HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) review: The new best laptop

What's really cool is that those new internals actually unlock new potential. In previous generations, new PCs could do the same things that their predecessors could, just marginally faster. With the NPU that's built into Intel's Core Ultra processors, the HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) can handle on-device AI tasks. These can range from Windows Studio Effects that blur your background on your webcam and such, to creating new backgrounds for images.

Intel didn't stop at an NPU either. It boosted integrated graphics by a lot.

Of course, this stuff isn't unique to the Spectre x360 14, but HP does always manage to put together one of the best total packages, with a beautiful 14-inch OLED display and a best-in-class keyboard.

About this review: HP sent us the Spectre x360 14 for review. It did not have any input on this article's contents.

HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) pricing and availability

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) is available now, starting at $1,649.99. While that might seem a little pricey, there are no low-end SKUs here. That price gets you an Intel Core Ultra 7, 16GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an OLED display. The unit that HP sent me comes in at $1,969.99, and it boosts those specs to 32GB RAM and a 2TB SSD.

Design

HP continues to pull it back

I've reviewed every Spectre x360 since 2016. I've seen the display aspect ratio evolve from 16:9 to 3:2 and then back down to 16:10. I've seen new colors introduced, like Dark Ash Silver and Poseidon Blue. I've praised HP for killing off the Natural Silver color, only to see it revived the next year. Most notably, I've watched as the overall design got flashier and prettier, only for it to be toned down.

Back in 2021, HP was all in on gem-cut edges and accent colors. Those sharp corners have been softened over the last couple of generations, but with the new chassis for 2024, the accent colors are gone as well. In the 2023 model, a subtle accent remained, with silver strips around the touchpad, the hinge, and the frame. If you showed me this laptop three years ago, I'd guess it was the new Envy x360, because that stand-out design was one of the things that held the Spectre x360 out above its competition.

We can probably depart from Memory Lane now. The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) comes in three colors: Nightfall Black, Slate Blue, and Sahara Silver. The unit that HP sent me is Slate Blue, but Sahara Silver is the new one. Personally, I'm a big fan of it, and I'm including some shots from my briefing in the galleries.

The chassis generally has harder corners than its predecessor did, but it maintains the flat rear corners that it's had since 2019. As we've seen since 2020, the back-left corner has a 3.5mm audio jack, and the back-right corner has a Thunderbolt port. These are strategically placed, because the angle makes them work well no matter what orientation you're using this convertible in. It also helps to prevent cables from getting in your way.

On the right side, there's another Thunderbolt port, and on the left, there's a USB Type-A port, something that many other companies have removed from premium laptops.

HP continues to make some of the most beautiful laptops on the market.

Overall, the design is great. HP continues to build some of the most beautiful laptops on the market. The premium metal build is something that you'll feel good about carrying around, and even better about using next to Mac users with their basic old aluminum designs.

Display and keyboard

Plus, the webcam is improved even more

The HP Spectre x360 14 comes with a 14-inch 16:10 display. You'd think that's obvious given that it's in the name, but over the last few generations, it's bounced between '13.5' and '14' branding for a 13.5-inch 3:2 display, so this is actually new. Aside from Microsoft's Surface PCs, HP was one of the few OEMs hanging onto 3:2 displays, but I'm pretty happy with 16:10 on a machine like this. I think it made the right choice.

The display is 2.8K OLED with a dynamic refresh rate of up to 120Hz. The colors are vibrant and the animations are smooth. I'll talk more about gaming in the performance section, but games looked beautiful on this thing. From my testing, it supports 100% sRGB, 92% NTSC, 95% Adobe RGB, and 100% P3, which is all what you'd expect from a solid OLED display.

Also in my testing, the black level stayed at 0.01 no matter what the brightness was set to. That means that the contrast ratio increases throughout.

HP has packed an all-new 9MP webcam in the top bezel, and as I've said for the last two or three years, if you want the best quality laptop webcam, you should buy HP. This camera can now record 4K.

It's also packed with features. There's an app called HP Enhanced Lighting that basically turns your screen into a ring light. With Windows Studio Effects and the NPU included with Intel Core Ultra, you can also do things like blur your background, change your gaze so it looks like you're watching the camera, and use automatic framing so the camera follows you around. And with all of that extra resolution, there's plenty of room for the field of view to follow you.

To be clear, some of these features have appeared on Intel-powered PCs before, but they've never been very good. They'd tax the system so much that things would just break.

HP continues to offer a best-in-class keyboard experience. The Spectre x360 feels comfortable and accurate to type on, and the keys don't wobble at all.

