HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) Laptop Review

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) is available in Nightfall Black, Sahara Silver, and Slate Blue. See the bottom of the laptop here.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024)'s build quality is outstanding. Its aluminum chassis feels very sturdy, exhibiting only a small amount of flex on the lid and keyboard deck. The finish doesn't easily scratch or pick up fingerprints, and its feet stick firmly to the bottom. The whole device feels hefty, with evenly distributed weight.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) has good hinges. They feel smooth when opening and closing the lid and are stable, exhibiting very little wobble when moving the device or typing heavily. However, they have just a tad too much resistance for a one-handed lift.

The HP Spectre x360 2-in-1 laptop 14's serviceability is okay. Accessing the internals is straightforward; you only need to remove four T5 screws and undo a few clips with a prying tool. Unfortunately, the RAM isn't user-replaceable, and there's only one M.2 2280 storage slot.

See the maintenance and service guide here.

• 65W power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024)'s OLED display looks very sharp and provides enough screen real estate for split-screen multitasking. Unlike the HP Spectre x360 14 (2023), this newer model has a 16:10 aspect ratio instead of the more squarish 3:2 of its predecessor, meaning it's wider but shorter (in landscape mode). While 16:10 is a popular aspect ratio for productivity these days, some may find it a little too narrow when using the device as a tablet in portrait mode. OLED panels are susceptible to permanent burn-in, especially with static elements like Windows' taskbar; however, it's unlikely to be an issue for those viewing varied content.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) is only available with a 120Hz OLED display. While not entirely necessary for productivity, a 120Hz refresh rate does help provide a better user experience than a standard 60Hz display. It makes motion look smoother, like when scrolling through a document, and improves responsiveness when moving the cursor and using touch or pen input. However, setting the refresh rate to 120Hz will drain the battery faster. You can set it to a fixed 60Hz to save battery, and there's also a setting that automatically switches the refresh rate between 60Hz and 120Hz, depending on whether you're actively using the laptop or looking at static content.

The display's contrast ratio is effectively infinite since OLEDs can turn off individual pixels to produce perfect blacks. The posted result is the contrast ratio when measuring with the checkerboard pattern above. Measuring a full-black and full-white screen separately results in a higher contrast ratio of 51,150. We got an even higher contrast of 72,350:1 when using an HDR video on YouTube.

As you can see in the checkerboard image, there's some color fringing between the black and white boxes. The fringing is hard to notice in person—the picture just makes it more apparent.

The display gets bright enough for use in most indoor settings but not outdoors in broad daylight. It's very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which is great for dark room viewing because it causes less eye strain.

The display's reflection handling is decent. Its glossy finish mainly struggles with bright light sources, like a lamp or open window during the day. These reflections are visible even when viewing light-color content with the screen at maximum brightness.

The display's horizontal viewing angle is decent. Like most OLED panels, colors shift fairly quickly as you move to the side.

The display's vertical viewing angle is passable. Again, color shift is the main issue when viewing from above or below. It isn't too bad if you're only viewing documents, but you'll have to look at the screen more or less straight on if you need perfect accuracy for color-critical work.

The display's accuracy is okay out of the box. The white balance is great; however, most colors look oversaturated because the Default color profile uses a wider color space. The gamma is too high for the most part, especially in dark scenes, resulting in loss of detail and crushed blacks.

There are many preset color profiles available, including Entertainment, Low Blue Light, Low Light, Native, Photos and Videos (P3-D65), Printing and Imaging (Adobe RGB), Web (sRGB), and Work. If you don't like the Default profile's oversaturation, you can switch to the Web (sRGB) profile, which limits the color reproduction to the sRGB color space. Here are the sRGB profile's measurements:

• Avg. White Balance dE: 1.76
• Avg. Gamma: 2.2
• Avg. Color dE: 1.20
• Avg. Color Temperature: 6308 K

The display's color gamut is superb. It has full coverage of the sRGB and DCI P3 color spaces and near-full coverage of the Adobe RGB color space. It's suitable for media consumption, professional photo editing, and HDR video production.

The display's flicker is unlikely to be an issue for most people, as the flicker frequency is relatively high. However, it may still cause eye strain for people sensitive to display flickering.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) has a great keyboard. Its layout feels spacious and is easy to get used to. The keycaps are okay; they're stable but feel a tad cheap for such a premium laptop. They're also very flat, which you might not like if you prefer keycaps with a more concave form. The keys have a decent amount of travel, require little force to actuate, and provide clear tactile and audio feedback. The typing experience is great but can be slightly tiring because it's a compact laptop, and there isn't much space on the deck to rest the wrists properly. The backlighting is white; you can toggle through two brightness levels or turn it off completely using the F5 shortcut.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) has an excellent touchpad. It's large and tracks all movements and gestures well. Palm rejection also works as intended. This is a haptic touchpad, meaning it uses a haptic engine to simulate clicks instead of mechanical buttons, similar to Apple MacBooks. You can click anywhere on the touchpad, and the haptic feedback feels good. The only issue is that it sometimes doesn't register double clicks, though this doesn't happen often.

The speakers get very loud with minimal compression at higher volume levels. They sound clear, full, and relatively natural. There's some bass, but not a whole lot.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) has an outstanding webcam. The image looks sharp and detailed, with no visible noise. Color saturation is good, though the color temperature is too warm, almost unnatural. Voices sound clear over the microphone; the gain is quite high, which can cause some static noise in the background. You can adjust the video and audio quality via the myHP app.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) has a decent port selection. The USB-A port supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speed (up to 10Gbps) and Sleep and Charge; the latter lets you charge a mobile device even when the laptop is in sleep mode. Both USB-Cs support Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gbps data transfer speed and two 4k displays at 60Hz), USB4, DisplayPort 1.4, Power Delivery 3.0, and Sleep and Charge. Power Delivery lets you fast charge the laptop and other PD-compatible devices connected to the port.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024)'s wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE200. You can also configure the laptop with an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 wireless adapter.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core Ultra 5 125H (14 cores, 18 Threads, up to 4.5 GHz, 18MB Cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (16 cores, 22 Threads, up to 4.8 GHz, 24MB Cache)

Both are high-performance CPUs from Intel's Meteor Lake family. Unlike Intel's 14th Gen processors (13th Gen Raptor Lake refreshes), these CPUs have two low-power E-cores (LP-E) to further improve efficiency and an NPU (Neural Processing Units) to handle AI-based tasks, like background-blurring on video calls. They're designed for general productivity tasks, like text processing, web browsing, video playback, spreadsheets, and presentations. They can handle some light programming and video editing, though the experience won't be as smooth as on a laptop with a higher wattage CPU and dedicated GPU, like the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024), and tasks will take longer to complete. Regarding core composition, the Core Ultra 5 has four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power efficiency cores (4P+8E+2LP-E), while the Core Ultra 7 has six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power efficiency cores (6P+8E+2LP-E). Both CPUs have the same Neural Processing Units (NPU).

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) is only available with Intel Arc Graphics, an integrated GPU designed to handle light tasks like web browsing and video playback. You can play some older or puzzle-like games, but you'll have to play at a lower resolution or with low graphical settings to get smooth gameplay.

You can configure this laptop with 16GB or 32GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-replaceable.

You can get the HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) with 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage. The SSD is user-replaceable; the slot supports M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 SSDs.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) has an outstanding overall score in Geekbench 5. The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H CPU performs well in a variety of workloads and can easily handle general productivity tasks like web browsing, text processing, and video playback. You can run more intensive, multi-threaded applications; however, you might experience some stutters and slowdowns if the work is overly complex, and it'll take longer to complete tasks. As for the Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, although it's faster than the Core Ultra 5 because it has two additional performance cores, it's still much slower than the high-performance CPUs typically found in workstations and gaming laptops, like the Intel Core i9-14900HX in the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024) or Apple's M3 Pro/Max SoCs in the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M3, 2023) and Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023). Similarly, the Intel Arc GPU performs well for integrated graphics but is much slower than even an entry-level discrete GPU like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650.

