Buying a used 2020 HP Spectre x360 off eBay: Good deal with big problems! 

I know your content is more shorts focused but wish you'd do more videos like this. Its very relaxing.

Ngl, this would've been a nice video to see in 2020. I bought mine for roughly $1600 at Best Buy because of its beauty and became terribly attached to it. Of course, I am the average consumer w/ no laptop repair knowledge, so that very last point really digs deep considering I take it in for a yearly checkup at minimum. 😅 Though, with a reliable and trustworthy technican near me who'll gladly take my money, I'm gonna see who'll give up first: my wallet, my technican, or this laptop.

That is a nice looking laptop. Shame about the soldered RAM. Curious what your thoughts on the Framework are. Seems like it could be a viable alternative, though definitely at a higher price.

As a tech enthusiast and fellow technician who has seen plenty of those HP Spectre units die, do NOT buy them, unless you know how to repair them. Cramming high-ish end parts into such a small chassis definitely has some downsides when it comes to heat. They overheat fairly easily, the SSD's tend to fail early, the performance suffers due to thermal throttling too.

i have an hp envy x360 , and i agree with what he said. The display is hands down absolutely BEAUTIFUL , and the laptop over heats like crazy and needs a thermal paste replacement. To anyone who is watching this , if you are planning on buying this kind of laptops ,wether the x360 or the spectre , please immediately change the thermal paste if you can because it extremly over heats at times , sometimes even when watching youtube, and secondly , for some reason hp has by default disabled always on cooling fan through the laptops bios. So i suggest you entre the bios and set the cooling CPU fan to always on enabled .

So I’m not the only one who absolutely adores older ThinkPad keyboards

I’m here from the shorts, but I loved this longer video. I used to be a technician something like 15 years ago, and I am a power user looking for powerful laptops that can handle my poorly written generative live visuals. I’ve always loved Asus laptops, recently I’m appreciating Apple M1s (except for the part where there’s no nVidia card). Now I’m saving for a TUF laptop but this video makes me think that also high end HPs can be give a chance. Live visuals are an hobby for me so I don’t like to waste too much money, let’s see!

I literally got one for free because it fell on its side and power button was stuck. Owner didn't want it anymore because of what they were quoted to replace the frame. I soldered two wires and a small external power button. Gave that to my friend who can now enjoy a convertible 4K touch display, an excellent keyboard, excellent audio, and just excellent build quality too! Now I will agree throttling for no reason is a big issue and HP does that a lot Your spicy pillows are amazing :) but if you don't want one that's why you use 18650 batteries

I love it too. It's such a good laptop.

Been in this industry for over 30 years and your disclaimer at the end earned yourself a sub. By all means people, get this laptop. I call it job security!

that's one hell of a pick, good to know that great laptop fell into the right hands and will see good use and care, good work man

You need more views, such an entertaining personality and informational content keep it up

That year of laptop just felt awkward in general. It felt like the specs you got just couldn’t justify the price and it’s hard not to feel that way today. I got a steal of a deal last year with a laptop that had a 9750H, 1660ti Mobile and had 64gb of memory (that I bought after) and it cost me only 400$. Caveat being it wasn’t a touch screen but I personally don’t really care for that feature much- so 400$ was a screaming deal. Ended up trading it back for a desktop, as the 9750h and that 1660Ti mobile just had horrible performance compared to its desktop counterpart- thermals aside.

We all need you as a friend. Bro can fix everything.

I love mine. Got it 2019 and it ended up being my Citrix connection to my work box for 2 years. Flawless

I love this types of video. Hope you will make more tutorial type videos such as how to change batteries or repaste cooling systems with common mistake. We can't be the greatest technician that's ever lived but we would like to be a somewhat great technicians to take care of our devices.

