness of the touchpad.
Multitouch gestures are supported on the touchpad and they work quite well. HP Touchpad usually able to perform multi-point operation on an average compared to other Windows laptops and Spectre XT continues to maintain this.
Function
Display resolution is 1366×768 pixels on the Spectre XT, although such is quite enough for a 13.3-inch screen laptop, but is weak compared with competitors like the Asus Zenbook and MacBook Air. It is this makes the Envy Spectre XT becomes a lot less attractive.
Besides the display resolution, viewing angle of the ball on the Spectre XT screen should also be improved. As we have often seen the screen quality on the laptop screen, we will want to do better as HP did with the HP Pavilion dv6.
Although HP has tried to equip a full size Ethernet port on the Spectre XT without resorting to a switch port, but its slim chassis can not fully equipped with connectivity ports.
Spectre XT is also equipped with Beats Audio sound technology like other forms Envy line, and with four speakers with two speakers in the front grille and the two speakers located under the sides of the laptop. Similar to the Envy 15 has a larger size, the sound of Spectre XT was not really impressed. Although the maximum volume is quite clearly heard in a quiet environment, but the sound from the speaker is really quite empty and lacking bass.
HP often not included in the software Envy laptop bloatware. Instead, the company offers the full version of useful software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. These programs, along with security software Norton Internet Security is copyrighted additional two years on the Spectre XT helpful.
In terms of hardware specifications and price, its nearest rival HP Envy Spectre XT is the Acer Aspire S5, also has a Core i7 processor and an SSD similar to 256GB. Besides an HDMI output port, Acer’s ultrabook also has added a Thunderbolt port – rarely seen on a laptop running on Windows operating systems.
One other unique feature is found on the S5 SSD RAID configuration gives it a little higher performance compared to Envy. S5 is thinner than the Spectre XT, also means that you must use the USB port to connect an Ethernet switch.
Performance and battery life
Besides being equipped with a Core i7 processor fastest pace that you can find on the Ultrabook, Spectre XT sample of this review is also equipped with a 256GB SSD from Samsung. Samples of the Samsung SSD 830 line is one of the best SSD drive which you can find at present. Spectre XT reached PCMark7 impressive point is 5489 points. This score is higher with an ultrabook, but also had a product that achieved better results as the Aspire S5 (6019 points) due equipped RAID configuration.
In actual use, you will not see much difference in performance between the two ultrabook, S5 boots a little faster on Windows only takes 11 seconds compared to 14 seconds are recorded on the HP Envy Spectre XT. The instant application launch and quick response on both laptops. But to be worthy of the money that customers have to spend, should HP laptops equipped with more RAM. 8GB of RAM is perfect to use Adobe software preinstalled applications.
Overall performance Spectre XT overall is great, but the graphics are not one of its strong points. This Ultrabook using integrated graphics, only good enough to play the normal game.
With operating time of 5 hours 37 minutes, the HP Envy Spectre XT “live longer” than the Envy 4. It is also much better than the Acer Aspire S5 maintains only 4 hours battery life of 30 minutes. Overall, the Spectre XT battery is not as good as the HP ultrabook earlier Folio 13 ultrabook, but only a few do it. Moreover, Folio has a bigger battery.
where can you get a HP Envy Spectre XT online
HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook 15-4010nr Intel Core i7-3517U , 8GB DDR3, 500GB HDD+32GB SSD Cache, 15.6? FHD 1920×1080 Touch-Screen LED, Windows 8 64-bit: Buy it now
HP ENVY 13-2150nr Spectre XT 13.3″ Ultrabook (Silver): Buy it now
HP Envy Spectre XT
Processor: Intel Core i7-3517U 1.9GHz
RAM: 4GB DDR3 1.600MHz
Storage Drive: 256GB SSD
Optical drive: No
Display: 13.3-inch, 1366×768 resolution
Graphics Card: Intel HD Graphics 4000 (integrated)
Sound Card: Beats audio
Ports: 1 USB 3.0, 1 USB 2.0, SD card reader, HDMI
Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Stereo speakers, headphone microphone combo jack &
Webcam: HP TrueVision HD Webcam, 720p
Battery: 4-cell lithium ion battery, 5 hours 37 minutes
Dimensions: 316 x 224 x 177 mm
Weight: 1.39 kg
Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)