HP is buying big into the Windows 8 touch notebook concept, as demonstrated by three models announced Thursday. One tablet-hybrid model and two notebooks will debut in time for the holiday season, combining the traditional keyboard and touchpad laptop interactions with the Metro-optimized Windows 8 touchscreen.
The HP Envy X2 is the most intriguing of the models, with an 11.6-inch tablet that detaches from a notebook-like keyboard base. The Envy X2 has an 8-megapixel rear camera, 720p front-facing camera, and a 64GB solid-state drive contained in the tablet half of the body. The IPS tablet screen weighs 1.5 pounds, and the tablet and keyboard base weigh a total of 3.1 pounds. The tablet is also NFC-enabled, which allows users to "share content, including photos, contacts and URLs with a simple tap."
The HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook, at 17.9 millimeters thick and weighing 4.77 pounds is a more conventional notebook, that follows in the steps of the Envy Spectre we tested at CES 2012, though with a fully Metro-capable touch screen. Ports on the model include Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, and HDMI. The base model is priced at $1,399, though it includes only a 500GB hard drive with 32GB of flash cache—options with a 128GB or 256GB solid-state drive cost extra.
A more graphics-intensive Ultrabook, the HP Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4, has an option to include a discrete AMD graphics card with up to 2GB of memory. The model has a 14-inch touch screen, measures 23 millimeters thick, and weighs 4.77 pounds, like the 15-inch Ultrabook above, though it clocks 8 hours of battery life. Like the 15-inch TouchSmart Ultrabook, the 14-inch version will have the option to use either an HDD with flash cache (500GB storage) or an SSD (128GB).
All three notebooks are expected to be available in the US for the holidays, and only the 15-inch TouchSmart Ultrabook has an announced starting price point of $1,399.
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