It was an amazing video. Right now, I have some days with my "new" HP 255 G8. It's nowhere near the level of beauty of that X360, but I love that modularity from HP laptops (that's why I always go back to HP, regardless of being HP. They have their moments, and I think we can agree on that). The fun part though? I noticed there are a lot of parts from other models of HP laptops that should work with mine, and my laptop's motherboard has some connectors that aren't available for any of the options of this model, but they're definitely available in other lines of laptops that use that same mainboard. I'm having a blast checking what else I can find that might work. The best ones so far? A backlit keyboard in Spanish and silver (my laptop is darker gray), the stupid palm rest that goes with it can have also a fingerprint scanner that isn't available for my 255 G8 (but the motherboard has the connector) can be made of metal, which is super cool, and the fact that I can use the main M.2 slot, and a SATA or SATA to M.2 adapter in a space where a hard drive can go (but it wasn't included on this one... But it can be added) for more storage.

Didn't realise at first which channel that was ! Cool to see a video an not a short from you

Secret pro tip for those who have overheating Intel laptops. Check to see if you can set your cpu to max out at 99% cpu in the power options. This disables turbo boost and will significantly bring down temps. This will slow down the PC a bit though. I had to do this as a kid with a Fujitsu that overheated and shut down when gaming. (Thermal paste did not fix sadly)

the only two laptops I've had have been HP and honestly, I've a happy costumer, they both have been reliable and sturdy

The greatest technician that has ever lived

I have the same one, just with the MX330. Got it in August 2022 for around $800, easily the best laptop I’ve ever owned.

I bought a used 2017 HP Omen in 2019 that i STILL use to this day. It's nice. It's getting on the slower side now, but it's still great.

I just am disappointing with the hinge design as well as its thermals other than that its an amazing laptop, and probably the best looking out there, i hope they arent scared to make a thicker one with some more powerful hardware inside

yeah, I had a similar experience with my Laptop, I bought a used top of the line AMD Ryzen Envy x360 for about $100 because it had a tiny crack on the display and a detached hinge, so after fixing the hinge and changing the thermal paste I was left with a quite powerful 13" laptop that has a half working touch screen and a slightly ugly corner. If you don't mind dealing with the issues they have, they make for very compelling second-hand machines

So here is some craziness: My hp Omen 16 had died. Nothing I did made it work. The power light came on for a second and died. No post or even a screen coming on. I thought it was dead. That was 2 months ago. I started seeing your videos 2 days ago. Last night I tried to trouble shoot (again) by removing the boot drive and booting (again). When I hit the power button, the light stayed on. Then the screen came on with a cmos error (common). Then it worked. Craziest part is that same day I was looking into sending it to you to look at. Totally crazy!

Awesome channel. U deserve millions of views sir

I own one, she is a beauty, but plagued with performance/overheating/battery issue, 101% score for her look, 15% for her inner soul (I still use it for random small task, e.g. to test a router)

I have a similar HP computer, but the hinge broke. My HP Envy x360 broke not even a year after it was purchased. It still works, the hinge and the mouse is the defective part. The mouse bends, and the hinge caused my camera to break also. So now I have a computer that is made of shit parts.

Just got a 2020 hp envy x360, its got a slight bit of balloon on the battery and a cracked screen, so i got it cheap, love it.

I have a 2021 HP Probook 445 G7 and it's been solid. Upgraded it to 32GB ram to have that spicy dual-channel AMD performance. It overheats like crazy though, I had to do a duct tabe mod because there was a large gap (for some reason?) between the fan and the heatsink. It still overheats, though it is much better. Got it used for $200 a while back and it's in near-perfect condition, really happy with it. But now seeing the spectre I might upgrade lol

HPS 2019 omen is just as well built and well developed as well as the fact it is incredibly modular I have 2022 3070 model it is remarkably good I am happy getting it for my partner

Good vid, mate. I was looking for info, as you seem to be the guy with the foghorn and lantern at the front of the ship.

