HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000) review – is Sure View the way to go in the business segment?

Usually, when a manufacturer releases a laptop, there is something in its name, that reveals the purpose of the device. For example, the Creator-dubbed devices from MSI are meant for professional content creators, while others are a bit more obvious – the 2-in-1 moniker on Dell’s convertibles. HP, in this case, is equally self-contained here, as their convertible indicator is “x360”.

Today, we are taking a look at the HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000), which is an evolution of last year’s Spectre x360 13 (13-aw0000). In fact, the notebook, HP produced the year before was one of the best 13-inch convertibles money can buy. However, since then, a lot of things have improved, and the main culprit of this positive change is most definitely AMD. Well, now HP employs the next-generation Intel processors, based on the Tiger Lake architecture, which is far more capable than its Ice Lake predecessor.

Apart from that, not much has changed – you still get the option for a Sure View display.

In case you don’t know, this is what HP calls the technology of a dual-backlight sorcery which intentionally narrows the viewing angles of your display. Thanks to it, no prying eyes can see the contents of your work if they’re not positioned right above you. This tech is neat, but it has its limitations, as you can imagine.

Nevertheless, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, we’re going to see what does the packaging look like, and how good is the construction of this little machine.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/hp-spectre-x360-13-13-aw2000/

Contents


Specs Sheet

HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000) - Specs

  • IVO M133NVFD R2 (IVO8584)
  • Color accuracy  3.7  1.0
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 16GB
  • OS
  • Windows 11 Pro, Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Home
  • Battery
  • 60Wh, 4-cell
  • Body material
  • Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 306.8 x 194.5 x 17 mm (12.08" x 7.66" x 0.67")
  • Weight
  • 1.28 kg (2.8 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
  • 2x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort, Sleep and Charge
  • Card reader
  • microSD
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HP TrueVision HD Camera
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Dual-Array Digital Microphones
  • Speakers
  • Stereo Speakers, Bang & Olufsen
  • Optical drive

All HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000) configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

This notebook comes in a pretty fancy package. Inside, you will find a 65W USB Type-C power adapter, the laptop, itself, and an optional Pen.


Design and construction

If we have to be completely honest, there is no visual, and probably factual change in the design of the new HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000). It is once again made out of aluminum, which results in a cool-to-the-touch anodized finish. When it comes to measurements, we see a 1.28 kg weight, and a profile of 17mm, although the tiny chamfered edges make it look a lot thinner.

Structurally, the laptop is rigid, but its chassis is ever so slightly prone to twists, which, itself, results in ghost clicks from the touchpad. On the other hand, the glass cover on the display really helps with the structural integrity of the lid. Speaking of which, it can’t be opened with a single hand, which is petty, but perhaps expected for a convertible. However, it is a bit disappointing, because the hinges of the predecessor were balanced enough for a one-handed opening.

Nevertheless, you still get thin bezels all around the display. Despite that, the top one still is able to house an HD camera with the appropriate sensors for IR face recognition, thus enabling the Windows Hello sign-in feature.

So, here, we have a very good keyboard, even though we are talking about a 13-inch convertible. Its key travel is surprisingly long, and the mechanism is clicky, but not loud. The function keys start with the Sure View option toggle, while the Power button is weirdly placed on the top left corner of the base.

Moving further down, there is the touchpad which is quite wide and has a glass surface. This offers smooth gliding and accurate tracking, while the clicking mechanism is satisfying enough. Also below the keyboard, there is the optional fingerprint reader, located just below the “Down” Arrow key.

If you turn the laptop upside down, the speaker grills will be revealed. By the way, the previous pictures reveal the Bang & Olufsen branding. Cool air, on the other hand, is being inhaled from the grill on the bottom panel, while the hot air is being exhausted from the back of the laptop.

Ports

Even though the I/O here is pretty limited, we want to give kudos to HP for still including a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port on the left side. There, you will also find the Audio jack. And on the right, there are two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, one of which is placed on the top right corner. In addition to that, there is the electronic camera privacy shutter and a MicroSD card slot.


Disassembly, maintenance, and upgrade options

To take this laptop apart, you need to remove the bottom panel. However, four of the screws are hidden beneath the back rubber foot, so you will need to carefully remove it with a plastic pry tool. Then, undo the rest of the screws, and pry the panel itself.

