The CNC-machined aluminum chassis is strikingly beautiful. The display lid, the keyboard deck and the bottom are "dark ash silver", but the color looks - especially outdoors - more like a slightly purplish charcoal gray to us. The sides and front edges of the notebook, the touchpad-surround and the HP logos are copper-colored; the hinges feature copper accents as well. HP's use of the accent color here is much more restrained than on their super-slim Spectre 13 and the overall result is very pleasing to the eye.

While not quite as sturdy as some other metal semi-unibody designs, the Spectre x360 is torsionally very rigid with no noticeable creaking sounds whatsoever. There is some minor give when pressing down in the middle of the laptop or to the left and right of the touchpad, but not enough so as to be a detriment as far as durability or usability are concerned. The display lid with its Gorilla Glass touchscreen is also quite sturdy and resists twists quite well given it's thickness. Moderately-heavy pushes induce some ripples on the display, however. The metal-encased 360° hinges are not nearly as convincing as the rest of the notebook and in our opinion not quite stiff enough to cope with the heavy display. While it takes two hands to open the lid, the display is actually quite easy to move once in it's in a normal laptop position. In fact, even the action of picking up the x360 can cause the display to swing backwards beyond a 180 degree angle. Tapping on the screen also introduces noticeable wobbles, so the laptop might not be the best choice for train rides and such. The edges of the convertible lack rubber bumpers of any kind, so in tent mode, the unit slides easily on smooth surfaces. Likely this was a design choice to preserve the upscale looks, but we fear that repeated use will scratch the finish in the long run. HP doesn't have an equivalent to Lenovo's lift’n’lock feature, so there's no frame to lock the keys in tablet mode. As good as the surfaces look, fingerprints are unfortunately an issue - even more so, as they aren't easily removed.

As mentioned in our introduction, HP shaved quite a few mm of the bezel, which now measure less than 5 mm each - 4.65 mm to be exact. The company calls the result a "virtually borderless micro-edge display". While the overall width of the notebook has decreased compared to the predecessor - see our size comparison below - the lower-edge bezel is very wide at 3.6 cm / 1.4 inches. so the convertible is slightly deeper, although only marginally so. The thickness has increased as well by about 1.8 mm, but in normal use this is hardly noticeable. The Spectre's footprint most closely matches that of the Dell XPS 15 width-wise, but it's once again deeper by about 1.5 cm (0.6 inches). Even so, for a 15-inch notebook, the HP convertible is exceptionally easy to slip into a bag and carry around.