Entertaining and informative at the same time

5:22 thank you for this because I’m upgrading my nvme drive

I love your long vids

Yeah, most laptops, for power users, need mods. Things I did to my Dell G5 SE; better thermal paste and thermal pads, removed mesh from bottom tray (no difference noticed, so this may vary), taped gap between fans and fins on cooling, upgraded the battery to a used Dell model for cheap, and found a 32GB kit of 3200MHz C18 RAM by OLOy. This laptop has been a blast to use for gaming and video editing for the past few years. Specs; CPU - Ryzen 4900H & GPU - RX 5600M

Love your content ❤

I am a proud owner of this x360 and was the envy of my architecture program bavk in 2017. It kept pace (if not exceeded) most of everyone elses pc's (even the tacky-looking ROG's). Only in recent years had I run into my first confounding issue with it, and that is power cycling. It all started with the spicy pillow batteries which I repaced, but still cannot shut it down, hibernate or sleep without it resetting - its very strange! Even the Bios believes everything is fine, so I'm thinking its an issue internally with the chip which might have been damaged by my negligence of not swapping put the battery fast enough. (Broke student life). Aside from having to smother it to death with a pillow to turn it off every night, I still love streaming F1 on it and using it for emulation of older games (its a decent GPU after all!).

Man I wished I had a really good computer repair shop in Australia I could trust and give my computer whenever I want it fixed or upgraded

I have an Hp spectre x360 and I love it

0:30 I prefer around GTX 1650 graphics performance for a laptop but apparently the MX 250 is around 30% slower than a GT 1030. Given that the 250 is pascal it’s still supported so there’s probably at least some new games that are playable. The NVIDIA MX series mobile graphics cards are honestly really interesting because I’m not really sure who it’s marketed for. Maybe given the nature the device with its 4K touch screen this GPU is meant for digital artists? I’m not sure

Dude the 10 hours for drivers thing is TOO relatable. Just bought a 2020 Envy x360 and I really like the laptop, but my God does it need work. When I have time, I have to hunt for the monitor driver, fix it not charging while on, and I want to find a solution to the stupid keyboard back light timeout problem.

This was really interesting!

Ayyyy the car wizard is great!

I love how you are not screaming about my mum and rubber

I have an asus zen book 14 inch. And asus made the cooking even worse than the laptop mentioned here. I put heavy load on it and under the laptop gets hot enough to burn you. It’s a ryzen 5 series with a dedicated nvidia gpu. It’s a single slim pipe and one fan setup. And the pipe cools gpu and cpu. And the cover blocks more than 50% of the fan. Not only that they dissipate nvme heat directly to the metal case. I always worry about the battery due to this high heat situation on the flawed cooling solution. And Asus does not allow me to modify cooling fan curve. It only ramps up when the laptop is near or already throttling. My late 2018 MBP at least has double pipes for double fans. And that one cools better than this Asus. It helps if I leave the cover of the Asus off or put more fans directing air to the laptop. Haven’t found a way to mod the cooling for this laptop. But thinking of getting some metal snips and tear a big hole so the fan breaths instead of choking. The MBP is really showing its age. DDR 3 ran and and old 8th gen i5 processor. Unfortunately I don’t have the cash to buy a new MBP as Apple has made the news even more expensive than mine was when it was new. But the Asus has some good performance on it. And it’s still fairly new at only around 3 years old. And lastly, I used to have an old hp. All it was good for is overheating and shutting off. I dug into that laptop but even reposting. And cleaning everything out it didn’t matter. The laptop required a fan blowing on it and low load to keep it from overheating. I can only hope some of the start up laptop companies making designs that are modular and easy to upgrade go mainstream because that’s when you can actually make the changes needed to improve everything about the laptop. Till then I’m sticking with my MBP till it dies off and my zen book. Laptops are always a pain.

