Living With the Spectre x360 13.5 (2022)

Convertible or 2-in-1 laptops aimed at the high-end consumer have become better and better, with HP’s Spectre X360 13.5 for 2022 being an outstanding example. While I’ve seen several great looking 2-in-1s lately, the Spectre x360 13.5 shows just how far the category has come, with the Spectre bringing in a couple of improvements—including those to the display and the camera—that make it stand out.

The most obvious of these is the display. The unit I tested came with a simply gorgeous OLED touch display with 3,000 by 2,000 pixels. The resolution is great and the 3:2 screen ratio gives you more vertical screen real estate—it’s only a 6% increase vertically but it’s still appreciated. Other display options include a more standard 1920-by-1280 IPS touch display or a 1920-by-1280 IPS display with HP’s SureView Reflect privacy screen.

It’s a very solid laptop with an aluminum case, and a screen that folds over so you can use it as a traditional laptop, tablet, or propped up like a tent for presentations. The unit I had was a silver aluminum color, though there are also “Nightfall Black” and “Nocturne Blue” options. The unit itself measures 0.67 by 11.7 by 8.7 inches and weighs 2.97 pounds by itself and 3.63 pounds with the included 65-watt USB-C charger and pen.

From my perspective, the Spectre x360 13.5 has the bare minimum of ports. There’s a headphone/mic jack on the back right corner, a single USB-A port that drops down a bit on the right side, two USB-C ports, on the left side, and another on the back left corner. Putting ports on the corners is actually pretty convenient, particularly on a convertible machine, though USB-C ports on both sides would be more convenient. I missed having a traditional HDMI port, though HP does ship the unit with a mini-dock with an HDMI and two USB-A ports. It worked well with both that dock and several others I’ve tried lately, including HP’s newest Thunderbolt 4 dock (G4).

(Credit: Molly Flores)

The keyboard seemed very nice, with a decent sized touchpad. It has a key that physically covers the webcam, as well as lights to show when the mic and speakers are muted, and a separate key on the bottom row that works as a fingerprint reader. Another key pulls up various HP applications such as Command Center, a gaming hub, and a photography app called HP Palette.

Of course, one of the things we’re all doing more of these days is video conferencing, and one of the big improvements is to the webcam.

The Spectre X360 13.5 has a 5MP IR camera “with AI,” that I thought looked very good—better than I’ve seen on most competitors. Within the included HP Command Center app, there’s a camera control section called GlamCam, which includes an auto framing feature (that worked better than on most of the other systems I’ve tried), lighting correction options, and an appearance filter (which I can’t say did a lot for me). I also appreciated a separate Enhanced Lighting app that makes the screen work like a ring light. with lots of controls over temperature and intensity.

Logging in via Windows Hello worked quite well. Overall, this may be the best built-in camera system I’ve yet used.

It has two bi-directional beamforming microphones, with “AI noise reduction” along with four down-facing speakers. It includes a dynamic voice leveling features, and Bang & Oulfsen’s audio controls. I was very happy with the audio.

On the performance side, the unit I tested had an Intel Core i7-1255U (Alder Lake) processor, with 16 GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. The 1255U is a 15-watt processor with two performance cores, and eight efficiency cores, supporting a total of 12 threads, with 12MB of cache, and a maximum turbo speed of 2.7 GHz. As such, it has two fewer performance cores and less cache than the Core i7-1260P I’ve seen on a number of high-end laptops lately, such as the competing Lenovo Yoga 9i. Both processors have Intel Xe graphics, but the 1255U has a maximum frequency of 1.25 GHz vs. 1.40 GHz on the 1260P. (The only other processor option for the Spectre 13.5 is the somewhat slower Core i5-1235U).

Likely as a result, the Spectre x360 scored a bit less on most of the basic benchmarks than the other Alder Lake systems I’ve tested. But it still provides a notable improvement over last year’s systems.

On my most difficult tests, it was slightly slower than the Yoga 9i on executing a complex Excel model, and on a large Handbrake compression. It was much faster than the Yoga 9i on my MatLab test, where the 9i I tested was held back by only having 8 GB of memory, but slower than other systems with 16 GB of memory and the Core i7-1260.

With a new fan design, it’s quieter than previous models in the series. The HP Command Center enables other nice options such as “smart sense,” which balances performance, temperature, and acoustics based on the application and battery status. This includes controls over things like fan speed and temperature, and it includes in-bag detection so that you don’t accidentally leave the machine running in your bag, preventing overheating or battery drain. Of course, you can manually control some of these settings as well. Overall, though, it makes it more convenient as a system to travel with.

The unit comes with a 5.5-inch stylus, which supports 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt control. It has two buttons and a USB-C port for charging and can magnetically attach to the side of the machine, or you can carry it in the protection sleeve that the machine comes with. It felt very good to use the pen in tablet mode.

Other features it supports include QuickDrop for moving photos from your mobile device to the machine, and Duet for extending the display to a mobile device. Both work with either iOS or Android, though the Duet(Opens in a new window) application only covers a wired connection (you’ll need to subscribe for a wireless connection.)

The unit I tested sells for $1749.99 with the OLED display; other models start at $1,250 on HP’s web site as I write this.

Overall, I was quite impressed with the Spectre x360 13.5—it was light and fast, has a wonderful display, and the best webcam I’ve tested in this class of machine. Its biggest competitor is probably the Yoga 9i, another great consumer 2-in-1. In both cases, you’re getting a fast, well-built, modern machine (though I’m a bit disappointed that neither has an HDMI port.) The Yoga is slightly faster on most applications, and to my ears, the audio was a bit better. But the Spectre was lighter, had a superior display, and a notably better webcam. It’s clearly a top choice.

Here’s PCMag’s full review.