ed here with the digital digest and today i wanted to share a comparison between the hp spectre 16 on the left and the spectre 15 on the right now of course the spectre 16 is brand spanking new i just received this from hp for review purposes and it will be going back to the manufacturer and it incorporates a brand new 16-inch uhd plus oled panel that is 16 by 10 and that’s probably the first thing you notice because the display is considerably taller than the 15.6 inch 16×9 uhd oled panel incorporated in the spectre 15. both have 400 nits of brightness both are excellent displays but i do think one is better than the other uh so let’s take a look and listen to each display and their speakers and then i will give you my impressions and i’m also really curious as to what all of you think so let’s go ahead and do that right now so i’m going to stop them right there now you may have noticed of course the letterboxing on the left because remember this is a 16 by 10 aspect ratio it’s taller and really it’s a matter of personal preference i find both are really good but there’s no question 16 by 10 is coming back and coming back strong and it may be better for overall use in terms of a blend of content consumption as well as of course productivity and for that reason i do like the aspect ratio better on the left even though generally in my reviews i’ll state normally that 16×9 is preferred because for reviewing content actually proofing it i would prefer to have native resolution but the fact of the matter is because this display is larger at 16 inches as opposed to the 15.6 we’re getting the same effective experience and then extra resolution for everything else so by that measure i dig it you know when we’re dealing with lower res panels that aren’t oled that’s another story doesn’t mean i don’t like the 16 by 10 aspect ratio there but i do think that hp has made a solid improvement here and these screens are nowhere near max brightness just to give you an idea we’re probably about 70 percent 65 there and here about the same now if i were to crank these all the way up they will be completely blown out so anyone saying 400 nits is not enough you know i i’m not sure what you’re looking at so let’s take a listen to the speakers i will just start with the spectre 15.
make sure volume is all the way up certainly no slouch not amazing but in its class again i would say very good take a listen to the specter 16.
[Music] also at 100. so i would say very similar performance and i know for all of you watching at home how much you can actually gather from an audio test like this is very limited but i will tell you the spectre 16 wins and it should so both in terms of display quality i think it’s better not just because of the extra resolution but i think the panel technology uh you know moving from this generation to this has improved uh significantly and then the audio performance not miles better but slightly better and that’s an improvement is always welcome now uh one other av test before we move on to other performance which you already see a little preview of there just to show you how it actually reproduces colors because of course i think that’s very relevant as well let’s go ahead and take a look at the lg demo reel [Music] both are high gloss if that wasn’t obvious already [Music] well i meant to stop it there but of course accidentally jog that forward so performance i think is great on both but hopefully well i won’t say hopefully to each their own here but it’s clear for me that again the spectre 16 is an improvement in every way color representation better accuracy better even the brightness seems to be better but granted you know they have the same brightness rating now when we get to benchmarking you can see how close things are even though there are several hardware refreshes uh in between
these two machines it reflects that you know this was still the top of the line specter at its time and they’re not separated by huge amounts of raw hardware performance which is a good thing if you still own this and that’s part of the reason i’m doing this you know if you’re wondering whether or not you should upgrade to the spectre 16 i think it really boils down to a few things which i’m about to touch on first and foremost uh when it comes to gaming obviously the spectre 16 is superior i mean this is the story over and over again is it you know does it blow away the older specter 15 uh hardware no it doesn’t but if you must have the best you’re gonna get it out of the brand new spectre 16.
No question and that might seem obvious but you know just in the little estimated game performance you get the idea battlefield 5 is going to be playable at 1080p ultra and actually i just noticed that that was set to 1440. let’s go to 1080p here you see that we’re talking about five frames i almost misled you there because i almost was misled uh but it is so close so even if we disregard the fact that the time spy score isn’t even 400 points higher on the brand new spectre you know performance is going to be negligible now some of you may say five frames per second is a big gain so i’ll take that five frames and i’m with you there but not so much because of the five frames it’s more about the entire package that the spectre 16 brings to the table and again this was one of my the favorite actually in its class because at that time to get a uhd oled panel with solid brightness touch screen input a two in one experience a great keyboard there just weren’t any options hp was the only one now they’ve you know exceeded what they’ve done in the past and that’s the way things should work folks we shouldn’t go backwards we should go forwards and thankfully this machine does now the keyboard is just as good here as it was here but obviously we gave up the numerical pad but what did we gain a gigantic trackpad so if a larger touchpad is something that was on your shortlist you got it in addition to that uh what is arguably the most important thing that i’ve noticed so far is that this machine is so much more quiet than the spectre 15.
