HP Envy 14 Spectre - Unbreakable

Unbreakable

After a slew of Ultrabooks suspiciously resembling Apple’s MacBook Air, it’s refreshing to see one that looks a bit different, although... there is a certain similarity to another Apple product:

The HP Envy 14 Spectre generated lots of buzz at CES 2012, and for good reasons: it’s one of the first 14-inch Ultrabooks, it’s absolutely covered in current, flavor-of-the-month material, Corning’s damage-resistant Gorilla Glass, it incorporates an NFC receiver, and of course, it's incredibly sexy.

With a hefty S$1999 price tag, the Spectre is definitely in the ‘premium’ category. Most of its inflated price goes towards its design and engineering as its specs are actually quite ho-hum: Intel Core i5-2467M (1.6GHz) dual-core processor, integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics, and a 128GB SSD (exactly the same config as HP's other Ultrabook, the Folio 13, which is S$600 cheaper). 

So what do you get for your money? Let’s start with its most striking feature, the Corning Gorilla Glass. HP has wrapped the Spectre in the stuff, using it on the lid, the screen and even the wrist rest area. While you’ll probably have to clean smudges off the lid every couple of minutes (if fingerprints bother you, this is not the notebook for you), the glossy, black glass gives the Spectre a clean, futuristic appearance and, contrary to common sense, the glass swaddling the Spectre actually makes it stronger, not more fragile. 

Corning’s Gorilla glass has become really popular with tech gadgets recently for its its strength and damage resistance without the bulk and thickness associated with traditional glass if it were to withstand the forces that the Gorilla glass stands up against. To test it out we tried a bit of random vandalism with a set of keys and a medium sized screwdriver, but despite our best efforts, the Spectre remained remarkably scratch-free. We’re not saying you should throw rocks at the screen, but it definitely holds up better than other notebooks.

Inside the Spectre

Opening the Spectre can be a bit problematic as the notch is wafer thin - you need to wedge a fingernail under it and even when you’ve got the hang of it, it can still be a bit awkward. There is an alternative method, where you use the gaps on both sides (left by the elevated wrist rest – more on that below) to lift the lid, but it's not ideal due to the reduced leverage and the heavy lid (Gorilla Glass covered surfaced isn't light!).

Once you’ve got it open, there’s a pretty obvious MacBook Pro look to the Spectre, with its silver palm rest and black screen. The feature that sets it apart is the sheet of Gorilla Glass that covers the entire wrist rest area and extends from the front lip almost to the bottom of the keyboard.

If you’ve seen an old, well-used notebook you might probably guess why the glass surface is here, as the wrist rest area always shows the most 'battle' wear, with watch straps, rings and sweaty palms constantly banging and rubbing away at its finish. It remains to be seen how well the Spectre will hold up, but based on our earlier tests, its Gorilla Glass laughs in the face of all but the most acidic-sweating user abuse (if such a person exists).

Display Matters

The 14-inch display has a native resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels, which is a nice improvement over the 1366 x 768 pixels resolution found on most other Ultrabooks (a notable exception being ASUS's Zenbook UX31, which also utilizes a 1600 x 900 pixels resolution display). Still, for the premium price, a full HD 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution would have been a very welcome addition - especially since this notebook has a full 14 inches of screen area.

While the Gorilla Glass is glossier than we would have liked, nevertheless, the screen is clear and bright, with excellent off-axis viewing angles.

Audio Delivery

Like pretty much every HP Envy notebook out there, the audio system is by Beats. Two front facing speakers are located on the base of the unit and produce a surprisingly loud volume - even 50% was bordering on wake-the-neighbors-noisy. Promotional materials state that the unit is also equipped with a Triple Bass Reflex Subwoofer but, even after taking the base plate off the unit, we couldn't physically find it. A jog dial found at the left side adjusts the volume, while a dedicated Beats button brings up the Beats sound-shaping software. A mute button and accompanying LED indicator is also found here.

The audio is fairly bass heavy, which may lend some weight to the existence of a subwoofer unit - although, we've found that most Beats products veer towards bass anyway. Regardless, it’s still the best audio we've heard from an Ultrabook. The Beats equalizers and sound-shaping software are tuned for Beats headphones but also work quite well with other brand headphones and external speakers (less so with the unit’s own built-in speakers).

Keyboard Usability

HP uses a flat-topped chiclet keyboard on the Spectre. Like a few other Envy models, it uses ‘Radiance Backlighting’ which provides brighter illumination, with each key having its own individual LED underneath it. The backlight will turn off when left idle for a while. One nice feature that adds to the premium feel is a proximity sensor that will activate the backlight when your fingers get close to the keys. (Now you know why the Envy 14 Spectre commands such an expensive price tag.)

The layout is essentially the same as HP’s other Ultrabook, the Folio 13, with a slightly shortened spacebar and arrow keys doubling up as Home, End, Page up and Page down keys. Following what seems to have become a common trend, the function keys are reversed by default, performing their alternate multimedia functions without requiring the Fn + F key combo. As an interesting extra, the Spectre has a dedicated Twitter function: pressing Fn + T will launch the Twitter website.

