In summary
The Specter x360 is a very nicely finished convertible that shows that it is not cheap. It is therefore a very good laptop, with a beautiful, well-calibrated OLED screen. The hardware performs as you would expect from an i7-1355U. Unfortunately, the cooling makes a lot of noise under light load. The battery life is not bad at almost eleven hours during browsing, but there are many competitors who get more. If you flip the convertible’s screen, you can rest it on its keyboard, which is moderately protected by the thin rubber pads all around.
In summary
The Summit is MSI’s business laptop series and this E14 also runs Windows 11 Pro. It is a smooth convertible with a 1360P processor, which does suffer from throttling at full load for a long time. The laptop features a bright 2880×1800-pixel LCD, which unfortunately is poorly calibrated. The battery life is decent and 14.5 hours is achievable if you take it easy. Also nice is that a stylus is included. If you fold the screen and rest the Summit on its keyboard, that part of the housing is virtually unprotected. The rubbers used for this purpose are very small and thin.
Suppose you have a lot of money to spend on a premium laptop, let’s say 1700 euros, and you would like a convertible with a Core i7 processor. Then HP sells the Specter x360 and MSI offers the Summit E14. You can only spend that 1700 euros once, so which one do you choose?
HP Spectre x360 2-in-1
“Spectre” is the name of HP’s most expensive consumer laptops, more expensive than the Envys and the Pavilions, and the very cheapest laptops that don’t even have a name, just called HP 14s or HP 15. You can immediately see from the outside that the Specter is expensive. There is a ‘gold-plated’ edge around the two parts of the housing, which returns at the hinges and around the touchpad. It’s quite subtle, but looks better than the design Specter laptops had five years ago, when it was lavishly sprinkled with shiny gold.
The 1.33 kg housing feels very solid and is made entirely of metal. The screen can easily be folded around the housing and despite that easy folding, once you have chosen a position, it will remain neatly in place without wobbling. That screen has a 3:2 aspect ratio, a bit more ‘square’ than a normal 16:9 screen. At the top of the screen is the camera, which supports a maximum resolution of 2560×1440 pixels. You can also use the camera to log in using facial recognition or you can use the fingerprint scanner on the keyboard. There is a separate button to make a mechanical slider appear in front of the webcam, if you like it.
Below the keyboard is the touchpad, with a glass surface that is nice and large and does its job well. The keyboard itself has flat keys, with quite a lot of travel. For such a thin laptop, the keyboard of the HP is very nice. ‘Thin’ is also the first word that comes to mind when you hold the Specter. The laptop is so thin that it doesn’t actually fit a regular USB port. HP solved that by making the lower part of the port into a movable cover. That looks nice, but it is a bit of fiddling if you want to insert a normal USB stick.
USB-C is of course also available. The two ports are on the right side of the chassis and one of them is rotated 45 degrees from the other so as not to disrupt the design. Both ports support USB4 and you can use both to charge the battery. Hidden next to the ports is a microSD card reader. You certainly don’t often find card readers on these types of thin laptops anymore, so it’s nice that HP has thought of photographers, videographers and Raspberry Pi users.
MSI Summit E14
Compared to the HP Spectre, the MSI Summit E14 feels a bit ‘lumper’. MSI’s Summit series consists of laptops that are somewhat intended for the business market. You can see that ‘somewhat’ in the processor. For example, it does not support Intel’s full vPro platform and in large companies, where thousands of laptops are managed at the same time, you will not get this handed out. MSI focuses more on small businesses and to reinforce that business slant, it ships the Summit E14 with Windows 11 Pro.
That businesslike appearance also seems to come back. The word “lumper” was mentioned above, but it’s also tighter, more straightforward and unadorned like the slanted, gold edges of the Spectre. The Summit also has a housing made of metal; it would be strange if that were not the case for 1700 euros, but compared to the Spectre it feels just a little less sturdy. Where the Specter feels like a solid piece of aluminum, with the MSI you get the feeling that the housing consists of two halves. You can press the housing a lot. That says more about the extraordinarily solid impression left by the HP than about the MSI. The latter is just good in terms of sturdiness, except for one point. That is not so much in the housing itself, but in the touchpad that is located in the housing. You can press the surface of that touchpad a little bit without anything happening, there’s a bit of ‘nothing’ before you feel the resistance of the touchpad. That sounds like a small thing, but can just be a source of annoyance.
The keyboard does feel very nice and has even more travel than that of the HP. This is made possible by the thicker and slightly heavier housing at 1.54 kg. So you can simply insert a USB-A plug into the side of this housing without pushing any flaps aside, and a card reader is also present here. There’s even an HDMI connection on the left side, in addition to the two USB-C connections. A button to switch off the webcam is located on the side of the housing, next to the card reader, but also on the keyboard. And to warn the user, a bright white LED continues to flash while the camera is on. Again, that was not necessary.
The camera also has a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels and supports Windows Hello. If you prefer to log in with your fingerprint, you can do that too, because a scanner is incorporated in the housing to the right of the touchpad.
Convertibles
The MSI and the HP are both convertibles and you can use them both in combination with an active stylus. With the MSI you get it, while with HP you have to pay 80 euros extra for it. Anyone who wants to use the laptops with a stylus or just with their fingers will sooner or later flip the screen. The laptop then rests on the side where the keyboard is, while the screen faces the user. The keyboard and the housing around it are then vulnerable and can be damaged depending on the surface on which you use the laptop. To avert that danger, both laptops are equipped with rubber pads that should create play between the keyboard and the table and ensure that things don’t shift when an overenthusiastic finger touches the touchscreen.
Speaking of bad: that is a striking characterization of the rubbers. With the HP they protect the keyboard just enough if you place the laptop on a perfectly flat table, but there should not be any unevenness. With the MSI, the even thinner rubbers are completely for decoration. In short, watch carefully where you put these laptops, because a scratch on the housing is easily made.
2023-08-05 04:00:00
#Luxury #laptops #folding #screen #spend #euros #MSI
