When comparing System76 Oryx Pro vs HP Spectre x360 15t, the Slant community recommends System76 Oryx Pro for most people. In the question“What are the best laptops to make Android apps?” System76 Oryx Pro is ranked 7th while HP Spectre x360 15t is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose System76 Oryx Pro is:
All System76 laptops come with Linux out of the box. The Oryx Pro comes with either Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or Ubuntu 16.10. But that does not mean that other Linux distributions are not supported, quite the contrary. Most Linux distros should work without any major problems with the Oryx pro and most (if not all) drivers are available.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great Linux support
All System76 laptops come with Linux out of the box. The Oryx Pro comes with either Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or Ubuntu 16.10. But that does not mean that other Linux distributions are not supported, quite the contrary. Most Linux distros should work without any major problems with the Oryx pro and most (if not all) drivers are available.
Pro Excellent choice for gaming on Linux
The Oryx Pro is probably the best laptop with Linux support out of the box that is great for gaming as well. This is mostly because of the NVIDIA graphics cards. It comes by default with the GTX 1060 but for $289 more, you can add a GTX 1070 instead. The default 8GB of RAM is good for gaming but the 16GB RAM is ideal.
Pro Amazing overall performance
The default 6th generation i7 Processor coupled with the 16GB of RAM (even better with the versions with 32GB and 64GB) make for an absolutely amazing machine. It has a dedicated SSD for the OS only which massively increases startup time and for anything else you can choose up to two SSDs or HDDs of varying sizes. The Oryx Pro is perfectly capable of doing some heavy-lifting including 4K video editing and gaming at highest settings without a hitch.
Pro Good speakers
One of the bonuses of having a larger body is that you get to use good speakers instead of some small ones stuck underneath the laptop. They are also angled toward the user and the sound is crisp and loud enough, even though it lacks some bass.
Pro Good keyboard
The keyboard is very nice, it's not amazing by any means but quite comfortable to work with. The keys are pretty thick, thicker than what you may find in laptops today and with a nice springiness to them. The keyboard also supports multicolor backlighting.
Pro Good display
Has a 1080p matte display with an optional IPS matte display version. With great colors and brightness and almost no eye strain even when it's used for extended periods.
Pro Very customizable
Before buying the System76 Oryx Pro from the System76 website, you get to customize almost every aspect of the laptop as far as specs go. The price depends on what you choose to put inside your laptop and prices vary from $1475 for the basic version to $7000 for a laptop with a 17.3" Matte IPS Display, a GTX 1070, 6th Gen i7 CPU, 64GB RAM, and two SSDs of 5TB and 4TB respectively.
Pro Long battery life
For simple activities such as web browsing and editing files, the HP Spectre clocks in at around 11 hours of autonomous battery life.
Pro Great design
The HP Spectre x360 has an all-aluminum body that gives it a very premium feel. The edges are all smooth and polished which provide a great highlight accent to the laptop.
Pro Good keyboard
HP put a lot of effort in the creation of this keyboard and it shows. With 60 gram actuation weight and a travel length of 1.3mm, typing on the Spectre x360 is a great experience, reminiscent of typing on a mechanical keyboard.
Pro Excellent performance
Performance of course depends on the configuration, but a medium-powered configuration with 8GB RAM and i7 provides an excellent performance. Multitasking is a breeze and the laptop doesn't stutter or lag even with 20 Chrome tabs open simultaneously.
The SSD is also extremely fast and is able to copy 40GB of data in about 2 seconds.
Gaming performance is decent as well, managing to hit 40FPS with Dirt 3 on medium settings.
Pro Great, colorful display
The Spectre x360 has a great glossy Full-HD screen to complement its amazing design. At 317 nits, the screen is pretty bright and it has a decent color range as well, covering 101.7 percent of the sRGB color spectrum.
Cons
Con Very heavy and bulky
Weighing at 5.5lbs for the 15.6" version it's relatively heavy and it's one inch thicker than the XPS 13. But the extra space is not put to waste, considering how it has an Ethernet port, SD card slot, 2 Mini DisplayPrts, HDMI port, 2 USB 3.1 Type-C ports, 3 USB 3.0 Type-A ports and headphone and mic jacks. The GTX 1070 version also includes a headphone amplifier. However, the power brick that comes with the charger is ridiculously large at 2lbs which understandably adds to the weight of the laptop since most of the time you have to carry both with you.
Con Customer service could be much better
System76's technical support is pretty bad. When there's a problem that should be solved by them, they usually resort to sending replacement parts instead or blaming third-parties (even if those third-parties are not at fault) of something that they should be fixing.
Con No 4K option
It lacks the option to have a 4K display. While not a deal breaker, it's a shame that a laptop with a display as good as Oryx Pro's does not have a 4K option which would also be a great plus for gamers.
Con Has some bloatware
While it's less than HP usually has, there are still apps like Netflix, The Weather Channel, Hearts Deluxe, Connected Photo etc.
Con Can easily trap heat and overheat
The extremely thin chassis is a drawback as far as heat management goes. Even a relatively simple activity like streaming HD videos will overheat the laptop and put the internal heat at about 105 degrees Fahrenheit which is 10 degrees higher than the 95 degrees "comfortable" threshold.