Typing on the Spectre feels quite different compared to other notebooks thanks to its elevated glass wrist rest. It's an interesting feel with both good and bad points. While we liked the slightly improved wrist angle, and how the glass remained cool after hours of use (in this regard, it's even better than aluminum), we didn't like the slight but noticeable drag on the glass, although, you can get used to it after a while. The keys themselves are amongst the best we’ve tried on a notebook, with a firm feel and a generous amount of travel and resistance - much better than the often mushy and too-shallow keyboards of some other Ultrabooks.

Trackpad Responsiveness

The glass trackpad is slightly bigger than average size (it's much bigger than the rather small trackpad on the Folio 13 at least), but judging from the amount of space below that, it could probably still be a bit bigger. Like other Ultrabooks, it’s a clickpad with a designated area (demarcated by a line) for clicking. The pad is slick and fast, with a fairly firm click, although we did notice an unreasonably large dead area towards the upper corners (which was also noticed on the previously reviewed Envy 15).

Multi-touch gestures are supported with differing levels of success: zoom in/zoom out was unreliable, and stuttery when it did work, while, on the other hand, two-finger scroll was surprisingly smooth. We would have liked to see the useful two-finger click to right click feature included too.

Ports and Connectivity

The guy at HP who designed the Spectre must be left-handed because every port on the machine is found on the left. Crammed tightly into a 10 cm wide area, you’ve got a DisplayPort, HDMI port, RJ-45 port, powered USB 3.0, powered USB 2.0 and a headphone/microphone combo jack. A multi-card reader can also be found closer to the front of the unit.

In terms of functionality, we’ve got to hand it to HP as they’ve included everything you need - the elusive RJ-45 port is an especially nice touch for an Ultrabook - but, and this is really nitpicking, while it might be nice to have everything conveniently located in one spot, we would have liked to see an extra USB port on the right-hand side for a wired mouse so the cable doesn't have to wrap all the way around the unit. With multiple peripherals plugged in, the left side can also get a bit crowded easily. Imagine if you plug in a fat device, such as a USB thumb drive or a 3G modem, they could easily block the adjacent port(s) and making them useless.

On the right, you'll find the power port, LED indicators for power and SSD activity and the previously mentioned Beats controls .The rear of the unit is free of any ports.

NFC Enabled

This is an interesting feature that, surprisingly, HP hasn’t promoted much in their Spectre advertising, despite its uniqueness among Ultrabooks or even all other notebooks. NFC or Near Field Communication, is an emerging technology that lets you exchange data between your device simply by placing your smartphone next to the antenna located on the notebook.

For the Spectre, this area is located on the left side of the glass wrist rest. We tried it out with a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which required downloading the HP Touch to Share app from the Android Market. Right now, it’s a bit iffy and we were only able to get our phone linked about 50% of the time. Furthermore, the only thing it enabled us to do was share a URL on our phone with the Spectre, which seems a bit superfluous to say the least.

Hopefully in future, more applications will be available, as there’s lots of potential in this area, although for it to be effective, the linking process will have to be more stable.

Performance Benchmarking

The Envy 14 Spectre is the first 14-inch premium Ultrabook so there’s really no direct competition to compare it to. As such we chose a range of notebooks that compete with it on one aspect or another. Specifications-wise, the Spectre uses the same setup seen in many other Ultrabooks, including HP's own Folio 13.

We also chose the higher-specced ASUS Zenbook UX31, which is in a similar price range and also utilizes a 1600 x 900 pixels resolution display.

As a contrast for other larger-sized Ultrabooks, we've included the brand new Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3, which is one of the few 'Ultrabooks' available right now with a 15-inch screen and also the only one offering discrete graphics (at the point of publishing), equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M GPU.

And finally, as a comparison to other ‘premium notebooks’ at around the same price range, we included Dell’s XPS 15z, a ‘premium multimedia notebook’ running a dual-core Core i7 processor and discrete (if low-end) NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M graphics.

Futuremark PCMark 7

PCMark 7 assesses a system’s overall specs in several smaller test suites to tax various subsystems. As expected, the Spectre posted almost identical scores to HP’s other Ultrabook, the Folio 13, while performing slightly worse than the Core i7 equipped ASUS Zenbook UX31 (both its processor and SSD used in the notebook are better than the competition).

Neither the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 nor Dell XPS 15z are equipped with an SSD drive, explaining their lower overall scores here. Since PCMark 7 is a system-wide benchmarking tool, it factors in a storage drive's performance into many of the tests since reading/writing data is all part of daily usage of the system, no matter the task at hand.

Futuremark 3DMark06

This benchmark shows the difference a discrete graphics module can make (even a low-end model like the Dell XPS 15z’s NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M). The Spectre was a relatively weak performer, with a score again similar to the Folio 13 since it uses the integrated graphics on the processor. It even fared worse than the Zenbook UX31 because of the faster processor on the Zenbook. The clear winner here was the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 with its new NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M GPU.

