HP Spectre x360 13t-aw200
Is HP’s sleek convertible good enough to convert anyone in 2021?
While there will be a couple of different variations on the Spectre X360 this year, the model we’re testing is only available at Harvey Norman for an RRP of $2,999. This might seem steep for a 13.3 inch laptop with just a 60Hz Full HD panel, but this screen is actually an OLED display, which makes it stand out in media playback and general colour reproduction in side-by-side comparisons. The Spectre x360 13t-aw2007tu also features an Intel Core i7-1165G7 CPU, 16GB of RAM and an integrated Intel Iris Xe GPU, which rounds out a nicely balanced spec sheet for a premium work productivity laptop.
The 11th Gen processors offer predictable ten-percent-ish improvements over last year’s laptops, but the Spectre x360 13t-aw2007tu we tested generally netted below average performance results against this year’s cohort.
Generally the x360 was behind by less than 15-percent, but that margin did dip to over 20 percent in some CPU tests, like 4K media encoding. Graphically it was even worse, with benchmark tests being between 10 and 55-percent behind the pack averages, making many of them unplayable. We’re hoping that this model is abnormal in its performance, but since there’s nothing obviously wrong with it we have to assume that it’s as intended.
Keyboard and trackpad are nice enough to avoid being called out and the B&O speakers, fingerprint reader, relatively broad interface options and unique design give it all the trimmings of a good professional laptop. Unfortunately price and performance just aren’t overly competitive this year.
A longstanding Ultrabook competitor that has taken a misstep on price and performance on this particular model.