ed here with the digital digest and today i wanted to share my full review the digitally digested segment for the hp spectre 14t now if you followed my initial coverage of this laptop you already know that i was impressed with it upon arrival it pretty much has everything you could want from an ultrabook and it breaks the trend of the traditional spectre lineup by giving you a three by two aspect ratio in this case a 3000 by 2000 resolution oled this build with intel’s core i7 1165 g7 16 gigs of ram and a one terabyte nvme still retails for around 1700 us dollars but i do expect that price to fall it has already gone down since this originally launched and this is the blue color for those of you wondering and in my opinion you really can’t go wrong with this ultrabook here in 2021 now of course a refresh may be coming sooner than later but how much of a performance gain that will mean to most of you may be negligible at best we have windows hello
capability with the ir camera at the top which works basically flawlessly we have a fingerprint scanner right here on the keyboard deck power button relocated dedicated mute and of course muting of the microphone with led indication which i love pen input because of course this is a two in one convertible and as you already know the screen is able to go all the way around not just open and close but we can go into tablet mode whatever mode you choose and pen input on here is solid the keyboard in my opinion is one of the best out there this is really true of all of the spectre laptops hp does an excellent job i believe hp and lenovo have the best keyboards in the business and this one’s no exception another nice thing about the spectre 14t is the size of the touchpad uh substantially larger than what you’ll find on my favorite from last year the 13t which is still a fantastic machine with the same internals that you get here at a lower price but many of you may prefer the extra height offered by the 3×2 aspect ratio on the 14t now when it comes to content consumption the speakers on here are fine they’re nothing amazing uh it’s more really about i would say having a computer that can do a little bit of everything which is exactly what the 14t can do just like the 13t that already is my ultrabook of choice and has been since 2019.
And in terms of performance the real jump we got with the 10th gen and this is evo certified is really iris xe graphics because with that you actually can game a little bit here now this isn’t a gaming laptop by any means but you can absolutely run older titles uh things that are not you know aaa brand new titles like cyberpunk or anything else you fill in the blank whatever your preference is you will be able to game you know when it comes to again older titles and that’s something that once upon a time in the ultrabook realm simply wasn’t possible and when it comes to the overall battery life that’s another thing that is solid uh now you can get this in you know different configurations obviously other than the review unit i have here but with the oled you’re looking at about eight to nine hours of battery life possibly even 10 depending on what you do in terms of screen brightness and the actual tasks that’s been my experience with it if you go hard at it you know you’re looking at under eight hours but right now just to give you an idea on screen brightness we’re a little over 50 if i take it all the way down you know things just got real that’s the lowest brightness setting
take it all the way up and well it’s looking blown out and that’s because it’s too bright uh for at least what i’m filming here now realistically speaking i like to keep it at around 50 so that’s where i’m getting my battery life numbers from if you’re curious and again if you watched my initial unboxing coverage comparison then you already know everything about this machine that you need to and it’s that it really is probably the best machine of its kind in my opinion fit and finish build quality battery life charges up fairly quickly under two hours to charge this and again it’s a big battery that does yield as i’ve stated you know somewhere between i’m going to say realistically seven to nine hours i know i said eight and then i said you could get as high as ten but realistically i wanna set true expectations here obviously and so seven to nine i feel like is a good range depending on users so who is this for well anyone who wants to travel light because it will do exactly that i think this is a great machine you know if you know that you’re going to be using this for school if you know that you’re going to be using it for work you’re going to be happy with it my only real gripe with this machine is that the webcam quality still suffers this is something that hopefully hp when this gets refreshed hopefully all manufacturers because hp is not the only one they will step up their webcam game i mean we’ve gone through the pandemic for over a year now crazy to even be saying that but it’s true and video conferencing has become the backbone of uh the world uh you know in her interpersonal communications have been
replaced by zoom meetings and having the ability to have a good webcam yes you can go out and buy one but it’s something that i think we need to start to see integrated and i really thought manufacturers would embrace through the course of this pandemic but we’re still not there hp is not alone on this so i’m not singling them out micro sd card slot love it we have a thunderbolt port here headphone jack thunderbolt port you are going to use those for charging as well and then a type a port on the left side you can see the pen is magnetically attached this is one of the few machines in hp’s lineup where the pen really does stay hp also supposedly and i have not had a problem with this because i haven’t been traveling around has support to ensure that this won’t wake up inside your bag it has detection capability i haven’t run into any situations where this thing is just powered on draining battery closed but we’ve all been there we know what that’s like it’s a pain in the butt so is this the perfect ultrabook in 2021 i think for many of you it is if you’ve been waiting for that three by two aspect ratio if you want an oled display this is really is about as good as it gets now if you want to spend less get a little more battery life you can go with the ips full hd version of this they also have a privacy display in the event that you need that but in a pandemic i feel like that’s less of a necessity these days
granted with vaccination rates things are changing we are getting back to more of a semblance of normalcy so maybe you want to have that privacy screen i’ve personally never been a fan of the privacy screen i just don’t feel it really does its job and you know it’s a thousand it’s a brightness it eats battery uh but that is an interesting feature that hp offers on this machine as well as the dragonfly i covered that in the past and look it’s a matter of personal preference but as i was saying when it comes to pen input when it comes to general processing uh whether you’re photo or video editing this will easily handle light photo and video editing we’re talking about uh raw stills from my sony a7r iv as well as 4k at 30 frames from my a7r iv uh my zv1 my 7r2 i can do it here it’s you know it’s not ideal it’s not like working with my asus g15 or a desktop but as far as ultrabooks go the 1165 g7 is perfectly competent doesn’t get too hot this isn’t going to necessarily burn you that’s another thing a lot of people worry about with a form factor like this and the pen input you know while no two-in-ones are going to live up to i think professional digital art i mean there you’re going to have to seek out specialized items i do think that what hp’s done with this revision puts it right on par with the surface pro in fact i think this is better than the surface pro in just about every way i used to always state that you know hp or lenovo whoever it may be granted lenovo is using uh wacom wacom
