HP Spectre x360 (2017) Review: A Beautiful And Impressively Quiet Convertible

The Spectre x360 ships with Windows 10 Home 64-bit, or for $70 more, you can bump up to the Pro version. It also comes with a couple bits of trial software—Office 365 and McAfee LiveSafe. HP also offers Computrace's LoJack software as an optional add-on. It's priced at $40 for one year of theft protection, $70 for two years, or $50 for four years, which is obviously the best value.


Brrr, that is a chilly looking desktop! And just in time for winter, too. That's actually the same wallpaper that HP used on the Spectre x360 15 it sent us earlier this year, and once again it arrives without any junk cluttering up the desktop. Only a sad, empty Recycle Bin adorns the desktop. You can cheer it up by adding 'This PC' and any other icons you might want, such as the Control Panel. Just type 'Themes' into the Cortana search bar, then scroll down to Desktop icon settings.


HP does not overwhelm buyers with a bunch of utilities or extra software. There are only a few, including a Support Assistant utility to help with grabbing updates and warranty information, and a Recovery Manager to help restore your system, should you need to.


There is also an audio utility with some basic configuration options. The Spectre x360 features four speakers with HP Audio Boost and custom tuning by Bang & Olufsen. At full blast, there is sufficient audio to fill a small room and jam to your favorite songs or playlist. Like most laptops, the bass response is minimal, so you'll still want a good pair of headphones if you want fuller range and bass that bumps.

Outside of HP's own utilities, the Spectre x360 supports Windows Hello, both with a fingerprint sensor on the side and through facial recognition. You can set this up in Windows 10 by going to Settings > Sign-in options, or by typing "sign-in options" into the Cortana search bar. In our testing, we found that the fingerprint sensor and camera both work well.