HP Spectre XT TouchSmart 15-4010nr Pro Reviews

In terms of what an ultrabook can deliver, you can’t go wrong with the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart. Its display still impresses me even after using it for several hours and its Intel Core i7 CPU made multitasking a complete breeze. There are only two things you should consider if you’re on the fence about this laptop: its weight and its battery life. 4.96lbs doesn’t sound like a lot, but that additional weight on your back and shoulders could do some damage if you’re not built well enough to handle it. The upside to that additional weight is you’ll always have a powerful touchscreen PC with you when you finally get to your destination, or at least get to sit down for a few minutes. The Spectre XT’s battery life also leaves much to be desired since 4 hours of runtime is relatively short and will result in you wanting to be connected to a power outlet as much as possible.

With a large and lovely touchscreen display and eye-catching, brushed-aluminum design, we really wanted to love the HP SpectreXT TouchSmart 15-4010nr. Unfortunately the terrible battery life and poor audio let it down. And because the HP SpectreXT TouchSmart 15-4010nr is heavy for its size, we're not fans.

Forgetting the applicability of Intel's ultrabook branding, the Spectre XT TouchSmart is a great deal. We no longer miss having an internal optical drive, and even if the hard drive/mSATA flash combo doesn't always live up to SSD-class expectations, you're still getting 500GB of storage in an era when more and more data is getting stored in the cloud, leaving your Internet connection as a far tighter bottleneck than even the slowest hard drive. For general productivity, light entertainment, education, and most other moderate-demand tasks, the 15-4010nr delivers ample performance and does justice to Windows 8.

While the HP Spectre TouchSmart XT was one of the first Windows 8 laptops we previewed way back in August 2012, we've only recently gotten our hands on the final shipping version of it. In many ways it's been worth the wait, as this is one of the only slim, upscale 15-inch touch-screen Windows 8 laptops you'll find. At $1,299 for this Intel Core i7 configuration, it's not inexpensive, but for that you get excellent design, a fast CPU, and a rare Thunderbolt port on a non-Apple laptop. At the same time, in this price range, it would not be unreasonable to ask for entry-level discrete graphics, better battery life (this system barely topped 3.5 hours), or even a slot-loading optical drive, which shouldn't be too hard to fit into the 18-millimeter body.