We once again have a 13.3-inch, full HD panel with a 300-nit brightness rating and a color gamut that includes 72 percent of the sRGB space. One thing that hasn't changed much: the screen. This isn't a surprise, especially considering what competing laptops have to offer, but it might still be a shame, depending on your needs. That includes the full-size HDMI socket, the Mini DisplayPort and the full-size SD reader. Unfortunately, however, while the full-size USB port and headphone jack both live to see another day, the rest of last year's ports have all been sacrificed in the name of a slimmer design. Don't worry, though: One of the original three full-size USB connections remains, meaning you won't need a dongle to charge your phone or plug in any other peripherals you might have lying around. These ports also support Thunderbolt 3 accessories, and it's also through one of these ports that you'll charge the machine. All told, the audio here is acceptable, but it's nowhere near as good as on, say, the new MacBook Pro, which I happened to be testing at the same time as the x360.Īlso new this time: The addition of USB Type-C ports - two of them, to be exact. Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" sounded better, but then again, it's a tinnier track to begin with. Green Genes" and Motown songs like Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" seemed to be missing some crucial bass and drum notes. But like so many other laptop speakers that came before it, these can sound a bit tinny, depending on your musical selections. The speakers are certainly loud - when listening alone in my apartment, I opted to cap the volume at around 25, but probably could have gone even lower. HP says the idea in separating the two speaker pairs the way it did was to ensure decent sound regardless of the usage mode. In addition to the two speakers in there, there are two more on the bottom of the laptop, which means the total speaker count is double what it was last year. There's also now a conspicuous Bang & Olufsen speaker grille stretching above the keyboard. For starters, HP swapped in the same new logo it introduced earlier this year on its Spectre 13.3 ultraportable you'll see that on both the lid and the lower bezel. Though the silver color and unibody construction have carried over from the original, you'd never mistake this year's for the 2015 edition. Throughout, the machine is made of solid aluminum, with the hinge made of stainless steel underneath. I've noticed the same thing on other Windows laptops I've tested (many of which use Synaptics) it's a telltale sign of a subpar trackpad. This caused me to grab and reorder my pinned browser tabs when really I was trying to move the cursor around the desktop. Also, it frequently rebels by registering phantom left clicks. Once again, HP went with a Synaptics clickpad - seriously, would it have killed HP to go with one of Microsoft's own Precision touchpads? As spacious as the trackpad is, it's also stubborn and unpredictable, with a high-friction surface that makes it harder to drag the cursor around than it should be. While I mostly enjoyed the keyboard, though, I was not impressed with the touchpad. It mostly works out - the backlit keys are well spaced and springy - and having just tested the Touch Bar MacBook Pros, I have a renewed appreciation for laptops with media shortcuts built into the Function row. As a result of using this "Micro Edge" panel, as HP calls it, the design team had to retool the keyboard, extending it from edge to edge so as to take full advantage of the available space. For reference, the upgraded 15-inch x360, which we're not reviewing today, now measures 15.9mm thin, making it as thin the earlier 13-inch model.Īs for that smaller footprint, HP pulled a page from Dell's playbook and went with a nearly bezel-less display, allowing for a smaller chassis than you'd otherwise expect on a 13.3-inch machine. (The first-gen version weighed slightly more if you bought it with a full HD panel.) Meanwhile, HP reduced the thickness by 13 percent - it's now 13.8mm, or 0.54 inches, as compared with 15.9mm (0.63 inches) on the original. First off, we're down to 2.85 pounds - an 11 percent drop from 3.17 on the original. Fortunately, then, the refreshed version really is noticeably lighter. The original x360's relative heft was one of the few things I found fault with when I reviewed it.
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