HP’s just told me that the ultra-shiny Spectre Ultrabook will be available in Australia from the end of the month, starting at $1899. Read on for my hands-on impressions.
We’d seen the Spectre at CES, but an HP representative brought the only sample in the country right now into the Gizmodo offices for a brief hands-on session. I’m hoping to have a full review unit sometime next week.
HP’s pitch for the Spectre is that it’s a ‘premium’ ultrabook; while that means it attracts a premium price over the rest of the ultrabook crowd, it’s also got a completely different style to the general razor thin design used by every other ultrabook.
In fact, my first impression of it is that it’s a notebook that’s gone on something of a crash diet, although at least from a technical perspective, it fulfills the requirements of the ultrabook specification.
It’s also Beats labelled — I’m told as an early promotional tool you’ll get a set of Beats headphones with every Spectre — and NFC capable, although that’s really more of a future proofing step at this point, given there’s only a tiny handful of NFC-enabled phones in Australia right now.
The keyboard is excellent; it could keep up with my typing speed with a good amount of room on each key and only a small quantity of noise as I tapped away.
HP’s claim is that it’ll manage up to nine and half hours of battery life; while battery life figures are rather rubbery I’ll be keen to see how well it can stack up in real world tests.