HP's 0.41 inch-thick Spectre laptop outperforms the MacBook but trails on battery life, and like MacBook makes too many sacrificies for thinness
The thinnest laptop currently available. Nice price. Walt Mossberg / The Verge : Mossberg: HP aims at the Mac with super-slim laptop Sam Rutherford / Laptop Mag : HP Spectre Review Stefan Etienne / TechCrunch : Review: HP's Spectre shows a great ultrabook can suffer from being thin Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld : HP Spectre 13.3 laptop review: Thin doesn't have to mean compromise Dan Ackerman / CNET : HP Spectre — THE GOOD The HP Spectre is remarkably thin …
Context & Ripple Effects
HP introduced the Spectre 13.3 in April as a 10.4mm, i7-powered machine claiming 9.5 hours of battery life at $1,169 — an explicit shot at Apple's thinness crown (the spring launch set the specs reviewers are now testing). The review wave from WSJ, Mossberg, CNET, PCWorld, Laptop Mag, and TechCrunch lands today, and the verdict splits: performance beats the MacBook and the price is right, but real-world battery trails and the chassis forces compromises.
The Spectre line has been here before — the 2015 x360 review praised battery life but flagged weight, and the late-2016 x360 refresh won 'best premium Windows laptop' while still losing the SD card slot. Thinness keeps costing HP something, and reviewers keep saying so.
First-order effects
- HP now has a credible MacBook rival at $1,169 that wins on performance and price, but buyers choosing on battery life get pushed back toward Apple — the gap between the advertised 9.5 hours and reviewed endurance becomes the deciding spec.
Second-order effects
- HP's own portfolio answers the critique within months: the x360's stronger battery showing shows the fix is form factor, not thinner, pulling Spectre marketing toward convertible designs over pure slimness.
Third-order effects
- The pattern holds across the line — the 2017 Spectre 13 refresh added quad-core chips, touchscreen, and 4K rather than chasing millimeters, and by 2023 the line's flagship statement was the folding Spectre Fold — evidence that sustained 'too many sacrifices for thinness' criticism pushes premium Windows makers to compete on capability per millimeter instead of raw thinness against the MacBook.
The trend: Premium Windows laptops are racing the MacBook on thinness, but repeated battery-life penalties are redirecting the competition toward performance-per-millimeter and new form factors.