HP isn’t exactly a mobile tech enthusiast’s favorite company, making the occasional headline of late with just a renewed commitment to the nichey Elite x3 Windows phone, a commercial expansion of the education-first Chromebook x360, and a few fruitless Cortana speaker teasers.
Of course, the Palo Alto-based tech giant is still focused mainly on manufacturing seemingly moribund PCs, dominating the traditional computer industry for the past three years as convertible laptops slowly go mainstream.
HP’s newest 2-in-1 crown jewel predictably packs the latest and greatest Intel processors (eight-generation Core i5 and i7 versions, to be specific), while letting you choose between a Full HD and 4K screen resolution option.
Both measure a decently compact 13.3 inches in diagonal, supporting touch interaction and literally bending over backwards to please. Up to 360 degrees, as the Spectre x360 name suggests, with four resulting usage modes, including tablet functionality… of sorts.
But in addition to your typical incremental performance upgrades, full range of memory and storage configurations (capping off at 16GB and 1TB respectively), as well as respectable 10-hour battery life (in mixed use), the revised HP Spectre x360 13 also brings something original to the table… for a change.
Not entirely new but decidedly innovative, HP’s proprietary “Sure View” technology was first introduced on the business-centric EliteBook family. Now the same “integrated privacy screen” feature is available for Spectre x360 buyers starting at $1,150 stateside.
Sensitive information can be easily protected with the press of a dedicated button, which reduces “up to 95 percent” of visible light when viewed at an angle. Basically, that means someone sitting next to you on the train or in a bus station won’t be able to distinguish anything of importance on your screen. Pretty neat, huh?