HP’s new Spectre x360 13.5 and Spectre x360 16 laptops with 12th Gen Intel are going to be bangers

What you need to know

• The Spectre x360 13.5 replaces last year’s model with an all-new, smoother design and Intel 12th Gen U-series processors.
• The Spectre x360 16 is also refreshed with Intel 12th Gen P- and H-series CPUs and Intel Arc graphics.
• Both are now available to order from HP.com starting at $1,250 (13.5-inch) and $1,650 (16-inch).

The HP Spectre x360 14 was one of our top laptops of 2021 for obvious reasons. It had a wild 3:2 OLED display, came with a pen, had a bold design, quad speakers, and was fun to use especially if you got it on sale.

New for 2022 is the Spectre x360 13.5. Don’t be confused. It’s the same laptop in many ways, but HP is ditching the non-x360 Spectre 13 and merging the device ID into the new Spectre x360 13.5. On top of that, it gets an all-new design language that copies the Spectre x360 16, including softer edges (pillow top) and less ornate accent bling.

The Spectre x360 13.5 is redesigned from the ground up with all new updated hardware, although the fantastic OLED display and aspect ratio remains. It’s also the “world’s first 13.5-inch convertible laptop PC with a 5MP IR intelligent camera,” which we saw in HP Elite Dragonfly Max in 2021.  

That camera does a lot of heavy lifting and uses the same tech as the 16-inch model, including auto-framing, appearance filter, AI noise removal, and backlight adjustment.

That display comes in a variety of options at 13.5-inch, including full HD LCD and 3K (3000x2000) OLED. HP’s privacy-focused Sure View Reflect is also available in the full HD model. The top-tier OLED now offers HDR 500, is anti-reflective, True Black Certified, and brings 100% DCI-P3 color gamut.

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We’re looking at Intel 12th Gen Core i7-1255U and Core i5-1235U with Intel Evo for the rest of the hardware. That’s an interesting move from HP as these are newer 15-watt chips with ten cores and 12 threads, but they’re not the more powerful P-series like what Lenovo used in its similar Yoga 9i 14-inch. While Lenovo’s laptop is extremely powerful (even beating an M1 MacBook Pro), battery life was weak, which HP is looking to avoid with Spectre.

Graphics are the usual Iris Xe, and users can get up to 32GB of LPDDR4x RAM (onboard) and up to 2TB of Gen 4 PCIe NVMe for storage.

HP reworked the thermals to keep everything cool and quiet and is using a new sLCP + YTB fan design (a “first” for Spectre) with 122 blades that improve airflow by 10% and 8% acoustic performance improvement compared to the last-gen. It’s also now using In-bag detection 2.0, which should better keep the device from waking up while in transit.

Look for a slight improvement with the HP MPP 2.0 Tilt Pen, as it can now stick to the Spectre x360 13.5’s display on the right side for quick access. HP is also now using Wake on Touch, which we’ve only seen in Surface Laptop Studio.

You won’t have to wait long to get the new Spectre x360 13.5, as you can order one starting today from HP.com starting at $1,249.99. And HP partner BestBuy.com and physical Best Buy stores will also be carrying the device.

HP Spectre x360 16 (2022)

Although we recently reviewed the Spectre x360 16 (2021), HP is not resting on its laurels. Our big issue with the 16-inch version was simply performance: It was still using Intel 11th Gen as it launched a few months before 12th Gen was announced.

That’s all fixed now, as HP has updated the Spectre x360 16 with Intel 12th Gen and Evo certification. In another unique twist, HP is not only offering the 45-watt Core i7-12700H chip (14 cores, 20 threads) but a more battery-friendly Core i5-1260P with 12 cores and 16 threads.  

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The GPU also changes from an RTX 3050 to Intel Arc A370M (4GB GDDR6 dedicated), which should give this laptop an interesting power to performance ratio. Indeed, HP claims 15 hours of mixed usage and up to 19 hours of video playback.

The rest of the Spectre x360 16 largely remains the same, which is good. You still get a 3K or 3.8K 16-inch 16:10 display, with the 3.8K version still being OLED. There’s also up to 2TB of storage (Gen4), 32B of memory (DDR4), and the HP True Vision 5MP IR camera making this ideal for many video meetings.