We could have predicted that HP would refresh its laptop lineup after Intel introduced its 8th Generation Core processor family in mobile form (Kaby Lake Refresh, or Kaby Lake-R, not to be confused with Coffee Lake on the desktop). By extension, our crystal ball, if we had one, would have also told us the new lineup would be faster than the previous generation, especially in multi-threaded applications where upgrading from a dual-core 7th Generation CPU to a quad-core 8th Generation chip would pay the biggest dividends. But what we could not have foreseen is that subtle changes beyond swapping out the engine that drives its systems would add up to an appreciably superior experience.