I received the hdmi to usb c adaptor, tried it with my LG 4K monitor and everything worked great. I thought I was having problems with the sound until it dawned on me the monitor did not have speakers (duh!). I also discovered I had to choose the external monitor as my only monitor in order to get 4k. Again "duh". I am guessing extend would work as well.
I love being able to close the HP and use it like a skinny flat tower. For the usb A port I connect an adaptor that has 3 usb ports, and an ethernet port if needed. So I can connect a keyboard and mouse with another port for another hard drive, flash drive, or SD card adaptor. I use 1 usb c port for power and the other for the monitor. I am going to return the $70 hub BestBuy sold me as it is not needed.
For me the Spectre may be the perfect machine I have been searching for. I wanted to do some 4k film editing and wanted to use a higher definition monitor for photo editing and after talking to an HP salesman on the phone thought the 13" Spectre would not work. Thanks to forum help, especially Huffer, I learned it can project 4K. I will not need it much but for the few times I will it is great to have. I could care less about 4k on a small 13" screen. i have had some pretty decent laptops - a Lenovo Thinkpad W540 (I would often get the dreaded blue screen when hooked up to an external monito), a Yogo Pro 2 (after a little more than a year the paint started wearing off the keys), and recently a Dell XPS 15 (all kinds of issues that would come and go - for example there was a time it would always turn back on when I wanted it to shut down, then without me doing anything the problem went away). The Spectre I have has 16 gb Ram, 500 SSD, and i7 processor that many small think laptops don't even have as an option. I think for what it has it is very reasonably priced. I have no idea how many HP employees view this forum but if they do then hats off the HP engineers for designing a great maching in my view!
So far using the laptop as a desktop as been a great experience. I have not had any noise or heat issues (of course I have not pushed the maching much yet). This was the easiest time I have ever had setting up a computer. Finally, I hope no one minds this post as I justed wanted to share my experience and maybe this could help other non geeks avoid the mistakes I made. I also wanted to thank those on this forum, and again especially Huffer.