Far Cry 2

How do those 3DMark scores translate to actual user experience? As you can see, limited as it is by its integrated graphics, demanding games on the Spectre are all but unplayable. Even with only medium graphics quality settings and a 1024 x 768 pixels resolution, the Spectre barely managed to stutter its way to an underwhelming 25 average frames per second.

Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge update with HD 4000 graphics is rumored to be a much needed improvement and more capable for gaming, though we won't really count on it given the track record for integrated graphics performance for over a decade. For now at least, if you need a machine that will handle games, you'll need one with a proper discrete graphics processor. Speaking of which, do note that the Acer machine's GeForce GT 640M didn't seem to shine much when compared to the Dell's GeForce GT 525M and that's because the latter has a much more powerful CPU that further assists in raking in the FPS. If the CPUs were identical, you would notice an increased performance gain from the machine equipped with the GeForce GT 640M.

Battery Performance and Portability Index

The Spectre is equipped with a 6-cell, 14.8V, 58Wh battery that takes up about half of its interior space. Unlike most Ultrabooks, the Spectre’s battery can be removed through an easily accessible base plate - although the battery itself is screwed into place.

With its larger and higher resolution screen, the Spectre wasn’t quite as good as the Folio 13 (which still holds the record for longest battery life) although it was the second best performer, beating both the Zenbook UX31and Timeline Ultra M3 by about half an hour, lasting 4 hours and 40 minutes in total - more than enough for a good movie or maybe even two!

As expected, power consumption was slightly worse than the 13-inch display Ultrabooks, and slightly better than the 15-inch Timeline Ultra M3.

If you want to see how much difference Intel’s low voltage mobile processors make, compare the Dell XPS 15z, which uses a regular mobile processor to the low voltage Ultrabooks. While the XPS 15z has a full HD screen, it also uses a higher capacity 64 Wh battery, but still died more than an hour before any of the Ultrabooks.

Portability Index

Intel’s Ultrabook specifications state that 14-inch Ultrabooks are required to be thinner than 21mm. The Spectre neatly beats that by being only 20mm thick. In fact, its overall footprint is quite small, and could easily be mistaken for a 13-inch Ultrabook with its dimensions more in line with models like the Folio 13 and Zenbook UX31 (it's actually smaller in both width and length compared to the Zenbook UX31)

Intel however, has no official weight limit specifications for their Ultrabook category (something they probably should); and, while the Spectre is small, it feels incredibly dense (thanks largely in part to the amount of Gorilla Glass on it) which somewhat nullifies any portability advantages it gets from it's compact dimensions. At 1.8kg - about 500g heavier than most other Ultrabooks with similar dimensions - when you're carrying around in your bag, you certainly won’t be mistaking it for a lighter, 13-inch Ultrabook.

On our Portability Index the Spectre’s heavy weight causes its ratio to dip below 2.0, while most other 13-inch Ultrabooks sustained far higher ratios. Acer’s Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 was worse at only 0.974, but that drop came with significant performance gains and an even larger screen, something the Spectre can’t boast over other, lighter, Ultrabooks.

The Price of Premium

The notebook market is no stranger to premium prices based on luxury looks and design. After all, most of Apple and Sony’s range is based on this philosophy - so it’s great to see HP trying something new. The black glass style of the Spectre is clean and modern, without being too novel so as to look dated in a few years. And, unlike some designs that can sacrifice practicality for looks, the Spectre’s Gorilla Glass construction actually makes it far more robust than other notebooks.

It is, however, expensive, without offering higher-end components to help justify the cost to most casual onlookers. While it offers excellent build quality, superb keyboard, great audio and a better than average display, for around the same price, the Zenbook UX31 offers better performance across the board and is far lighter and more portable to boot. Similarly, the Dell XPS 15z offers more functionality (such as a built-in optical drive), discrete graphics and a larger, full HD display.

No doubt, the Spectre is a good looking and well built machine, but it’s also heavy for its size and equipped with only average specs. At S$1999 for a Core i5 processor model, the Spectre isn't cheap, and you’re not just paying more for those gorgeous good looks, you're giving up portability too. While there are certain characteristics of the notebook design and features that quickly add up to its price premium, this machine is clearly not made for the average user who judge purely by price-performance metrics. Premium products are targeted at a different group of users who don't mind spending more to keep up with the Joneses. Ultimately, you have to ask, how much are you willing to pay, just to look good?

For those who don't mind spending this amount for a quality HP Envy class notebook, take note that the Envy 15 costs just as much, but offers much more substantial capabilities as it has a stronger multimedia performance with a full HD screen, better audio subsystem and more processing horsepower for gaming. Of course it comes in 800 grams heavier than the Envy 14 with a much larger 15.6-inch screen too. It's far from being value for money, but it's something worth considering for those who don't mind the size and bulk.

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