The latest HP Spectre x360 13 comes with a slew of significant upgrades over its predecessor.

While the new iteration of HP's premium laptop has the same sharp chiselled edges and angular design as the previous version, the bezels at the top and the bottom of the display have been reduced drastically.

The result is a 11 per cent reduction of the laptop's footprint. It means that this 13.3-inch notebook fits into bags more easily. It is also handier to hold when it is in tablet form, achieved by rotating its 360-degree hinge.

Thankfully, the bezel reduction does not come at the expense of a Web camera, which remains above the screen and supports Windows Hello's face-recognition feature. Like its predecessor, the latest Spectre has a physical switch at the side that disables the Web camera for privacy.

The other big changes are internal. The new Spectre is powered by Intel's latest 10th- generation Core processors.

The internal cooling system has been improved. There are larger air intakes and vents for better air circulation while two fans and three heatpipes dissipate heat efficiently from the processor.

The screen itself is among the best in its class. It is bright (up to 400 nits of brightness) and offers vibrant colours.

A complaint I have with many modern laptops is their small touchpads, though, to be fair, there is only so much room for the touchpad when the laptop is a compact one.

But the Spectre does have one of the smallest touchpads in its class. The upside is that this glass-coated touchpad is smooth, responsive and accurate.

Its keyboard is excellent with just the right amount of resistance such that it feels firm and pleasant to type on.

My only gripe is that the layout is not entirely conventional as there is an extra column of keys to the right (Home, Pg Up, Pg Down, End). As a result, first-time users will likely miss-hit the Enter key in the beginning, though they should get used to it after a while.

The Spectre has the same type of ports as the previous model, which is a good thing.

With two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports and a single USB-A port, the Spectre will be compatible with most accessories and peripherals. It also has a microSD card reader and supports the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard.

Its performance in general computing benchmarks such as PCMark 10 is decent. Its score of 4,286 is higher than that of the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 (4,088), but lower than the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (4,500).

And while not the most essential aspect of a portable notebook, the Spectre's graphics performance is slightly below average compared with its closest rivals' in the 3DMark gaming benchmark.

Battery life is where the Spectre comes out tops. In PCMark 10's Modern Office workload test, which runs general computing tasks such as Web browsing and spreadsheets, it lasted an incredible nine hours and 39 minutes, which was almost four hours longer than its closest rival, the Acer Swift 5.

With its excellent build quality, attractive design and long battery life, the HP Spectre x360 13 is easily one of the best ultraportable notebooks you can buy today.

This story first appeared on hardwarezone.com.sg.

FOR

Compact and stylish design

Long battery life

Good keyboard

Camera kill switch

AGAINST

Small touchpad

Graphics performance is below average

SPECS

Price: $2,899

Processor: Intel Core i7-1065G7 (1.3GHz)

Graphics: Intel Iris Plus Graphics

RAM: 16GB DDR4

Screen size: 13.3 inches, 1,920 x 1,080 pixels

Connectivity: 2 x Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A, microSD card slot, audio jack

Battery: 60 watt-hour

RATING

Design: 4.5/5

Performance: 4/5

Value for money: 4/5

Battery life: 5/5

Overall: 4.5/5 [ST Tech Editor's Choice]