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    HP’s Spectre x360 15.6" Brings Big-Screen Entertainment

    Discussion in 'Notebook News and Reviews' started by Charles P. Jefferies, Jan 3, 2017.

  1. Charles P. Jefferies

    Charles P. Jefferies Lead Moderator Super Moderator

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    Charles P. Jefferies, Jan 3, 2017
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  2. edit1754

    edit1754 Notebook Prophet

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    Good writeup!

    In addition to this, I think it would have been informative had you also covered (with a small note) the pentile issue from the 2016 Spectre x360 15, since as of right now there’s no confirmation that this 2017 model isn’t doing the same thing, and that has pretty significant bearing on what it means for this laptop to be listed as 4K.

    A way of looking at the RG/BW Pentile ‘4K’ display in the 2016 model is that it more or less ‘cheated’ the ability to advertise the 4K resolution, without actually providing the full detail of the resolution. You would see 3840×2160 in your display settings, and the GPU would render every pixel of 3840×2160, but the actual display didn’t have enough RGB components to display all those pixels, so all you got to see was a downsampled version. It was a fair bit worse than the real 4K displays in the Dell XPS 15 4K and Lenovo Yoga 710 4K, and IMO the proper cost-cutting alternatives to 4K displays that manufacturers should use are 3K 2880x1620 and QHD+ 3200x1800 displays, not false-4K pentile displays.

    I personally would recommend, to potential buyers of this laptop, not to pre-order, and to hold off on buying this unless/until it can be confirmed that HP has stopped using the old display, and is using a 100% honest true-4K display in this year’s model. Or, for an alternative the same size with the same GPU, consider the Lenovo Yoga 710 4K which is confirmed to use a 100% honest true 4K display.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2017
    edit1754, Jan 3, 2017
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  3. edit1754

    edit1754 Notebook Prophet

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    edit1754, Jan 26, 2017
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    Charles P. Jefferies likes this.