Battery

When the first-generation Spectre x360 was introduced last year, its battery life was rated up to 12.5 hours thanks to a somewhat large 3-cell, 56Wh unit. In the early development stages, HP and Microsoft spent time exploring areas of the system where power could be disabled or minimized, including the hinge sensors that detect the device’s usage mode, along with using a Panel Self-Refresh (PSR) feature in the display to prevent unnecessary pixel changes during use.

The second-generation unit now features an even larger 3-cell 57.8W battery, capable of holding 25 percent more capacity inside of the 13 percent smaller chassis. The battery is rated to last more than 14 hours on a single charge, and in some cases after reaching a full charge, we were able to see 23 hours and 24 minutes remaining on the desktop while idle with no programs open (this quickly dropped back down to 14 hours as soon as Chrome was opened, however).



The notebook also features HP’s fast charge feature, allowing it to reach full capacity in about 1.5 hours with the system powered off. With the notebook in use, we were able to reach a full charge in about 2 hours, so the details will vary depending on the situation.

While running a mix of web and productivity apps including Chrome, Adobe Lightroom and Microsoft Word, we were able to get the “Low Battery” indicator to appear at around 1 hour and 16 minutes of charge remaining, which is about 10 percent.



Intel has also included some additional power-saving features in the Intel HD Graphics menu along with Panel Self Refresh, including Display Power Saving Technology (gives extra battery life by decreasing the backlight intensity), Enhanced Power Saving mode (gives a little more battery life by applying extra dimming for bright images), and Extended Battery Life for Gaming (dynamically controls the frame rate for games).