Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 was one of our favourite 2-in-1 tablets of 2015, but its premium price put it out of reach for many consumers. Luckily, the HP Spectre x2 is here to fill in the gap, bringing similar specifications, a familiar form factor and, more importantly, a much lower price to the table.
As the least expensive of the two devices, HP has obviously made some compromises in its design, but they're easily forgiven when it's so much cheaper than the Surface Pro 4. The kickstand, for example, is inelegant and difficult to flip out of the rear of the tablet. Instead, you have to flip a switch on the left-hand side of the tablet, which physically releases the stand from captivity, but even then you still have to pry it out with two fingers in order to ease it into a more useful position.
The tablet is left wanting when it comes to ports, too. Aside from the 3.5mm headset jack, there are just two USB type-C connectors, one of which will be occupied whenever you're charging the Spectre x2. Thankfully, HP supplies a USB-C to USB-A adapter if you don't have any USB-C peripherals, but you'll need to buy a dock if you want to connect the Spectre x2 to anything else, such as an external display, for example.
This is where the USB-C specification comes in handy. While the Spectre x2's ports only have USB3 speeds (not USB3.1), there's still a dedicated video lane for displays. This means you can connect a third-party dock, such as Sandberg USB-C Mini Dock (£40 from www.ballicom.com) to connect the Spectre x2 to an additional display without it slowing down the USB peripherals you have connected as well. It also helps cut down on the number of wires trailing away from your device, a problem with the Surface Pro 4 when it's fully hooked up to monitors and peripherals. Still, you'll need to factor in the purchase of a dock if you plan on using the Spectre x2 as your main work machine.
The Spectre x2 has the edge over the Surface Pro 4 when it comes to weight, too, although this can largely be explained by the Spectre x2's slightly smaller screen (12in versus 12.3in). The tablet portion is both lighter at 800g and thinner at 8mm than the Core m3 version of the Surface Pro 4. With the keyboard attached, these figures increase to 1.2kg and 13mm respectively, but this is still a very svelte device.
Keyboard and touchpad
The grey, wool-like material that lines the bottom of the keyboard dock looks and feels great, and HP has kept things classy with its classic metallic silver keyboard tray, touchpad and buttons. The keyboard is backlit and its buttons provide a decent amount of feedback - easily comparable to that of the Surface Pro 4 - and they just enough travel and a very usable layout, with few compromises in the form of smaller buttons.
I do wish the touchpad was slightly larger, though. It's plenty wide enough, but its rather squat height makes it slightly awkward to use when executing large, two-fingered scrolling motions. You can increase the scrolling sensitivity, but there's nothing quite comparable to a nice, sweeping scroll. Otherwise, the touchpad is very good, with lots of built-in gestures and multi-fingered support. The physical click action is responsive, although it only works from roughly a third of the way down the touchpad.
The keyboard dock clips to the tablet using magnets and feels secure, but you shouldn't be tempted to pick the Spectre x2 up by the keyboard; the weight of the tablet is enough to release the magnets and send it tumbling.
Thanks to its lightness, the tablet portion is very pleasant to take away from the desk and into meetings. The included stylus means taking notes in Microsoft OneNote is possible, although not always easy. The stylus doesn't feel as precise as Microsoft's Surface Pen and there are some definite problems with palm rejection; you can't always trust the touchscreen will ignore your hand resting on the screen when drawing and writing, although this is something you can work around as you get used to its idiosyncrasies. There's also nowhere to store the stylus, which is a bit of an oversight. You'll probably lose it very quickly unless you keep a close eye on it.
Display
The 12in screen has a 1,920x1,080 IPS panel. It's very bright, topping out at nearly 300cd/m2 and its decent contrast ratio of 963:1 leads to plenty of detail when looking at photos. However, with just 72% sRGB gamut coverage, its bright images aren't matched with particularly vibrant colours, leaving bright reds, greens and blues rather devoid of life. It's no worse than a mid-range laptop, but I'd have expected just a little more from a £700 machine.
The built-in speakers are disappointing as well; they're not very loud and even tweaking the pre-installed Bang & Olufsen EQ software doesn't make a huge amount of difference. Dialogue in movies is fairly clear and music is certainly audible, but it's not the rich audio experience you'd want from a device you might use as your dedicated media streaming machine when at home.
Performance and Battery life
The HP Spectre x2 comes equipped with 4GB of RAM and a dual-core Intel Core m3-6Y30 processor running at 0.9GHz. This is the same chip found in the entry-level Surface Pro 4, and its Hyper-Threading support, which gives each physical core an additional logical core for a grand total of four threads, means it's much more capable than the low-powered Celeron and Atom chips you normally find in other Windows 10 tablets.
In our crushingly hard 4K benchmarks, the processor stood up very well indeed, managing an overall score of 23. Ignoring the inevitable score of 6 in the multi-tasking portion, the results are better than they appear. A score of 54 in the photo editing test points towards speedy single-core speed, while 32 in the video editing test suggests multi-core activities are handled pretty well. In real world testing, I had no problems whatsoever working on documents, sending emails, watching videos and listening to music, and there wasn't a stutter to be found even on the most media-heavy websites.
I also ran our basic Dirt Showdown benchmark to test its gaming muscle. No surprises here. At 1,280x720 resolution and High settings, it managed 25.5fps, although I was able to get a playable framerate at Ultra Low settings at the same resolution, so there is potential here for some very light gaming.
Battery life was a little disappointing, with the Spectre x2 clocking in just 6h 7m in our video playback test at 170cd/m2 screen brightness. In real world use, I was able to stretch it to around 7h in a single charge, and with even more careful management, 7h 30m is definitely possible.
Conclusion
The HP Spectre x2 is a good all-round 2-in-1. At £700, it's not cheap, but when compared to the equivalent Surface Pro 4, it's still pretty great value, particularly when the Spectre x2 comes with a keyboard in the box. The basic Surface Pro 4, on the other hand, costs £749, but you'll have to factor in another £110 if you want to buy a Surface Pro 4 Type Cover keyboard, bringing the total overall cost to £859.
There are flaws that you'll need to work around. There aren't enough built-in connectivity options, for example, and its speakers and stylus pen are both rather disappointing. However, as a device for work and for media consumption, it's more than capable, and is a great budget alternative to the Surface Pro 4.
| Core specs | |
|---|---|
| Processor | Dual-core 0.9GHz Intel Core M3-6Y30 |
| RAM | 4GB |
| Memory slots (free) | Not stated |
| Max memory | 4GB |
| Dimensions | 303x209x13mm |
| Weight | 1.2kg (combined), 0.8kg (tablet) |
| Sound | 3.5mm headset port |
| Pointing device | Touchpad, stylus |
| Display | |
| Screen size | 12in |
| Screen resolution | 1,920x1,080 |
| Touchscreen | Yes |
| Graphics adaptor | Intel HD Graphics 515 |
| Graphics outputs | None (possible via USB type-C adapter, not included) |
| Graphics memory | Shared |
| Storage | |
| Total storage | 120GB SSD |
| Optical drive type | None |
| Ports and expansion | |
| USB ports | 2x USB3 type-C |
| Bluetooth | Yes |
| Networking | 802.11ac |
| Memory card reader | microSD |
| Other ports | None |
| Miscellaneous | |
| Operating system | Windows 10 |
| Operating system restore option | Windows 10 restore |
| Buying information | |
| Parts and labour warranty | One year RTB |
| Price inc VAT | £699 |
| Details | store.hp.com |
| Supplier | store.hp.com |
| Part number | Spectre x2 12-a001na |
Source: Expert Reviews
