The HP Spectre x360 is cut from the same cloth as its ultrabook counterpart, the Spectre 13, reviewed last week. Both devices come in dark grey, with copper accents, and exude warmth and luxury.

As a two-in-one convertible, the x360 offers additional usage modes over an ultrabook. Simply rotate its shiny 360-degree hinges to transform the device from a standard clamshell laptop to a large and unwieldy 13.3-inch tablet.

At around 1.3kg, the Spectre is not as light as the Asus ZenBook Flip S (1.1kg). It is also not as slim as its Asus rival, though it is by no means bulky at around 13mm thick.

Bundled with the Spectre is a battery-powered active stylus. It is pressure sensitive, which means exerting more strength while writing on the Spectre's touchscreen will produce a thicker line. But it seems to have some difficulty with lighter strokes - they were not registered by the device during my tests, leaving blank gaps in my scribbles.

The Spectre has a neat optional feature - an integrated privacy screen - to deter nosy neighbours. Dubbed HP Sure View, it is enabled by pressing F1, which turns the display opaque when viewed from the sides. The contents of the screen are visible only to those directly in front of it. But even when the privacy option was not enabled, the screen looks more reflective to me than usual, prompting me to turn up the screen brightness.

All variants of the Spectre x360 have a fingerprint sensor. It is found at the edge of the device so you can unlock the gadget when the keyboard is less accessible, such as when the Spectre is in tablet mode. And for truly hands-free authentication, the Spectre's infrared Web camera supports facial recognition via the Windows Hello feature.

The keyboard is tactile with good depth. The touchpad is wider than most, though it would have been more useful if HP had raised its height instead.

HP has retained one full-size USB Type-A port on the Spectre. While the other two USB Type-C ports take up less space and also support the fast Thunderbolt 3 interface, the Type-A port works with most of my USB accessories without requiring a dongle.

Also, the Spectre has a microSD card slot that is handy for transferring files from other devices such as smartphones. It can also be used to augment the convertible's internal storage, though this is not a priority, seeing as my review set has a 1TB solid-state drive.

The Spectre comes with Intel's latest Core i7-8550U processor, a quad-core chip that offers a good performance bump over its predecessor, especially for heavy multi-tasking.

Battery life is excellent, thanks to its sizeable 60 watt-hour battery. It lasted around eight hours in our video-loop battery test. This is similar to the uptime of the Dell XPS 13 ultrabook.

•Verdict: Its optional privacy screen is useful for some, while the battery life is excellent. However, the stylus is not quite as good as others and the entire package is relatively pricey.