I've had to replace the fan on my Acer Swift 3 *three* times because every time the fan would start being noisy and eventually fail. The battery connector somehow managed to become loose two times, meaning I had to open it and re-seat the connector. Also every few months or so Windows will shit itself to where the Laptop will no longer shut down properly and drain the battery when powered off, so you have to re-install a bunch of drivers to fix it. BUT DAMN IT I GOT A GOOD DEAL ON THE THING 6 YEARS AGO AND I AM GOING TO DECIDE WHEN IT DIES. Not some fan or some battery connector. Amazingly though, the battery itself is holding up really well.

LOL the chest burster battery scene

Yoo this is the laptop ive had sonce college, got a bit worried since it was an hp Glad it was a good purchase lmao, ive still got it and use it perfectly 5 years later

That laptop has some amazing specs, sure wish I had one, I should make a video on my laptop. It is a HP Pavilion x360 m, 14-ba. I had 8gb of ram, i upgraded it, and with my 1080p HDR Display, and the folding. Its not that bad. I got it for free from a cousin, his dad broke it. It had a spicy pillow, cracked screen, very dusty, cleaned it all up, and with the intel hd graphics 620, I use it daily, I am commenting using it. anyways, love the videos, keep up the good work ! :)

I had an old pre-spectre x360 :) The m3-u001dx. I did everything with that little laptop and even played back raw paperscans of hand drawn animation(can tweak the registry to give more vram to the intel). And it synced up pretty well to a whole bunch of different drafting screens. Plenty powerful for what I did. IMO x360s and the spectres seem to have pretty good replacement part catalogs on hps website. In the time I owned mine(gave it to family) I gave it so much more RAM, a backlit keyboard upgrade, and even a 1080p screen replacement. And yeah... new battery and SSD. Definitely not good to have a 180degree burning hot hdd running right next to a lithium battery xD Now I run an ideapad, cause can use art stylus without a tablet and the stylus even works on my phone. So convenient!

It's just weird seeing you so calm.😅

That Alien gif was just, *chefs kiss* XD

you really greatest technically ever what ever I love you man

These days modern PC are also difficult to upgrade they moved the sata dlot from horizontal to vertical. Hard to reach they say it's for eure management

0:13 Who's that majestic man in the corner? 😍 10/10 impersonation

I'm also a fan of the HP Specter like you. I have already replaced the battery twice by myself (I occasionally repair laptops as a part-time job.). It's a shame that HP doesn't allow you to set the charging limit in the BIOS... And it also overheats like crazy. Please, how did you modify the cooling system? Did you add another heatpipe or some sheet of copper?. I have HP Spectre 15 ch001nc from 2018.

I'm really hoping that amd's upcoming apu comes in the hp spectre, ciz holy shit that going really is beautiful. 🖤

… I love the design of it

i have the 2021 spectre 16 i got at the time for $850 and its sooo good

oh no i wanted to buy one, thanks for the info

Subbed, good job!

I have one of these. Same graphics card and with the 10th gen i7. My Spectre acts like I slam it into a wall daily with how often it breaks. Have never dropped the thing once. I once had a repair man ask me if I purposefully broke it because the damage inside was “impossible to cause outside of human intervention”

It looks so damn futuristic imo

5:12 Just waiting for this guy to say “A perfect 72 degrees” Maybe because I’m just FNAF pilled but I can’t unhear it.

I had one. It was great.

Damn, that spectre is a looker!!!

It sure looks like modern Intel chips can't undervolt simply because they already extremely undervolt themselves (and they are still hot). The CPU can and will run as low as it possibly can, just to prevent overheating. The only difference you can make is by choosing the overclock strategy: will it kick in immediately, or just wait it out in a hope that the need for higher power is not going to last more than a split second, and you can continue to idle.

