HP Spectre x360 Touts Whiskey Lake CPUs, LTE And Crazy-Long 22 Hour Runtime
HP is refreshing its sleek and stylish Spectre X360 convertible laptops with new designs and upgraded hardware. This includes both the 13-inch Spectre X360 13 and 15-inch Spectre X360 15 models, though it is the smaller of the two that purportedly boasts extra long battery life—up to a whopping 22.5 hours, according to HP, for an Always-On, Always-Connected experience.
That is a 37 percent increase over the previous generation. In our experience, real-world battery life usually trails rated metrics, but if the Spectre X360 13 comes anywhere close to 22.5 hours, it will be tantalizing selling point for people who need their laptops to last a full work day (and beyond). To be clear, this is not an ARM-based laptop with Snapdragon hardware inside.
HP says these new laptops will sport a new Intel Whiskey Lake processor. Whiskey Lake processors are built on the same 14nm++ manufacturing process as Coffee Lake and fall under the 8th generation Core banner. Intel offers these in up to four cores and eight threads, and HP is pitching the Spectre X360 13 as delivering the "world's longest battery life in a quad-core convertible."
The fine print that goes along with that claim point to a Core i5-8265U processor. This is a 4-core/8-thread CPU clocked at 1.6GHz to 3.9GHz, with 6MB of SmartCache and a 15W TDP (configurable up to 25W).
It's not clear if the Spectre X360 15 will feature the same processor. However, HP rates the battery life on the bigger model at up to 17.5 hours, which is still a long time. If real-world run time lasts even half as long, then it would be usable for a standard 8-hour workday without having to plug it in.
HP is offering optional 4G LTE connectivity on the Spectre X360 13, and "ultra-fast Wi-Fi with up to 1-gigabit download speeds" on both the 13-inch and 15-inch models. They've also been upgraded with USB-C connectivity.
Both models pack up to 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of PCIe SSD storage. The 15-inch model kicks things up a notch with an optional 4K resolution display (up from Full HD 1080p on the 13-inch model) and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with Max-Q design.
The Spectre X360 13 and 15 will be available in November on HP's website and December in Best Buy stores, starting at $1,149.99 and $1,389.99, respectively.
