HP Envy 14 Spectre Review: Beefing Up the Ultrabook - holladaywillith

At a Coup d'oeil

Good's Rating

Pros

• Very good keyboard and excellent touchpad
• Superb, color-close, high-reticuloendothelial system display

Cons

• Not quite a every bit rawboned and light A it could be
• Heavier than similar Ultrabooks in its class

Our Finding of fact

Gorgeous looks plus a neat interface and display overcome the Invidia 14 Spectre's slightly higher weight.

First impressions are important, and the HP Envy 14 Spectre makes a great one. The glossy, glass-topped display bezel and keyboard tray smel elegant and understated, and the uniform, thin chassis gives the laptop computer a groomed appearing. Second impressions are a trifle fewer positive, though: When you peck the Spectre, IT seems heftier than you'd look. That's because HP covered it in impact-resistant crank, similar to what you might see on a high-end smartphone. That pretty glass upside is a fingerprint magnet, too.

Encapsulating the monitor bezel in meth, notwithstandin, allowed HP to establish a 14-inch display into tight quarters–the Specre offers essentially the same width and distance as virtually 13.3-edge Ultrabooks do. HP took advantage of the bigger reveal area, packing in a 1600-by-900-pixel native-resolution LED-backlit IPS panel. IT looks great, and it offers superior video playback fidelity. Rather than duplicate the tapering shape of many competitors, the Fantasm is barely under 0.9 inch thin (scantily get together the Ultrabook specs that Intel lay out) throughout, which makes the system seem somehow larger than other laptops in its class. IT also weighs more than many Ultrabooks (a spy-connected 4 pounds without the power brick), partly due to the deoxyephedrine surface and partly because of the larger LCD panel.

The LCD dialog box offers first-class horizontal viewing angles, and good vertical wake from above the laptop. If you look from downstairs the plane of the sweet spot, however, color and contrast loose are severe. The screen is very equally kindled, probably owing to the LED backlight. Color saturation is good, and video looks quite nice, particularly high-definition video. The 1600-by-900-pixel display also makes editing photos a bit easier than systems with a more standard 1366-by-768-pixel display typically do. You can put that video display to good use instantly, since HP includes full versions of Photoshop Elements 10 and Premiere Elements 10.

Operation, on the other hand, is a bit disappointing, trailing behind that of similar systems in the class, such as the Dingle XPS 13. The Spectre posted a mark of 106 on WorldBench 7, the indorsement-lowest in comparison with four quasi Ultrabooks, simply good overall performance nonetheless. Plus, the Begrudge 14 generated slightly lower rafts in our Web-performance tests. The higher-resolution display verisimilar has some wallop on execution, but having all those extra pixels makes up a trifle for the slightly lower scores. Barrage life was approximately average for the class, at 6 hours, 29 proceedings.

Like most Ultrabooks, the Envy 14 Spectre is somewhat lacking in expansion ports, offering a scant two USB connections (same USB 3.0 and the other USB 2.0). Complete of the system of rules's ports, including the two USB ports, the gigabit ethernet jack, the headphone labourer, the SD Card expansion slot, and the HDMI and mini-DisplayPort video outputs, are on the left side. I would like to see at least four USB connections happening these units–the chipset supports that, and the Apparition certainly has enough chassis real property for them.

The base of operations model of the Ghost includes a 128GB solid-State Department drive; Horsepower offers a 256GB SSD American Samoa an option. You won't find a built-in receptor drive, simply that's pretty typical for this class of scheme. Connectivity comes in the form of 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and wired ethernet. H.P. doesn't offer an option for intrinsic LTE or any other wireless system technology.

Audio is a variety. At reasonable volume, HP's Beats Sound equalization system enables euphony and movie content that sounds richer than on well-nig laptop speakers, only if you crank the volume past about 60 percentage, you can hear noticeable speaker overrefinement. If you neediness louder audio, you'll ask to use headphones. The Specte offers a convenient analog-style volume telephone dial on the right side.

Like most Ultrabooks, the Envy 14 Spectre uses Intel's HD 3000 art technology, and so IT's suitable for only light PC play at take down resolutions and contingent levels.

The keyboard offers an excellent find, although the spacebar is slenderly recessed, which results in mashed-together words when you miss pressing the spacebar complete the path down. The touchpad is uncomparable of the world-class we've seen on a Windows laptop, coming close to the feel and usability of the large trackpads built into Apple's MacBook Melody. Full support for multitouch gestures, suited button sensitivity, and tapping anywhere to make a right sneak away fall into place are receive.

You'll need to weigh few trade-offs with the Spectre: It has a bit more heft and slightly shrivelled carrying out compared with most Ultrabooks, but it also offers a so much break exhibit, a good keyboard, and an excellent pointing device. Information technology's also non inexpensive, with the base unit costing about $1299 (as of March 29, 2012), indeed you should factor that in as considerably. In the end, HP's Envy 14 Spectre falls just short of being a classical–but information technology doesn't disappoint, either.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/469513/hp_envy_14_spectre_review_beefing_up_the_ultrabook.html

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