One welcome addition with this year's model is a haptic touchpad. It's pretty solid too. I've not had any issues with drag-and-drop functionality like I've seen on some lower-end touchpads.

Performance

Intel Core Ultra is the generational improvement you didn't know you needed

Like I mentioned in the beginning of this review, this isn't a regular old spec bump. If you buy a PC with an Intel Core Ultra, you'll actually be able to do things with your PC that you couldn't do before, and developers really haven't tapped the possibilities just yet.

First of all, Core Ultra comes with a Neural Processing Unit, or NPU, which is for AI tasks. Right now, you can use this by activating Windows Studio Effects, and you can actually see when the NPU is in use in the Task Manager.

The new HP Spectre x360 is an upgrade that actually allows you to do more with your PC than you could before.

It's not perfect, and Windows Studio Effects is one of the few things you can actually do to take advantage of the NPU right now. Windows Copilot runs in the cloud, but Microsoft is going to be adding logic for it to run on-device if your hardware can handle it. Adobe has a new denoise feature in Lightroom Classic, but for now, that runs on the GPU, so the experience is pretty bad.

But developers are working on supporting this. Audacity just announced noise cancelation, automatic transcription, and more. You see, AI isn't just about chatbots. These features can work to improve pretty much anything across the board if it's implemented intelligently.

And then there are Intel's new integrated Arc graphics. The last time we've seen a real improvement in integrated graphics was with 11th-gen 'Tiger Lake', when Intel introduced Iris Xe. Once again, Intel is promising 1080p gaming at 60fps, and it more or less delivers. My biggest testimonial is that when I install a game, I'm confident that it will work.

When I reviewed the Acer Swift Go 14, which has the same chip, I played a lot of Forza Horizon 5, among other things. This time I went heavier and played Battlefield V. You're not going to get the ray tracing that you would with an RTX laptop, but Arc can still offer an impressive gameplay experience.

When you install a game on Intel Core Ultra, you can feel confident that you'll be able to play it with integrated graphics.

While Intel is once again pushing gaming on integrated graphics, you should think of it as a casual gaming experience. You can play pretty much any game you want, but if your primary use case is gaming, you should still get dedicated graphics.

As you can see from the benchmark scores, there are some major, major improvements over last year's Spectre x360 13.5. One of the reasons that there's such a big difference in performance is that HP elected to use U-series processors in its premium laptops, while Dell and Lenovo used the 28W P-series in their XPS 13 Plus and Yoga 9i, respectively. On top of that, Meteor Lake is just that big of an upgrade.

Battery life isn't super impressive, although that's not too surprising given the increased wattage being pumped through the CPU gen over gen. Still, it's good enough. On average, using the power slider set to balanced and the default setting in MyHP, I found I'd get an average of between six and seven hours with a regular workload, meaning mostly working through the browser.

And yes, HP does have its own power settings in its own app. It's annoying, because Windows does have a power slider built into it. Ironically, when HP launched the Dragonfly Pro, it and AMD talked a lot about systems being intelligent enough to know when you need more power and when you don't, and that the user should never have to touch the power slider. Giving people an extra, hidden power slider is a bad choice, considering that if all you do is turn the Windows power slider to the max, you'll get subpar performance when compared to the competition.

Should you buy the HP Spectre x360 14 (2024)?

You should buy the HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) if:

• You want the best experience you can get in a laptop
• You do a lot of photo editing, maybe with some video editing mixed in
• You want something you can use for work, but also do some gaming on
• You're on a lot of calls and care about webcam quality

You should NOT buy the HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) if:

• You could benefit from 5G or a privacy display
• You're a heavy gamer
• You don't need the best of the best

The HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) is the best laptop you can buy right now; however, you might have noticed that one of the cons is that it's not a Dragonfly. Here's what I mean by that. The HP Dragonfly G4 is winning right now. It's the product that I, and other reviewers, carry with me. And yes, we do ask each other which laptop we're carrying that day.

The Dragonfly is a business laptop, which is why I don't recommend it to everyone, but it's just so good. It's ultra-light, packs 5G connectivity, and some models come with a privacy display. HP hasn't made a non-convertible Spectre in over five years, so there's just no consumer equivalent to the Dragonfly. My question is always, why not?

But I digress. The HP Spectre x360 14 has by far the most power we've seen in a 14-inch convertible so far, whether it be from the CPU, GPU, or even the new NPU. The chip unlocks actual new features that you haven't been able to use before, and there will be more on the way. On top of that, it's got a best-in-class keyboard and a beautiful OLED display. If you want the best a consumer laptop can offer, you go Spectre x360.