HP’s Spectre x360 15t gives you a bigger screen in a smaller laptop, and it somehow manages to make that screen 4K without killing your battery. Announced Sunday at CES in Las Vegas, this powerhouse system will be available in the spring, with prices yet to be specified.
Featuring a 15.6-inch 4K screen, the newest Spectre x360 15t saws off so much bezel that HP said it’s now about the size of previous laptops with 14-inch screens. This side shot of the new Spectre x360 15t next to the older version shows the difference.
HP
The new Spectre x360 15t gets significantly smaller thanks to a smaller bezel.
HP kept fairly thick top and bottom bezels on the previous generation because it didn’t want to shed the infrared camera support that enables Window 10’s cool biometric login feature. A new generation of IR camera module shrinks from 6mm to 2mm and allows HP to keep the IR module while making the bezel smaller. You can see just how much smaller the module is in the picture below.
Gordon Mah Ung
The significantly smaller IR module allows HP to shrink the heck out of the bezel.
The other stand-out feature of the Spectre x360 is its battery life. HP claims the the Spectre can last up to 17 hours of run time on a charge. That may not impress you until you learn the number is produced with a 4K-resolution panel. 4K panels, whether OLED, IPS or VA-based, all typically kill battery life due to the power required to push light through many more, tinier points.
HP said it has a 4K panel option that sips a mere two watts in normal operation, allowing battery life to hit that 17-hour mark. If you just don’t care about battery life and prefer jaw-dropping contrast ratios, HP still offers a good ol’ battery-sucking 4K OLED with a rated 100,000:1 (that’s not a typo) contrast ratio.
HP