The HP Spectre XT is one of those sleek looking Ultrabooks, and the moment I saw it I liked how it felt and looked. My first real Windows 8 experience at the Microsoft store in Boston, after trying out several different machines I went for the HP Spectre XT. I liked the 15-inch screen and the touch and feel of it.

It is a different machine then last years Ultrabooks, the ASUS Zenbook Prime I have is thin with a metal finish which makes it slippery and a very nice 13 inch screen. Its great for traveling, and light the battery wasn’t that great. But it was a great machine, but I wanted something a bit bigger then is more powerful and so that is why I went with HP Spectre XT. It has this industrial finish to it that makes it very appealing, it really looks like an Apple device, if I didn’t know it was an HP laptop. This was the machine I was looking for to jump into Windows 8, I’m not used to a laptop with a Touch Screen but it was an interesting idea, and people are always surprised when I make adjustments right onto the screen.

Specifications

• Operating system – Windows 8 64
• Processor – Intel® Coreâ„¢ i7-3517U (3 GHz/1.9 GHz )
• Screen size – 15.6″ diagonal full HD IPS BrightView LED-backlit (1920 x 1080)
• Memory – 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
• Hard drive – 500 GB SATA (5400 rpm)
• Secondary hard drive – Acceleration cache (32 GB Solid State Drive cache) with Intel Smart Response Technology

Pros:

• Beautiful Design, I Love The Clean Metal Feel
• Touch Screen – Works Perfectly
• Very Nicely Spaced Out Full Keyboard
• A Decent Touch Pad, but the Windows 8 gestures get a bit annoying
• The Sound On the laptop is very loud and clear, Which was Perfect for my need
• Powerful Processor – Can handle anything I threw at it

Cons:

• Seriously Horrible Battery, barely lasts two hours
• Substantially Heavy Machine
• During Hibernation it Loses Battery Power

Wrap Up

I got this laptop before the new Intel Haswell boards came out which was optimized and in all the ultrabooks. The reason why this laptop annoys me after several months of use is because of the battery, its a beautiful machine that I enjoy using but runs out of battery so quickly. It barely lasts 2.5 hours with the screen at full, and if you lower the brightness you can get it to 3.5 hours but just barely, this isn’t what we have come to know from laptops, we expect more of them. But as my first experience into Windows 8 I have to say that I enjoyed it and learned a lot, the machine itself is perfect for Windows 8, there was a lot to it that I had to figure out. For $1299 over it is a powerful laptop in a beautiful package, and the price decent, but the battery is annoying.

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