O_O i didnt realize this video was shot on an iPhone and not a professional camera until i saw the controls on your Apple watch

i guess most technician is the same, function over form, and some times we love something so much we got to revive it n make it the best.....hahaha, my self currently trying to get hold of a Latitude 9520 i7 motherboard

I don't think that companies should be limited on how much they can charge for replacement parts. All it would do is transplant the extra price they charge to another area. In the end, it could end up the same thing or even worse. What we truly need is a company that *doesn't* do it. If one does it, it'll attract more and more demand, forcing the other companies to do the same. Another way to achieve the same is not buy replacement parts at all, but that's not really viable (after all, discarding electronics is not very friendly to the environment).

i have always had good luck with lenovo legions. my new one is sturdy and doesnt feel cheap. my old one was a brick. this one is not a 4k but 1440p is fine.

Yes, make more content like this.

1:41 I have a 9th gen i5 and throttlestop has worked perfectly fine for me. Intel XTU didn’t work however. Maybe you could see if your 8th gen is compatible with XTU

5:50 For me, thats a nightmare scenario. I already have a hard time with the whine from my PC which works perfectly fine, that much would drive me mad.

I hope he gets a HP spectre sponsor

oh boy hp laptops overheat like hell mine is a 14 pavilion sometimes I have to keep it out from my legs because of how crazy the temperatures can get

5:52 that sounds like an old dot matrix printer 😂

i vaguely remember salem being a black cat who talks or was that just a fever dream

I have the same laptop. Replacing the battery. I think the one i got is OEM. I hope it is. Not sure how I'll tell. Probably need to do the thermal paste also. Ugh. No idea what to do. Guess I'll search for that video. Didn't have the time though. Good story, huh?

I just got a HP ENVY X360 Laptop for school, and really like it. What do you think about my purchase?

Yes, more posts like this or what these guys do with product reviews, they also started off like what your doing "Linus Tech Tips"

I wonder if removable batteries and RAM (at least, BCS I remember being able to update the GPU) is something that will come back. Also this should be the way laptops should be build.

looks like I missed out on not getting the spectre, no soldered ram, but damn I wish I had the discreet gpu

wish i knew a good shop i could send my desktop to to get rewired reset and checked for any faults

I absolutely despise HP but that is a pretty laptop.

Good old hinge problems.

I have a Elitebook 840 G8 touchscreen laptop, the only problem is that the screen doesn’t go fully back, only around 90 degrees so the touchscreen is hard to use

I'm not sure if I understood why you cancelled the first order. Didn't it have a 10gen cpu and a much better gpu?

My thinkpad yoga x1/4th for 250 says otherwise. Yeah, just for Linux, it's such a good machine.

You make me wanna buy one of these and beef it up Btw, I still love your shit posts too

Hey, its probably been asked before but what thermal paste do you use?

I'm using an eglp4bk evoo laptop. Would you reckon I should switch it for a more reliable laptop or should I just be upgrading, as I have for roughly 6 months?

What are your opinions on HPs "Enterprise" lineup of laptops? Few year old EliteBooks and are very cheap and are built like tanks, everything you don't expect from HP. I recommend them to everyone looking to get a laptop and never had any issues. The only complaint I ever had was that the speakers can be piss-weak on some variants.

I want to pick your brain about something. I was thinking about buying a gaming laptop but as everyone knows the battery life is only a few hours at best. I was thinking of swapping out the original battery with one of a higher capacity so I get a longer life span between charges. Now the higher capacity would be a little longer physically and this might fit provided I keep the SSD bay empty as I already have an NVMe. I'm planning to get the higher capacity battery from the same manufacturer for reasons of compatibility. My question is, will the higher capacity battery brick the motherboard if the voltage is higher or does this new battery have to have the same voltage as the original ? I'm not sure if I have asked all the right questions. Thanks.

Aaah, the coil whine. Your laptop sounds like like my gigabyte rx 6950xt. Only and 8th as loud. I can literally play melodies to other people in the room by varying the fps in a 3d application...

hp stands for hinge problem

Question my pencil small lead stuck inside laptop keyboard f9 button can this cause any damage or trouble to my laptop my laptop is asus a17 it's says it has dusk proof I culdent find lead

Swollen Li Ions are terrifying