HP introduces super-thin 10.4mm, 13.3-inch Spectre laptop with i7 CPU, 9.5 hours battery life; starting $1,169, available for preorder April 25
HP goes for bling with new super-thin, copper-accented Spectre notebook — While taking up minimal space, it promises to deliver on battery life and power.
Context & Ripple Effects
HP's premium Spectre line has been climbing upmarket: the Spectre x360 convertible arrived in 2015 from $899 as a Broadwell machine promising 12.5 hours of battery life, establishing the brand as HP's design-led flagship. Today's announcement takes the line in a different direction — a thin clamshell with copper accents that reads as HP's answer to Apple's MacBook aesthetic, priced above the x360's entry point at $1,169.
The bet is that buyers will accept less battery for more power in a thinner body: this 10.4mm machine pairs an Intel i7 with roughly 9.5 hours of rated life, versus the convertible's longer runtime. Whether that trade holds up is exactly what reviewers probed when the shipping unit was tested weeks later.
First-order effects
- Buyers preordering April 25 get an i7-powered 13.3-inch notebook at 10.4mm thick for $1,169 — HP directly targeting the MacBook's thinness pitch while claiming a performance edge.
- HP splits its own premium lineup: the x360 convertible keeps the battery-life-and-versatility position while the new Spectre 13 owns the thinness position.
Second-order effects
- Rival PC makers selling 13-inch premium notebooks face pressure to match the sub-11mm silhouette, forcing the same battery-versus-thinness compromise onto their next designs.
- Intel gains a marquee showcase for its Core i7 in consumer ultraportables, reinforcing the premium-CPU attach strategy that HP's later quad-core eighth-gen Spectre 13 refresh would double down on.
Third-order effects
- When the shipped product was reviewed, it outperformed the MacBook but trailed it on battery life and was judged to make too many sacrifices for thinness — evidence that the thin-at-all-costs formula has a ceiling, which HP's subsequent Spectre generations corrected by prioritizing displays and runtime over raw slimness.
- If the pattern holds, premium Windows laptops converge on Apple's industrial design first and differentiate later on specs HP ultimately chose — 4K panels, OLED, and multi-day battery claims in later models.
The trend: Premium Windows ultraportables are chasing MacBook-style thinness and then rebalancing toward battery life and displays across successive generations, with HP's Spectre line as the running case study.