HP ENVY 14 Spectre Pro Reviews

Without a doubt, the Envy 14 Spectre is distinctive and has features that are undoubtedly going to be compelling to some users. Yet I'm at a loss to figure out exactly who this ultrabook is intended for when there are more portable options floating around. HP has a blend of style and substance here and should be applauded for creating something this unique, and the $1,399 starting price doesn't actually seem too high for what you're getting. I'm just not sure this kind of bling justifies itself in this market; whether or not I'm wrong remains to be seen.

HP’s Envy 14 Spectre is an impressive piece of hardware. It is a device with more flaws than an Apple laptop - the glowing red Beats logo is the strangest of several questionable design choices - but the Spectre 14 makes up for such shortcomings with several major wins. The greatest of these is the display. It’s beautiful. It’s colorful. It’s bright. It’s everything that computer enthusiasts constantly ask for but never receive. No, it’s not perfect (quality is still behind a decent desktop monitor) but it puts most laptop displays to shame. Only Apple’s new Retina MacBook Pro will clearly hand the Spectre its hat, but the base price of the Retina is $2220, so it's not a fair comparison. Sound quality is another strength. It easily beats laptops of similar size and matches or exceeds many larger multimedia and gaming laptops. If you don’t care about listening to music this may not be of benefit to you, but I do care about that, so I thought Beats audio added a lot to the product.

Despite my concern that the HP Envy 14 Spectre is perhaps a little chunky compared with other Ultrabooks on the market, it compares very favourably with the competition in terms of what you get within those two centimetres: connectivity, performance, battery life, display quality and, not least, classy product design. If I forget for an instant that certain other Ultrabooks are as thin as a blade, the Spectre stands out as a fabulously slim notebook that (apart from lacking an internal optical drive) does everything I'd want from a supposedly full-size notebook - and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

Gorgeous looks plus a great interface and display overcome the Envy 14 Spectre's slightly higher weight.

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.

On its own, the Envy 14 Spectre is a nice laptop. And we mean that in the most superficial way: this is one of the loveliest, most memorable machines we've tested recently, and its 1600 x 900 display is unparalleled -- at least in the Ultrabook category, where it's slim pickings for high-quality screens. The problem is the price. We're not saying that $1,400 cost of entry makes the laptop any less of a solid product, but we're coming up short on reasons why you would choose this over a $1,100 ASUS Zenbook UX31, or even a $1,300 MacBook Air. Those are two beautiful, finely crafted options right there, and let's not discount the $1,000 Dell XPS 13 and $1,200 Lenovo IdeaPad U300s. We love these for their looks too, even if they are safer than the Spectre's glass-and-metal show. And while the Spectre's 1600 x 900 screen is a delight, the UX31 offers the same resolution for hundreds of dollars less. Most importantly, perhaps, the Spectre doesn't perform any better than less expensive Ultrabooks packing similar (or identical) components. Worse, it's saddled with a stiff clickpad -- something that can't be remedied with a quick driver update.

None of the competitors mentioned above is as drop-dead sexy as the Spectre, they all have smaller displays (with the exception of the Ultra M3), and none have integrated media-streaming features. On the other hand, each one of them is less expensive (by several hundred dollars, in some cases), and several are considerably faster than the Spectre. If sheer performance is your foremost concern, you can leave this machine off your list of contenders. Fortunately for HP, the Spectre boasts plenty of other reasons for us to recommend it. Audacious style sits atop of that list, but that exquisite 14-inch display, fantastic keyboard, integrated media streaming, and generous software bundle (including Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Premiere Elements, and a two-year subscription to Norton Internet Security) follow closely behind.

The Envy 14 Spectre is a perfectly fine, competent and desirable machine. It checks most of the right boxes up and down the line. Still, I have to admit, I wonder for whom it would be the right choice. While it's a striking machine, to be sure, I can't honestly say it beats the MacBook Air on any crucial point, and it costs $100 more. HP paints a lovely picture in bold strokes, but lacks Apple's attention to detail. If you prefer Windows, though, as I do, the Spectre is a great place to start, and it's got a better display, trackpad and port selection than most any ultrabook on the market. Just know that without the battery life and price to match, it’s not a flawless victory. In some ways, the Folio 13 is still the best all-around ultrabook on the market.

With its sexy glass casing, fine keyboard, and great battery life, the HP Envy 14 Spectre is a slick premium package.

Without a doubt, the HP Envy 14 Spectre is one of the best ultrabooks we’ve ever tested. Solid performance, unique style, plenty of inputs and a gorgeous high-resolution screen make it a joy to use. This is the first ultrabook that’s seriously tempted me to give up my hulking full-sized daily driver laptop, because there really are no compromises, so long as you can live without a disc drive and down’t mind giving the glass lid a wipe down every once in a while.

The HP Envy 14 Spectre is already in line to be one of the most talked-about laptops of the year, and that's with systems featuring Windows 8 and Intel's Ivy Bridge chips still to come. Its design is funky without being impractical, and it doesn't become a prisoner to its novelty. It is, however, expensive, without offering higher-end components to help justify the cost.

The HP Envy 14 Spectre comes with a two-year warranty, a nice change from the usual one-year plan we see from most laptops these days. HP delivers a valuable selection of bundled software on this machine, as well. The Envy 14 Spectre comes with full versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and Adobe Premiere Elements 9 for photo and video organizing and editing. The current versions of those programs retail for $99 each, so it's great that HP includes full versions of these, even though they're a version behind. These are powerful editing tools for consumers, and they're far better than any such software you'd get with any other notebook. Also in the bundle is the Starter version of Microsoft Office Starter (a more common inclusion) and a two-year subscription to Norton Internet Security 2012. The last is a nice capstone on an unusually good bundle of software.

A gorgeous ultrabook with a great display, but it's just too expensive when lined up against faster, better competition.

We're deep into the second round of Ultrabook releases by now, and we feel the HP Envy 14 Spectre sits alongside the Dell XPS 13 at the top of the heap. But these are two different machines with different focuses. The HP Envy 14 Spectre is the most media-centred Ultrabook, with a larger 14-inch screen, 1600 x 900 pixel resolution and Beats audio technology. But it won't win over fans looking for performance and portability, due to the lower spec processor and bulky Gorilla Glass chassis. If you can overcome the steep asking price then the HP Envy 14 Spectre is a well-built and stylish way to transport and enjoy your music, movies and do a spot of image editing.

Unlike the evil villains of the James Bond movies, this Spectre is not scary at all - it is a beautiful-looking machine but could launch at the wrong time as its price and processors mean it could lose out to cheaper Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks.