When we talk about tech upgrades, we usually think that devices will be thinner or lighter along with being faster and more powerful. On the other end of the spectrum, there are some really amazing innovations that manufacturers sneak in and make gadget usage leagues better.
HP’s CES 2017 offerings happened to have a mixture of both, but not in the way we predicted.
Spectre x360
The newest Spectre x360 is slightly thicker than the previous generation at 17.8mm (the older model was 15.9mm) because it has a bigger battery pack and with it, three extra hours of juice. While that sounds great, things fall into perspective once you realize that the 15.6-inch version comes with a 4K display – something that requires a fair bit of power. Being able to flip the display over to use the device in tablet mode is an expected feature, hence its name. The Spectre x360 comes with Intel Kaby Lake options, up to 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 940MX. It’s not a heavyweight on all the specs, but this laptop is powerful enough to get the job done.
ENVY Curved AIO 34
HP’s All-In-One (AIO) is a beautiful beast of a machine. The 34-inch curved display outputs “widescreen ultra wide” (their words) QHD with almost no bezel, which makes for gorgeous immersion when it comes to watching movies. And no, that’s not all you can do with this desktop. The Intel Kaby Lake i5/i7 options, 16GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM, a 1TB HDD/256 SSD combo, and AMD RX 460 all chip in to make this AIO powerful enough to handle just about anything you want to do with it.
Omen X35 Curved Display
HP’s OMEN line of gaming devices has started making the rounds locally, and this new monitor certainly deserves some attention. It has a 100Hz refresh rate with NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology baked into the monitor. What the software does is it links the display with your graphics card (which also should be an NVIDIA, obviously) to deliver stutter and lag free visuals. The deeper-curved 35-inch UWQHD display has a 21:9 aspect ratio to increase immersion and comes with a headphone hook, HDMI display port and even one USB 3.0 port to increase your connectivity options.
Sprout Pro
For creatives, the Sprout Pro by HP all-in-one upgrades its previous model and takes a futuristic approach to computing for creatives. The diagonally-angled 23.8-inch display is touch-enabled, and can project onto a 20-point capacitive Touch Mat. It comes with the latest Active Pen with precision tracking. The projector mount at the top of the display is not just for the Touch Mat, but also houses the 3D scanner for the device allowing you to map anything you hold under it. Powered by the latest Kaby Lake Core i7 processor and NVIDIA’s GT 960M graphics card, up to 16GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM, and a 1TB SSHD/512 SATA SSD storage combo, the Sprout Pro by HP is one of those machines that creative agencies will sure want to consider for their businesses.