The posted results are numbers obtained in the default Balanced profile. Switching to the Performance or AI Smart Sense mode has almost no impact on the performance.

The Intel Core Ultra 5 125H CPU performs well in the Cinebench R23 benchmarks. Again, this CPU can handle some heavily multi-threaded workloads, but know that there are significantly faster CPUs on the market, like the Intel Core i9-14900HX or AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX.

While you can render 3D images in Blender using the CPU, getting a laptop with a discrete GPU is best, as even an entry-level GPU, like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, can render images much faster.

The Intel Arc GPU's Basemark score is unremarkable. It's a step up from Intel's own Iris Xe; however, it's still far too slow for graphically intensive games. You can play some simple, puzzle-like games or older titles at 1080p, but you'll have to play at a lower resolution or with low graphics settings to get playable frame rates.

Borderlands 3 isn't playable on the HP Spectre x360 2-in-1 laptop 14 at 1080p. The gameplay is too choppy, even with low graphical settings. The Intel CPU's integrated graphics can't handle such a demanding game.

Civilization VI is playable. You can easily get over 60 fps by turning down a few graphical settings. The average turn time is decent and within the expected range for a model with an Intel Core Ultra 5 CPU. Upgrading to the Core Ultra 7 will only get you a few more frames per second.

Counter-Strike 2 runs poorly on the HP Spectre x360 2-in-1 laptop 14. The Intel Arc integrated graphics can't push 60 fps at 1080p, even with the lowest graphical settings. The Core Ultra 7's integrated graphics will likely push closer to 60 fps, but the gameplay will still be very choppy due to frame drops.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs poorly. The gameplay is very choppy, even with low graphical settings. Upgrading to the Core Ultra 7 won't improve the performance significantly.

The keyboard gets a little toasty under load but isn't uncomfortable by any means. See a heatmap of the laptop's underside here. Fan noise is relatively low; it's mainly the sound of heavy airflow, not a high-pitch whine. The posted fan noise result is the level of noise when using the default Balanced profile. Switching to the Quiet mode reduces it to 39.5 dBA, while switching to the Performance mode increases it to 47 dBA.

The HP Spectre x360 2-in-1 laptop 14 has many pre-installed applications, including:

• Dropbox promotion: Ad for Dropbox file hosting service.
• HP Command Center: Lets you tweak the laptop's performance and fan speed, optimize network performance, and view system information.
• HP Enhanced Lighting: Adds a virtual light ring on the screen to improve lighting during video calls.
• HP PC Hardware Diagnostics Windows: Helps diagnose system issues.
• HP Privacy Settings: Lets you choose what type of information you share with HP.
• HP Smart: App for HP printers.
• HP Support Assistant: Lets you access information on how to repair and diagnose issues. Also contains guided troubleshooting via a virtual assistant.
• HP System Event Utility: Lets you see the system's information and run diagnostics.
• Intel Unison: Lets you connect your smartphone to the laptop, allowing you to send and receive messages, view photos on your smartphone, and transfer files, similar to the MyPhone app.
• McAfee: Antivirus software. Requires subscription.
• myHP: Lets you tweak the laptop's performance and fan speed, view system information, optimize audio and video quality during video calls, tweak the speakers' sound, change the display's color profile, and remap the stylus' buttons.
• OMEN Gaming Hub: Lets you access your installed games, HP rewards, and picture gallery. It also lets you see system information like CPU and GPU usage and temperatures, optimize the PC, and change the power profile.
• Solitaire & Casual Games: Solitaire, FreeCell, Spider, Mahjong, Sudoku, and other casual games.
• Spotify: App for the music streaming service.

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) has a fingerprint sensor and an IR facial recognition camera. You can use either to log in quickly, authorize purchases in the Windows Store, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.

The display supports pen input, using Microsoft Pen Protocol technology (formerly N-Trig). Depending on the region and retailer, you may or may not get a stylus included with the laptop. The stylus is an HP rechargeable (via USB-C) MPP 2.0 pen with 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt support. It attaches magnetically to the right side of the laptop for transport.