HP’s Spectre X360 13“ laptop offers Ice Lake, Project Athena, and more

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  The Spectre isn't entirely bezel-less, but it's close—HP says it has a 90% screen-to-body ratio at every angle. [credit: HP Inc. ]

Today, HP announced that the 2019 model of Spectre x360 13 is available. This lightweight high-performance Ultrabook will compete with Dell's XPS 13.

The Spectre x360 is verified to be Intel's Project Athena standard, which (among other things) means some hellacious battery life. In order to qualify as a Project Athena laptop, a device must get nine hours or better on-battery with the screen at 250 nits brightness, out-of-the-box display and system settings, and multiple tabs and applications running.

A cynical person might say Project Athena really just means "if it doesn't have an Intel CPU, it can't have this sweet sticker." The bits about battery life are pretty great, though. (credit: Intel Inc.)

HP played its CPU selection coyly in its official release announcement. The company only talked about a "10th-generation Intel Core" instead of coming right out and bragging about using Ice Lake. HP did mention Iris Plus graphics, though, which—along with the doubled performance year-on-year with last year's Spectre and a reference to the i5-1035G4 in the footnotes—makes it clear. The Verge reports that the i7-1065G7 will also be available.