HP announced their updated Spectre x360 at Mobile World Congress. Like the Lenovo Yoga, it has a hinge that flips the entire way around, allowing the laptop to function as a 13.3-inch tablet with a 1080p, IPS display. There are two stages between “tablet” and “laptop”, which are “stand” and “tent”. They are basically ways to prop up the touch screen while hiding the keyboard behind (or under) the unit. The stand mode is better for hands-free operation because it has a flat contact surface to rest upon, while the tent mode is probably more sturdy for touch (albeit rests on two rims). The chassis is entirely milled aluminum, except the screen and things like that of course.
The real story is the introduction of Core i-level Broadwell. The 12.5-hour battery listing in a relatively thin form-factor can be attributed to the low power requirements of the CPU and GPU, as well as its SSD (128GB, 256GB, or 512GB). RAM comes in two sizes, 4GB or 8GB, which will depend slightly on the chosen processor SKU.
Prices start at $899 and most variants are available now at HP's website.
I like the HP
I like the HP probook(discrete GPU), I really like the HP Mini desktop, the business model, It’s about as small as the Mac Mini with a real desktop SKU(socketed), it’s made to breakdown and upgrade, unlike the others. This is just more of the copy cat, trend setting follow the lemmings sort of thing. The top end i7 Spectre SKU is $1399.00, if I go Apple, I can get the new Firewire(Thunderbolt) and the 20Gbs, it looks like Apple has some advantage, although the HP could be used as tablet. When Apple does their refresh, this will be behind in short order for the most part, unless you want a hybrid/tablet device, and still the Intel graphics in not there yet.
I wish they would stop with the Apple comparisons(on any windows based device without thunderbolt) simply calling any device Apple like, and not doing a feature by feature comparison and contrast, is not going to make the Apple comparison valid. I guess HP has to try to compete, watch out for that bloatware HP, don’t superfish yourself. One good thing about HP they will make so many of these things that a year down the road those big box electronics retailers(M-center, an such) Will have plenty in stock and on sale. If it comes with an SSD, and faster than SATA 3 connection(?) maybe USB 3.1 would make it a little bit more of an Apple competitor. The Spectre’s 3 USB 3.0 ports, are they all sharing the bandwidth under a single USB 3.0 controller chip?