I haven't had a lot of canopies yet so I can really only compare it to larger Silhouettes and to the Sabre2 150.
The openings are really nice. I have never had a hard opening, but the opening aren't as slow as some people say either (except maybe when doing hop-n-pops). The only draw back with the openings is that the canopy sometimes opens off-heading.
It flies a lot better than I had expected after hearing what people at my DZ have to say about 7-cell canopies. The toggle turns are almost as quick as those on the Sabre2, but both the Sabre2 and the Silhouette respond better to front riser input. The Spectre's front riser turns aren't bad except they are fairly slow, but whey you try to do a front riser dive the canopy feels unstable and sometimes wiggles slightly from side to side.