Over in the heat of the kitchen at IFA Berlin, HP used familiar ingredients such as Windows 8, multi-touch enabled touchscreens, and designs focused on thin profiles and portability to cook up three brand new PCs-- the HP Envy x2 hybrid laptop-tablet, the HP SpectreXT TouchSmart Ultrabook, and the TouchSmart Ultrabook 4. Here's a run-down of each new system.
The HP Envy x2 joins the league of 11.6-inch combination laptop-tablets we've seen this week from Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba. Whereas some of the previous machines transformed from laptop to tablet modes via a slide-out keyboard, the Envy x2 uses a magnetic hinge design to to dock the 11-inch tablet into a keyboard dock, effectively turning the device into a traditional clamshell notebook. HP expects the Envy x2's display to be a standout feature. The tiny transformer's IPS screen has a standard 1366 x 768-pixel resolution that kicks out a rated brightness of 400 nits. As mentioned before, the screen is multi-touch but there is an optional stylus for more refined touch interaction. Specs around the system include an SD card slot, an HDMI port, an 8-MP back-facing camera, and a front-facer that's listed as high-definition.
The HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook biggie sizes things a bit. It takes the new line of notebooks to 15.6 inches and throws in a multi-touch ready touchscreen with in-plane switching technology. The big news here is that the Spectre XT is packing a Thunderbolt port. That's a much welcome addition because it offers transfer rates up to 10 Gb/s and the ability to daisy-chain other Thunderbolt devices to a single PC port, plus it's a rare occurrence on Windows PCs. According to HP, this heavy-weight Ultrabook packs an mSATA SSD for storage, an HDMI port, USB 3.0 ports, Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, and some variation of a Intel third-generation Core CPU.
Rounding out the new line is the HP Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4. Like the others, this 14-inch system also packs a multi-touch ready display, plus it adds some other luxe perks. There's a backlit keyboard, a battery rated for 8 hours of juice (we can't wait to test that out), and a sub-woofer complemented by Beats Audio. HP is scant on this system's details, but we know it measures 23mm thick and weighs a little less than 5 pounds. This smaller Ultrabook will definitely pack Intel internals, but it will also be available with AMD graphics as well.
Look for more details as we receive them.
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