What keeps the laptop running when it’s away from the plug is a 60.7Wh battery pack.

Unfortunately, the memory here is soldered to the motherboard, and there are two possible configurations. One has 8GB, while the other has 16GB of LPDDR4x RAM. On the bright side, there is one M.2 PCIe x4 slot for storage upgrades.

When you look at the cooling solution, you will see two heat pipes cooling the CPU and the GPU, and one dedicated to the VRMs, and perhaps the memory modules.


Display quality

HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000) is equipped with a Full HD IPS touchscreen panel, IVO M133NVFD R2 (IVO8584). Its diagonal is 13.3-inch (33.78 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 166 ppi, their pitch – 0.15 х 0.15 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 50 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels). One important feature of this device is its Sure View technology. Its purpose is to block unwanted viewers from seeing the content of your screen. A key role in that place the backlight and an additional light directing layer.

We apply these photos to evaluate the viewing angles. The 45-degree photos are taken with a longer exposure than the front-facing one.

The maximum measured brightness is excellent – 857 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 885 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 11%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6200K – slightly warmer than the standard 6500K temperature for sRGB.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 33% Brightness (White level = 141 cd/m2, Black level = 0.067 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is excellent – 2100:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 92% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 27 ms.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000)’s display backlight uses PWM for brightness adjustment, and on top of that does it with a low frequency. This is especially uncomfortable in a low-lit environment, where you use the laptop with a brightness level of around 140 nits. Then, the backlight lights up to the maximum level but stays alit for only 18% of the time, while during the rest of the 80+% it is turned off. This is explicitly harmful to the eyes and the brain in our view.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusion

HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000)’s IPS panel has a very high maximum brightness, excellent contrast ratio, and wide color coverage. Thankfully, it covers 92% of the sRGB gamut, and our Gaming and Web design profile greatly improves the accuracy of the color representation. Although it comes with the Sure View technology, which is intended at reducing the chances of prying eyes reaching your precious content, we didn’t find it particularly useful. It doesn’t really make your screen invisible, it just makes the color shift, which is pretty disappointing, since you pay a premium for the panel. Additionally, it uses aggressive PWM for pretty much all brightness levels, which is not ideal for long periods.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000) configurations with 13.3″ IVO M133NVFD R2 (IVO8584) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000)’s Bang & Olufsen speakers produce a sound with decent quality. However, there are some deviations across the entire frequency spectrum, and the maximum volume isn’t particularly high.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be downloaded from here: https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-spectre-x360-convertible-laptop-pc-13-aw2000/35610627

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This notebook’s 60.7Wh battery pack lasts for 19 hours and 5 minutes of Web browsing, and 12 hours and 2 minutes of video playback.


CPU options

This notebook can be bought with either the Core i5-1135G7 or the Core i7-1165G7.


GPU options

Respectively, the iGPU depends on the CPU choice – you get Iris Xe Graphics G7 with 80EUs for the Core i5, and with 96EUs for the Core i7.


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS184 fps139 fps83 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS128 fps79 fps67 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-1165G7 (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000)3.46 GHz (B+24%) @ 97°C @ 42W3.03 GHz (B+8%) @ 97°C @ 32W2.49 GHz @ 82°C @ 22W
HP Pavilion 14 (14-dv0000)3.08 GHz (B+10%) @ 91°C @ 40W2.79 GHz @ 89°C @ 29W2.13 GHz @ 71°C @ 18W
Acer TravelMate P4 (TMP414-51)2.99 GHz (B+7%) @ 94°C @ 33W2.66 GHz @ 93°C @ 27W1.86 GHz @ 68°C @ 16W
Lenovo ThinkBook 15 Gen 23.63 GHz (B+32%) @ 94°C @ 45W3.32 GHz (B+19%) @ 94°C @ 38W2.87 GHz (B+3%) @ 80°C @ 28W
Dell Inspiron 13 7306 2-in-13.12 GHz (B+11%) @ 99°C @ 33W2.68 GHz @ 99°C @ 25W2.04 GHz @ 83°C @ 16W
ASUS ZenBook Flip S UX3713.48 GHz (B+24%) @ 90°C @ 43W2.79 GHz @ 90°C @ 27W1.95 GHz @ 69°C @ 14W
Acer Swift 3X (SF314-510G)3.74 GHz (B+34%) @ 95°C @ 45W3.45 GHz (B+23%) @ 95°C @ 37W3.09 GHz (B+10%) @ 85°C @ 28W
Acer Swift 3 (SF313-53)3.55 GHz (B+27%) @ 95°C @ 44W3.17 GHz (B+13%) @ 95°C @ 34W2.32 GHz @ 64°C @ 17W
Acer Swift 5 Pro (SF514-55GT)3.54 GHz (B+26%) @ 94°C @ 39W3.27 GHz (B+17%) @ 94°C @ 31W2.44 GHz @ 74°C @ 17W

