HP has come out of the premium laptop woodwork to produce what it claims to be the thinnest laptop ever.
But this isn’t some run-of-the-mill Atom or Intel Core M-powered machine: if HP manages to do what it claims, its new Spectre 13 laptop could eclipse everything that’s come before it, including the Dell XPS 13 and the 12-inch MacBook.
HP has carved out a unique design language for itself, with dark grey aluminium and copper-coloured highlights creating a laptop that actually looks, if I’m honest, a bit full of itself and just a little bit bling. That’s not to say it doesn’t look impressive: it really is a unique piece of design. The ‘piston hinge’ also contributes to the premium design, almost completely disguising its presence when the laptop is closed, making it appear hingeless.
At just 10.4mm thick I can’t think of a laptop that’s thinner, and at 1.1kg it’s down there with the lightest netbooks released in the last couple of years. It’s still 100g heavier than the 12in MacBook, so Apple still has the edge here.
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Brilliantly, instead of using an Intel Core M processor, which is normally how you’d achieve such a thin design, HP as opted fore Core i5 and i7 chips instead. I’d assume these will be i5-6300U and i7-6500U chips, which aren’t the most powerful in Intel’s range, but they’re much more powerful than the equivalent Core M5 and Core M7 chips.
HP says it’s managed to squeeze this amount of power into the chassis by using Intel-developed Hyperbaric cooling, which was first revealed last year on Dell’s Vostro line of business laptops. Instead of simply ejecting hot air from the laptop, there’s a proper intake fan that actively sucks ambient-temperature air into and through the laptop, which should help to minimise overheating on such a powerful device.
Elsewhere, it comes with three USB type-C ports, all three of which are found at the rear. Two of those will also be compatible with Thunderbolt 3.0 for super-fast data transfers from docks and displays. The screen is a 13-inch Full HD IPS touchscreen, while inside you’ll get 8GB of RAM, super-fast PCI-E-based SSDs and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.
There’s been no word on the pricing of this device, but I’d recommend sitting down when the salesperson tells you the final cost. We’re no strangers to laptop makers charging a premium for exceptional design, and I’m very hopeful that HP will more than be able to justify whatever price it choose to stick on the Spectre 13.
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