And that to me is maybe a difference maker altogether for example if you are not attracted to the new design and you prefer the older uh design language which you know sharper edges no no soft curvature really uh certainly as you may have noticed the design at the the top of the display again it’s curved we had more you know there’s still curved edges on the older machine but sharper corners now things are rounded out i personally like this more i know some of you inherently will not like it more but you will like the fact that it operates so quietly even when idling the older spectre 15 occasionally the fans would kick up that’s really not happening with the new spectre 16. and under load it’s quieter as well and it appears to have less throttling so if those things matter to you which they should spectre 16 does make a really big performance leap there and i think that’s critical now when it comes to again the keyboard experience it’s a wash the track pad this is definitely better not just because of the size it’s just a better trackpad and in addition to that you still have all the niceties that the keyboard had to offer in this generation here but they’ve added some things like a direct button to the hp software which could be set to the omen software i mean you can really you choose where you’re going to go in addition to that you know the webcam is better on the newer spectre 16 both of course support windows hello they have ir camera systems so that’s still good and of course we have a fingerprint scanner right here i mean so there are a lot of things to like about what has or the evolution of uh the um i almost said omen of the spectre lineup now i may have said oman before i’m confusing myself the fingerprint scanner here i mean if you were personally a fan of that location uh you know i don’t think it really makes a difference both work well so that’s kind of a moot point when it comes to i o it’s nearly identical i’m going to show you around the machine in a second but before i do that battery life charge time both of these are powered by 135w watt power bricks both of them can take power over their thunderbolt ports of course here we have two thunderbolt 3 ports here we have two thunderbolt 4 ports which is you know nice that you have that option to trickle charge you won’t get full performance with this machine on the trickle but again quieter and also when it comes to weight and i think this is surprising for a lot of people this machine 4.2 i don’t know if it’s four point two three or two four but four and a quarter pounds this one four point four four so we’re getting a bigger display uh in many ways better performance across the
board in every facet and it’s not that much heavier and i do prefer this display you already know that now in terms of the ram both have 16 gigs both have soldered ram so remember that i haven’t talked a lot about ram because i can’t really recommend the 32 gig option with the spectre 16 because it is just so expensive it tacks on about 500 uh forgive the fact that that’s out of focus io just to recap um we have let’s see if i can do this without destroying anything you know what i’m going to close up the spectre 16 just so we don’t run into a problem so again the 15 we have that type a port a kill switch the kill switch for the camera has been relocated on the 16 to the keyboard deck and both thunderbolt ports right there and these edges are something that are gone in the new design then on the other side and did i miss of course the micro sd card slot right there don’t want to forget that all that ventilation come around to the other side and you have your power barrel pin connector port hdmi 2.0 i believe it’s a b and then your headphone microphone combo jack and that’s it i mean that is the whole deal with this machine you know ventilation on the bottom ventilation at the back the other thing that has changed on the spectre 16 is the actual hinge you may have noticed that it’s curved now and just picking it up again it’s more of a curved design softer touch still a fingerprint magnet but i happen to like it some of you will say it looks more like other machines on the market i personally prefer this micro sd card slot thunderbolt 4 your power barrel pin connector there another thunderbolt 4 and this is part of that you know change in the edge and the way that it looks and feels you know just a different design and i think it’s better personally and then we have of course our hdmi out and our type a usb port with its little uh enclosure little lip there and that’s pretty much it again uh
the pen also changed uh this generation essentially what used to be the more expensive pen the upgraded pen for this line became standard across the board and it works well um the curved hinge i mean if i flip these around you’ll immediately see that curve in the hinge and by the way this can be opened with one hand for those of you that are wondering but this is a brand new hinge you know how well it will hold up i don’t know how long i’ll actually be you know reviewing the unit to give you feedback um you know we did have curvature here the difference is is that you can see the curvature on the interior when the machine is open and it is totally different again kind of reflects the transition from you know the sharp edges and i would say more industrial look that this machine had to some degree which i was a fan of but you know i i’m not against seeing a redesign that i think is nicer and i really do think that the new spectre design is sharp i’m just a big fan of what they did here uh transitioning away from the old uh you know diamond cut gem cut excuse me edge so if i pick them up let’s see if i can get a hand under this guy without breaking anything and i put them side by side you start to see exactly what i’m talking about with those edges you know it’s it’s clear when you do that and don’t forget that on the other side of the spectre 16 i think i did forget that’s where the headphone microphone combo jack has been relocated but either way i mean i don’t think that anyone will be disappointed with this new spectre i think it’s an excellent machine so far what i’ve seen um of course i have more you know testing to do i’ve only spent several days with it but i think we’ve come a long way in very short a very short amount of time and i think the star of the show if there’s one takeaway on this is this new display and the fact that uh the fan performance is so much better again charge time roughly the same you know to go from zero to full on either of these you’re looking at you
know over an hour i don’t want to say an hour and a half but probably an hour and 20 could be an hour and a half and they’re nearly identical on charge time battery life is where things are a little bit different and i’ve gotta iron that out but i do expect battery life to be better here than it was here with the older model and part of that is just also keeping thermals in check and newer hardware all around but it’s equally impressive if it does exceed it because we have a higher resolution larger oled that is driving that experience but yeah that pretty much rounds things out so far the spectre 16 looks like a winner so if you liked if you own this machine and you’re happy with it and you’ve gotten a couple years of use out of it i think you’re going to be really pleased with upgrading to this in the same vein if you don’t see anything wrong with it or if you’re wondering if you need to make this upgrade i would say the only reason you should upgrade is the new display and of course as i keep mentioning the thermals the ability to keep the cool uh the machine cool and not spin up you know at random i mean this is just a much quieter machine to use and a cooler machine overall and you know that’s something we kind of expect over time with the improvements on internals but that rounds it out io is fairly the same pricing pretty much the same from one generation to the next and you know even though we’ve got a new processor and a new gpu not that much more powerful so it’s really more about the display the design and of course the lack of you know kicking up of fans on a constant basis hope uh all of you enjoyed the video any questions or comments please feel free to post them hit that like button and as usual please feel free to subscribe and please stay safe later
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