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HP Spectre and Envy laptops to launch with AMOLED screens in April

HP Spectre x360 15 review
Luke Larsen/Digital Trends

HP’s next generation of Spectre x360 and Envy laptops will come with the option of 15-inch AMOLED screens when they launch in April. The two devices will have wide viewing angles and full support for HDR, with a dynamic contrast ratio that can reach 100,000:1 when required.

The 15-inch HP Spectre x360 with AMOLED display made its debut at CES 2019 in January and we absolutely loved it. Its screen has a native resolution of 4K and it goes up to 500-nits brightness, which is more than we’d likely use day to day, but provides plenty of headroom for the HDR to look good, and look good it does. Although some of the benefits will be lost on a screen of this size, there are few technologies out there that could improve such a display, unless you’re not a high-end gamer. That should make the laptop perfect for media viewing on the go.

The internal hardware was strong too, with a combination of an Intel Core i7 Whiskey Lake processor, 16GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GTX MX150 graphics chip. We’d have liked to have seen a dedicated GTX GPU in there — as you will get with non-AMOLED version — but the configuration is more than enough for most, including entry-level gaming. It’s certainly enough to give the Dell XPS 15 a run for its money.

The new Spectre x360 15 is set to hit retail on April 19, according to Anandtech, though we aren’t sure how much for at this time.

The AMOLED Envy x360 15 will launch around the same time in Europe, although we’re told that the U.S. launch will take place at a different time. How different is anyone’s guess. Its specifications, too, remain mostly under wraps. It seems likely that it will be based around the same display as the Spectre, with the same high-contrast ratio and wide-viewing angles. It will also support HDR for popping colors and deep blacks and whites.

Some have expressed concern over screen burn-in with AMOLED technology on laptops and whether technologies utilized on OLED TVs, like pixel shift, could be utilized again to help prevent it. This is a phenomenon that has been well documented, however, so it seems likely that HP will have some mitigation solutions in place when these laptops launch next month.

If you encounter burn-in with your screen, on your laptop or any other device, check out our guide to fixing the problem.

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
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