however you want to pronounce it drivers as opposed to n-trig technology the same as what microsoft uses and has owned now for several years i do really believe that the balance of the package you’re getting with the hp is vastly superior to what you get out of a surface pro and look i am a person who loves the surface pro concept it’s just become stale because frankly microsoft has not given us really something new and hopefully they will eventually but again the point of this video is to focus on this machine now on the back you can see we’ve got ventilation i mentioned it does get a little hot it’s not going to get incredibly hot you’re not going to burn yourself no real user upgradability if you want to get in there and upgrade the nvme that is the ssd the hard drive you can i don’t recommend it though pick the machine you need whether we’re talking about 8 gigs of ram or 16 gigs of ram that is soldered you will not be able to change that so keep that in mind i don’t recommend going in and upgrading this yourself because it’s a pain in the butt between the torx screws and the rubber strips that have to come off that you would then have to replace because the adhesive will be ruined i just see these machines as being what most ultrabooks are you buy them you use them you lose them i don’t mean you literally lose them but they live out their lifespan and then you know maybe they go to a child you know someone that isn’t as demanding that doesn’t need you know the newest the latest the greatest and you’re good to go and i really think the 14t is an exceptional machine uh the poseidon blue i think is a
really sharp color in this is a custom build that hp sent for review that of course is going back but i think they did a great job when i look at the 13t and the 15t they’re well represented the redesign with the screen to body ratio on the display was a welcomed redesign last year realized this year i feel like but this is a brand new offering and not brand new anymore so hopefully it will be around for a long time and just improved more and more i would love to see this uh you know with gen 4 pci e nvme drives which i’m sure we’re going to see now how much tangible difference that’s going to actually deliver is another story altogether but still pretty cool and when you think about what this is really capable of doing it’s a fairly phenomenal machine i mean if i could pick one ultra book to own this is probably it and i have to say when i first got this for review the three by two aspect ratio i wasn’t personally after because as a content creator you know i don’t hate it but i still prefer 16×9 i’m not in the majority on that i know that i’m also not in love with the fact that the power button is on the keyboard deck i would like it to be on the side but that’s also one of the ways that this machine isn’t going to accidentally power on so it’s a nice added bonus it’s hard for me not to reiterate how good the keyboard is because that is one
of the deciding factors for me ultimately whenever i purchase a laptop even though i didn’t buy this for all of you that followed my 13t coverage back in 2019 and 2020 you know that part of my love of that machine is its best in class keyboard and this is no different so while it may take some time for some of you to get adjusted to i really think it is a winner in just about every way and i’ll reiterate size because this is all finally going back to hp long overdue and there are a lot of options out there but the one machine i think it really compares very well with is of course as i keep mentioning my 13t favorite and you know the 13t the 16×9 aspect ratio you instantly see the difference in terms of height with that display but in terms of power and overall processing capability they’re right on equal footing it’s really just in my opinion all about that display and if you don’t care about the oled which by the way is incredibly color accurate which is the reason i love it you don’t need to buy it you can go with the less expensive model as i’ve stated just like in my original coverage of this machine go with the ips panel save yourself some money you probably won’t care that much about the difference in resolution either so it’s just nice to see that hp again is
listening to consumers reading the market in my opinion well they’re reading it correctly and delivering products that are functional that look good and that are made well one of my big problems with the original 13t was quality control well there were no quality control issues at all with the 14t now i may have just gotten an excellent unit but in my experience again it’s just it’s been pretty much bulletproof wish list for the refresh if we can get better speakers a better webcam possibly possibly uh you know more power on this thing i mean if we can somehow make battery life extended a little bit more that would be great but overall it pretty much has everything now for those of you who would like to see an amd flavor of this i still think while i actually own the asus g15 which is powered of course by ryzen 9 processor i feel like amd’s bread and butter still is not in the ultrabook space that may change uh very soon but i’m still a thunderbolt user i do not and thunderbolt will be available to amd sooner than later but as it stands right now i think that if you’re buying an ultrabook to look away from intel and the faster internal storage that they have in the pipeline would just be a little bit bonkers but practical difference between gen 3 and gen 4 nvme
drives not that much i mean yes the read write speed is nearly doubled but what you’ll see in real time performance because of software optimization is another story altogether so final points words about this machine it is great i can easily recommend it i’ve included a link in the description for you to purchase it uh it you know it is through the hp affiliate program um i was not paid uh to promote this product in any way shape or form this is an independent review as usual and hp has just made a stunner i mean the spectre line has been a favorite of mine for a while now and i wasn’t sure if the 14t was going to be in line with that but i have to say it might be a new favorite this might you know even though i’m not buying this generation i may have to get on board uh next gen this may be the machine that replaces my 13t but i still do love the 13t and the fact that it’s got of course a 4k display the uhd display for me is kind of a make it or break a thing especially with oled panels having the color accuracy knowing exactly what my content is going to look like is what i look for in an ultrabook but if you’ve been waiting for that three by two aspect ratio i don’t think there’s much better out there than the 14t and that’s pretty much where i left things back when i first covered this and where i’m closing them here uh many months later 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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