Review: HP Pavilion TouchSmart Sleekbook 15

CES 2013 is where you'll find Windows 8 devices galore. So it's interesting seeing how some PC hardware manufacturers are trying to stick out from the rest of the pack. Take Hewlett-Packard and the company's HP Pavilion Touchbook Sleekbook, for example.

The Pavilion Touchbook Sleekbook is actually a lot like the vanilla plain Pavilion Sleekbook, which was also present. Both devices sport an AMD A-Series APU (Advanced Processing Unit) CPU, 6GB of memory (which can upped to 8GB), and 1TB hard drive.

When it comes to connecting it to cameras, smart phones, external displays, and the like, you have HDMI plus both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports.

HP has also loaded it with plenty of their proprietary solutions: HP TrueVision HD Webcams and HP MyRoom are designed for video calling and sharing images, HP CoolSense regulates temperature, and HP ProtectSmart keeps files safe and sound in case the Touchbook Sleekbook gets knocked around.

Again, everything above is common to the regular Pavilion Sleekbook. So what's the key difference? The name should be everyone's biggest clue; the Pavilion Touchbook Sleekbook has a 15.6-inch touch capable screen, to offer an alternative method to interacting with Windows 8.

Speaking of touching, the feel of the machine overall is its most distinct attribute. The machine sports a plastic body, resulting in a finish that's shiny. Very shiny. It also sparkles: instead of being solid black, it's covered with what can only be described as glitter.

The Sleekbook is HP's line of low-cost laptop alternative, so one might make the guess that such a design choice was intentionally to perhaps make it appeal to the tastes of the younger set. That's only a wild guess, and as unfair such an assumption might be, many others will have the same gut reaction.

Sticking with the impression that the HP Pavilion Touchbook Sleekbook was engineered for children, one might assume that it's a lightweight device, but that's simply not true; it's shockingly heavy.

No specific weight numbers were handy when asked, and considering the size of the screen, perhaps some degree of weight is to be expected. But the toy-like appearance and feel simply betrays those expectations.

Exacerbating the situation is the hinge. It's stiff and makes opening and closing difficult. The keyboard also felt a bit mushy. Did we mention how, again due to the finish, it collects fingerprints like nothing else?

Yet there is one genuine positive of the device, and it's the trackpad. It's the same texture that adorns the speaker grill, so the end result is something that feels very nice to slide one's fingers around with (as well as very different).

Just messing around with it for just a minute leaves an impression, and a hope that other laptops follow suit.

Unfortunately, the aforementioned key differentiating factor is also a major disappointment. The responsiveness of the touchscreen was very accurate, but the image quality was sub-par. The colors were also noticeably washed out. The 1366 x 768 resolution, for a 15-inch laptop, feels rather dated for 2013, even if it is a budget machine.

And when compared to the HP Pavilion Sleekbook, its touch capable bother is still not the best bargain either. Given all the strikes against it, the US$649.99 is somewhat hard to swallow. Though be sure to check it out for yourself, when it arrives on Febuary 3.

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Review: Updated: HP Spectre XT TouchSmart

Where is the balancing point for laptops? Where does the touchscreen and brushed aluminium finish start to outweigh the need for unbridled power and portability?

Can Full HD and wafer-thinness really step into the void left by an underperforming battery? These are important questions. And we're about to find out the answer to them, with the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook 15-4000ea.

The HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook is a great computing enigma. It's why we started with philosophy and confusion. It's a jumble of chips in a tiny box that does a number of things brilliantly and a few, sadly, quite poorly. But before we explore specifics, let's start with the laptop's biggest impact point: it goes straight for the psyche before you've even switched it on.

HP is certainly not messing about, then, in terms of the Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook's initial wow factor. It's thin - of course it is, it's an ultrabook - with a deliciously brushed metal lid and wonderfully tactile silicon-coated base.

Although it lacks the immediate impact of the glassy, miniscule Acer Aspire S7 (which we're a little bit in love with, to be frank) the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook is a perfectly lovely machine to look at. You could show it off.

For a machine in the same price band as the Sony Vaio Duo 11, Toshiba U920T and the aforementioned Acer Aspire S7, that's one important tick in the box. Speaking of price, the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook costs £999 / US$1,199.99 (around AU$1,463).

Opening it up, the style continues with a huge raised, countersunk, glassy-feeling touchpad. Island-style keys - almost impeccably laid out, our only gripe being the compressed directional pad and HP's infuriatingly twee lower-case naming convention - dominate the middle ground.

There's no unnecessary number pad, which is nice; the temptation must have been there, given the vast amount of case space afforded by the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook's 15-inch flush-mounted widescreen touch panel.

So here's the awesome thing about the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook: the screen. Man, what a screen. Not only is it enormous, touchable, generous with the viewing angles (and did we mention enormous?), it's a Full HD panel running at 1920 x 1080 - something that would be much more common on Ultrabooks if they weren't all so very small.

HP has pushed the boat out with its 15 inches, making the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook a significant slab of computing indeed. It's like the laptops we used to know, only without the sharp edges and leg-melting heat.

Everything within is very sensible. The processor - a mildly disappointing Intel Core i5 3317U running at 1.7GHz - is just enough. It's not something that will cook you, but it also isn't something that will let you down in a bind.

There's 4GB RAM onboard, which is just enough, again, and we wouldn't like to contemplate upgrading that quotient given the stature of the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook's perfectly ventilated underbelly.

For storage, HP has opted for a 500GB/32GB hybrid drive, straddling the line between realistic internal capacity and the solid state speed that Windows 8 all but demands. It's fine, of course, and that extra capacity once again roots the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook in 'proper laptop' territory.

Stuffing it with a massive SSD alone would have bumped the price up and reduced the overall usefulness.

There are other ultrabooks in the bracket that will offer more grunt under the hood, of course. The Acer Aspire S7 manages a superior Core i7-3517U in its tiny shell, and every other HP Envy Ultrabook seems to tote more RAM.

Plump for something fancy - and dare we say it, silly - such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga and you'll get a huge SSD, more RAM and a more versatile touchscreen to boot. But we think HP has the balance right, here.

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