Dvice: Shanghai, China — It's tough being an Ultrabook right now. You're either a MacBook Air clone or a confused laptop masquerading as a new breed of mobile notebook. In a sea of wedge-shaped Ultrabooks, the HP Sceptre XT feels like the first one that really stands on its own without coming off as a copycat laptop.
Maximum PC: The Spectre XT TouchSmart is HP’s creme-de-la-creme consumer Ultrabook. In some ways, it lives up to that lofty mantle; in others, it doesn’t. The notebook is attractive all right, in a brushed-metal-chassis, black-island-keyboard kind of way. We also like that the interior is free of branding, save the Beats Audio logo on the speaker grill. But if the term “Ultrabook” conjures up images of dainty thin-and-lightness, the Spectre TouchSmart XT will cure you of that. The 15.6-inch all-aluminum body looks sleek enough—and its .87-inch height is within Intel’s Ultrabook specification—but its lap weight of nearly five pounds (close to six pounds with the power brick) will surprise you with its heft. At least it did us.
Pocket-Lint: HP has announced a whole heap of Ultrabooks at its Global Influencers conference in Shanghai. By far the sweetest piece of kit there has to be the new Spectre XT which sits at the top of HP's Ultrabook lineup.
