For the past few years, HP's Spectre notebook has been one of the options that die-hard Windows fans often turned to when looking for a product to rival that of Apple's MacBook. Now, HP's latest Spectre 13 model is aimed outperforming the MacBook altogether.

Billed as the "The world's thinnest laptop," by its creators, the Spectre 13 measures precisely 10.44 mm thick. To put that in perspective, Apple's latest 12" MacBook is 13.1 mm thick, giving the 2016 Spectre 13 the edge. To ensure this achingly thin device is still robust enough to use wherever owners would like, HP has opted for a 1.11 kg carbon fibre body to protect it. Other noteworthy features are a 13.3" Gorilla Glass display which serves up 1080p visuals. It also runs a choice of either sixth-gen Intel Core i5 or i7 processors, with 8 GB of RAM and up to 512 GB of solid slate drive storage.

While it seems to tick all the necessary boxes from a specification perspective, perhaps most pleasing of all for us, is that HP has not added any gimmicky features to the Spectre 13. As a result, there is no touch display interface for Windows 10, no swiveling or rotating screen and it is not detachable. Thankfully then, the Spectre 13 is a purely distilled notebook on paper. As for how it will perform in real life, it's still hard to judge.

The Spectre 13 is set to arrive in the US for pre-order come 25 April, retailing for $1 170 and up. For now, a South African release has been scheduled for Aug/Sept 2016, with further details not yet available. This is one notebook to certainly keep an eye out for.