HP Spectre x360 14 vs MacBook Air M4: Where the MacBook Air M4 Pulls Ahead
HP Spectre x360 14 or MacBook Air M4? We compare price, measured performance and real-world trade-offs to work out which is the better buy.
Tech Daily Review Desk
The short answer
HP Spectre x360 14 10h 20m mixed use, MacBook Air M4 16h 20m mixed use — the same test, run the same way. Where they part company is who they suit: the HP Spectre x360 14 is the one to get if you are note-takers and anyone who sketches or annotates, the MacBook Air M4 if you are students, writers and anyone who works away from a socket.
Price difference: The MacBook Air M4 undercuts the HP Spectre x360 14 by £300. That gap only matters if the extras below are ones you will actually use.
Specifications side by side
| Specification | HP Spectre x360 14 | MacBook Air M4 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £1499 | £1199 |
| Our score | 4 / 5 | 5 / 5 |
| Display | 14in OLED touch, 2880 x 1800, 120Hz | 13.6in, 2560 x 1664, 60Hz |
| Chip | Core Ultra 7 258V | Apple M4 |
| RAM | 16GB | 16GB |
| Storage | 1TB | 512GB |
| Battery | 68Wh | 53.8Wh |
| Weight | 1.44kg | 1.24kg |
| Runtime | 10h 20m mixed use | 16h 20m mixed use |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two working weeks as a primary machine, on battery wherever possible. Display at 150 nits, keyboard backlight off, the manufacturer’s balanced power profile, and the same browser profile with thirty tabs restored on every machine.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Battery life | A looped workday script — document editing, video calls, browsing — run to shutdown, three times, averaged. |
| Sustained CPU | A thirty-minute all-core render, reporting the settled clock speed rather than the boost figure. |
| Fan noise | Measured at 50cm from the display hinge during that render, in a room with a 28dB floor. |
| Chassis heat | Palm rest and underside temperatures after the render, since that is where it is actually felt. |
| Display | Brightness and contrast from a colorimeter, at the panel’s native setting rather than a boosted HDR mode. |
We deliberately do not report single-core burst scores, which almost nothing outside a benchmark actually produces.
The honest caveat: Sustained figures depend on ambient temperature. A warm room costs most thin laptops several percent.
Where the HP Spectre x360 14 wins
- A genuinely usable convertible hinge
- A bright OLED touchscreen
- An included stylus that clips magnetically
It also has the edge on the intangibles: the hinge holds tablet mode firmly rather than flexing under a stylus.
Where the MacBook Air M4 wins
- Exceptional battery life
- Completely silent under load
- The best trackpad on any laptop
And in day-to-day use, a ten-minute 4K export finished in 4m 12s with no fan to spin up.
The trade-offs
Neither is flawless. The HP Spectre x360 14 has one clear weak point — heavier than a comparable clamshell — and the MacBook Air M4 has its own: only two ports, both on one side. Weigh those against how you actually work rather than against the spec sheet.
The value case
The HP Spectre x360 14 costs £300 more and scores 1 point higher — roughly £300 per point of difference. Whether that is good value depends on whether the extra buys you a genuinely usable convertible hinge, or only a number. In our testing it is the former, but only just.
If neither quite fits
Look at the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 at £1649 — it scored 4 out of 5 and suits people who type for a living. If the budget will not stretch, the Acer Aspire 14 AI at £649 is the cheapest option in this category we would still put our name to.
Living with each of them
On paper the gap looks like a specification difference; in use it is a habits difference. With the HP Spectre x360 14 the thing you adjust to is heavier than a comparable clamshell, and you do adjust — within a week it stops registering. Its display (14in OLED touch, 2880 x 1800, 120Hz) is the part you stop thinking about. The MacBook Air M4 asks for a different accommodation: only two ports, both on one side, against a display of 13.6in, 2560 x 1664, 60Hz that holds up better than the number suggests. Neither compromise is severe. They are simply different, and which one you would rather not think about is a more useful question than which is objectively smaller.
Which one ages better
Both launched in 2025, so neither starts with a support-window advantage. The other half of ageing is the weak point you already know about: heavier than a comparable clamshell on one side, only two ports, both on one side on the other. Weaknesses of that kind do not improve with firmware, so assume you are buying them for the life of the device and price the decision accordingly.
Our recommendation
For most people we would take the MacBook Air M4, which scored 5 out of 5 in our testing against 4 for the other. That said, a score is a summary, not a substitute for knowing what you need.
Buy the HP Spectre x360 14 for a genuinely usable convertible hinge. Buy the MacBook Air M4 for exceptional battery life.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the laptops we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are HP Spectre x360 14 vs Razer Blade 16: Is the Razer Blade 16 Worth £1400 More? and HP Spectre x360 14 vs ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13: Which Suits You Better?.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