Given its size and the tiny space inside, this notebook maintains reasonably high clock speeds, despite the initial high temperature. In fact, this is a common observation on every Intel ULV processor, because they reach the high frequencies thanks to high power input.

Comfort during full load

Well, the laptop warms quite a bit on the keyboard, and the bottom panel. However, it is not too bad, and the noise is reasonably quiet even under a heavy workload.


Verdict

If we have to be honest, HP has taken the Spectre x360 13 (13-aw0000) from last year, slapped a Tiger Lake chipset inside, and called it a day. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing, as the predecessor was pretty well-built, and had most of its issues related to the screen and its Sure View technology.

Well, this year, it was no different. HP Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000)’s IPS panel (IVO M133NVFD R2 (IVO8584)) has a very high maximum brightness, excellent contrast ratio, and wide color coverage. Thankfully, it covers 92% of the sRGB gamut, and our Gaming and Web design profile greatly improves the accuracy of the color representation. Although it comes with the Sure View technology, which is intended at reducing the chances of prying eyes reaching your precious content, we didn’t find it particularly useful. It doesn’t really make your screen invisible, it just makes the color shift, which is pretty disappointing, since you pay a premium for the panel. And while it is reducing the viewing angles, we feel that it brings more discomfort than actual benefits. Additionally, it uses aggressive PWM for pretty much all brightness levels, which is not ideal for long periods. However, keep in mind that the panel we are talking about has a Full HD resolution, and there are two other options, one of which is a 4K OLED display.

Expectedly, the performance increase was exponential, as the Core i7-1165G7 offers improvements both in computational and graphics power. And for a machine that is a bit larger than a Kindle, this is impressive. Especially the fact, that the notebook complies with the Evo platform, which traditionally enables more balanced performance.

Another improvement over last year, actually, is the battery life. In terms of Web browsing, we were able to extract about 19 hours and 5 minutes of Web browsing, and 12 hours and 2 minutes of video playback. This is thanks to the better efficiency of the hardware, and the 60.7Wh battery pack, which is quite large for a 13-inch convertible.

Unfortunately, the memory is soldered to the motherboard, and the I/O is quite limited, but you still get a single M.2 PCIe x4 drive for storage, and two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a MicroSD card reader, which makes it a decent little device for photographers (if it wasn’t for the weird display).

So, the moral of the story here is – get the Spectre x360 13 (13-aw2000), but ditch the Sure View display. Otherwise, the Lenovo Yoga 7 (14) is also a viable option, where you get better speakers and a more adequate screen, at the expense of the MicroSD card slot, which is nonexistent on the Lenovo.

Pros

  • Comfortable to use input devices and an optional stylus inside the box
  • Great performance output
  • Very high maximum brightness
  • Covers 92% of sRGB and has accurate colors, especially with our Gaming and Web design profile installed (IVO M133NVFD R2 (IVO8584))
  • Has two Thunderbolt 4 connectors
  • Supports PCIe x4 SSDs, WiFi 6 standards
  • Premium aluminum build
  • Excellent battery life


Cons

  • Sure View doesn’t work as promised (IVO M133NVFD R2 (IVO8584))
  • Uses harmful PWM to adjust brightness at all levels (IVO M133NVFD R2 (IVO8584))
  • Prominent unevenness in the luminance across the screen (IVO M133NVFD R2 (IVO8584))
  • No RAM upgradability post-purchase

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/hp-spectre-x360-13-13-aw2000/

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