Power Button Issue - New Spectre x360

[hirenshah]

I recommended the Spectre x360 to a work colleage who was going travelling for 3 months.   The laptop was used a couple of times in the UK and the first time it was used abroad, the power button just caved in.

There appears to be no way to power on this laptop.  It is less than 2 months old and not going to be possible to send it off to be repaired until March 2018.

The laptop needs to be repaired where it isas it cannot be sent off.  HP UK need to urgently find a solution for this laptop to be repaired in Australia and this just shows poor workmanship.  Something one may expect from a cheap laptop, but not off a premium product for which a premium price has been paid. 

[CHI_GIRL78]

I have had that same issue from the moment I purchase the laptop. It appears to be some sort of fault. Were you ever able to get any resolve or repairs?

[hannahsimpson]

Hi, I have had my laptop since around the end of thanksgiving last year, and this just happened to me this week. The computer was not turning on out of sleep mode, the light in the button was blinking but the laptop was not responding, so I attempted to do a hard reset just holding the power button down, nothing unusual, and it just caved in exactly as you said.

I took it to a “Best Buy” shop in the US, the store where I bought it and from which it has an extended warranty. To their credit, they did immediately take off the back to see if they could push it out from behind (they can’t), so they offered to send it out for repair. They had the nerve to say, “Well, we need to evaluate it to see if this kind of damage is even covered by your warranty.” Excuse me? 1. This is clearly something wrong with the laptop, and 2. Even if this was “accidental damage,” that is covered too, so buzz off with the rudeness. They also wanted to charge me $200 to do data recovery, which should be included in the warranty too.

I did not ship it off because I too was flying abroad within hours of when it happened. I will probably send it off next week. Mostly just furious that I am being accused of damaging the laptop intentionally or even by negligence. But yeah, exact same thing happened to me just now. Definitively not a premium laptop feature. Actually, I’ve always felt the power and volume

buttons were lacking substance and poorly placed. Even the fact the power button is on the opposite side of the charging indicator is annoying as all hell.

[ELAINELOU]

I have the same problem with this laptop which I purchased from Best Buy.  Best Buy told me they needed the laptop up to 4 weeks to repair and minimum of 2 weeks.  I cannot do without the computer for that amount of time.  Even though the repair would have been covered by warranty I had to get the laptop repaired.  This issue has happened 3 times in 9 months with 2 different technical repair shops.  Both have now refused to continue these repairs because they consider the power button a design flaw.  Am I now screwed and forced to buy another laptop?

[hannahsimpson]

With the right screwdrivers because disassembling the bottlon panel requires both philips and Torx (#5 or #6 I think), and some effort, you can pull out the power button assembly and manually bend it back and restore it to functionality. While I am hardly a delicate tech-inept gal, I got lucky to have my boyfriend’s father, a former Intel Engineer, decide he wanted a look after Best Buy turned me down. He managed to get it working, and it hasn’t bent down since for me at least.

Between the staticky speakers, the screws on this bottom plate that don’t stay down (which throws the touchpad out of alignment), and the rubber feet I’ve had to remove so many times to fix other issues (because the set of screws is stupidly hidden under it) that are warped and no longer sticky, I have been thoroughly unimpressed by the build quality of this laptop. I say you call HP directly, suggest they offer you the 2019 “gem cut” unit as a replacement (has the diagonal power button placements, totally redesigned, possibly better????) and in the meanwhile maybe get yourself a cheapo used/burner/loaner laptop while it’s away. The good news is that a 512GB flash drive or even microSD that can entirely back up my hard drive in a jiffy has never been cheaper so at least I lose nothing data-wise.

If you succeed, message me and they can replace mine too.