HP Spectre x360 (late 2016) review: HP’s best hybrid hangs onto its last USB port

If your laptop could be thinner, lighter and smaller with the same great battery life and performance, would you celebrate? Or complain about all the missing ports?

That’s not a rhetorical question, it’s the deciding factor when you consider the latest version of the HP Spectre x360.

Earlier this year, I called the 13-inch Spectre x360 one of my favorite laptops, because it didn’t force me to compromise. It offered powerful processors, long battery life, a beautiful backflipping hybrid screen, a relatively thin aluminum frame plus enough ports to plug in two monitors, a mouse, keyboard, a USB thumb drive and my camera’s SD card simultaneously.

Starting at $1,049 or AU$2,299 (UK availability TBD) the new, slightly revamped version of the HP Spectre x360 is just as good in almost every way — but it’s missing a lot of those ports. Like Apple with its new MacBook Pro, HP chose thinness over utility.