Hands on: HP’s Spectre Foldable PC redefines what a computer can be

Getting hands-on with the HP Spectre Foldable at a press event in Palo Alto California last week revealed an exciting reality about folding laptops: They’ve now evolved past that first troubled stage that new-concept technologies occupy until later generations iron out their hang ups. The HP Spectre Foldable PC is a lot more refined than I was expecting, and mostly performs as well as HP claims it can.

The laptop’s design was the first hint of that, being very slim and light to hold and so easy for me to manipulate. It measures just 0.33 x 14.8 x 10.9 inches unfolded (0.84 x 14.81 x 10.91 inches folded) and weighs just 2.99 pounds (3.58 pounds with the keyboard attached), which is slightly more compact and lightweight than its near rival the Asus Zephyrus 17 Fold OLED.

The big appeal of this laptop, if you haven’t already heard about it, is that it folds like a book and opens up again, yet it’s essentially just one continuous display. That allows it to be used as a 3-in-1: a laptop, tablet, or 17-inch desktop PC. The transformation between laptop mode and the expanded 17-inch desktop mode is quite amazing — it certainly impressed me.

Put simply, the Spectre Foldable is like a chameleon that can change in a heartbeat. Moving it through its various forms was like unfolding a tourist map that I’d naively been using all wrong to display just one district of a city, only to finally open it up and display the whole city in all its glory. The difference in size between its compact 12.3-inch laptop form and desktop form was hard for me to fathom at first, because I missed the first demonstration of it being opened up — you really have to have two eyes keenly on it to believe the transformation.

Once the reality of what it could do hit home, though, I had more than a few butterflies in my stomach that something like this had been made possible; it’s futuristic, yet here it is available right now, a gratifying prospect for this reviewer whom is so often on the move and so desperate for a larger display for writing up my reviews that I’ve at times seriously considered lugging around a 24-inch gaming monitor.

Yet playing around with the configurations revealed even more surprises. In addition to laptop, tablet, and desktop modes, you can configure the laptop to an additional mode HP calls Expanded 1.5 Screen mode. Here, you make just a quarter of the bottom display visible — similar to the dual-screen setup in Asus’ ROG Zephyrus Duo laptops.

The Spectre’s intelligent full-sized Bluetooth keyboard is a big part of making each of its various modes work. It attaches and detaches easily from the display proper and even blacks out the bottom part of the display upon contact, so there’s no unwanted light glare. Magnets keep it firmly in place so it doesn’t slip off either, but pulling it off takes just minimal effort. The Spectre Foldable also comes with a magnetic HP Wireless Rechargeable MPP2.0 Tilt Pen. Both of these devices work well and feel comfortable to use. They recharge while attached to the device, which is a very nice touch by HP.

For changing the laptop to Expanded 1.5 Screen mode, the keyboard makes good use of sensors along its sides which match up with sensors along the display’s edges. I simply had to take the keyboard off the bottom, roughly align it towards the lower half of the display and the magnetic keyboard just snapped into place — so, you don’t need to waste precious time precisely measuring out proportions.

The laptop is loaded with other enticing hardware, including a 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD drive, 16GB DDR5 RAM, a 5MP HP True Vision Camera, and a Wi-Fi 6E capable wireless network card. Not having had a look at the port options before I got hands on, I was quite surprised to see the offering consisted of just two Thunderbolt 4 ports. Admittedly, that’s a little thin compared to conventional laptops that often have multiple USB-C and or USB-A options as well as Thunderbolt 4 ports. Then again, just having Thunderbolt 4 ports makes a lot of sense in a panel that’s just 0.33 of an inch thick.

One of the big criticisms about foldable laptops to date has been, and rightly so, about the fold part. It’s no secret that the concave shape of the crease tends to reflect light, which makes it somewhat difficult, if not near impossible, to see the display where the fold appears. The Spectre Foldable has the same issue — I could see plenty of glare beaming back at me. It is, however, a lot less noticeable than in rivals — HP has managed to make the crease a mere 3mm across. Compare that to the 5mm crease in the Zephyrus 17 Fold OLED, and the Spectre’s thin strip of glare doesn’t seem all that bad.

Besides… the Spectre does a great job overcoming two other main pain points that often arise in foldables: a visible bump and a lack of durability where the fold sits. The display looks remarkably flush. It also feels extremely tough thanks to metal reinforcement directly behind the fold. I just brushed over these design smarts in one paragraph here, yet their importance to the Spectre Foldable shouldn’t be underestimated — this is really an achievement HP should be proud of.

In regards to CPU power, although I didn’t get to run any benchmarks on the Spectre Foldable, in the short time I had with the laptop it proved reasonably quick and responsive for browsing, opening and closing programs, and running videos and other light tasks. I barely had to wait two seconds for programs to open, which suggests that the laptop’s Intel Core i7-1250U CPU is up for the kind of work that will be done on it.

Videos and images, too, looked brilliant on the laptop’s 2.5K (2560×1920), 99.5 percent DCI-P3 color gamut OLED display, which I was pleased to see isn’t a watered-down version of an OLED panel just because the Spectre is a foldable technology. On the contrary, it looked every bit as colorful as you’d expect an OLED to be in any conventional laptop. The bezels are extremely thin too, so you also get largely unimpeded visuals.

Testing the battery life was also not possible this time, but HP’s explanation of how the company fit a 6-cell rechargeable 94.3 WHr battery into such a slimline device really had me applauding the design team. It’s been split into two segments which have been discretely placed down each side of the panel, so that all the other hardware can fit too. HP promises up to 12 hours and 30 minutes of battery life, which if achievable is very decent for a device like this.

On the whole, I was left in awe of what HP has achieved in the Spectre Foldable. Most of all, it was reassuring to see that it’s not the kind of device that leaves you hoping that future technology advances will finally make foldable technology competent — it’s competent now, and that makes me very happy.

BUT, and there’s usually always a but, $4,999.99 seems like an eye-wateringly expensive price to pay even for a laptop like this one. Then again, it’s been a long time since a device has given me butterflies…

The HP Spectre Foldable is available for purchase now from HP.com and ships this month.