Best Laptop so far

The Good Beautifully designed and less than 3 pounds (1.4 kg), the HP Spectre x360 13 has a great keyboard and track pad, a sharp 4K display and an above-average sound system. Battery life is decent for such a power-sucking screen, and performance fits right in line with its class.

The Bad Battery life takes a hit with the 4K display compared to high definition. The system runs a little hot.

The Bottom Line The HP Spectre x360 13 is a great little laptop, but if battery life matters to you a lot, opt for the HD display, not the more expensive 4K.

Thanks to a first-class execution, the HP Spectre x360 13 is the Mini-Me of its head-turning 15-inch sister. What's most surprising about it is how little HP had to drop from the design to shrink it into a 2.8-pound (1.29 kg), slightly larger than a letter/A4-sized 2-in-1 laptop, turning the x360 13 into the most compelling 4K convertible in its size class. True, the only other real competitor in that class at the moment is the Lenovo Yoga 910, but it has clear advantages over that and only a few relative drawbacks.

Of course, the first question you have to ask yourself when considering either system would be "do I really want such a small 4K display?" A lot of people don't notice or just don't mind the difference between the roughly 200 pixels-per-inch sharpness of 1,920x1,080 with the 13.3-inch display and the 331ppi of 4K UHD. I do. Interface text is easier to read, and I can really judge photo sharpness. But it comes with two big tradeoffs: battery life and price.

The 4K model's battery life tests out about 14 percent shorter than the close-to-identical HD model we tested last fall, dropping from about 9.5 hours to 8. (The 4K model uses newer DDR4 memory which operates at a lower voltage and thus gives back some battery life, which makes the gap less extreme.) However, that's comparable to a similarly equipped 4K Yoga 910. And HP rates the battery life at 16 hours for the HD model against 8 for the 4K -- that's a nontrivial difference. The larger model comes with a choice of a higher-capacity battery to compensate, a luxury this model doesn't have. Plus, it can run a little hot when there's no airflow around the bottom.