HP Spectre Folio Laptop Review

Recently Techradar has reviewed “HP Spectre Folio” laptop, in their review they tried to clarify and explore HP’s claims about this new laptop.

They discussed many points including the price, design, specs and performance.

Price and Availability

The entry-level model price tag is around $1,299. This comes with an Intel Core i5-8200Y fanless processor, 8GB of DDR3 memory and a 256GB M.2 SSD. The screen is a 13.4-inch 1080p WLED touchscreen that’s protected by Corning Gorilla Glass. Another version is a Core i7-8500Y processor with an LTE modem attached for wireless connectivity anywhere, plus the same amount of RAM and storage as the version above. This costs $1,499, but these versions are not available in many countries.

“It’s a pricey proposition, then, with fierce competition, which means HP needs to pull out all the stops to make the Spectre Folio worth the considerable sums of money it is asking for.” Techradar comments.

Design & Specs

Building the Spectre Folio directly into a piece of genuine leather gives a unique look and feel that sets it apart from other premium laptops. (The leather is a part of the laptop).

HP Folio Spectre can be used as a laptop or as a tablet, and the leather case slides into various positions with ease, supporting the screen depending on which mode you use.

The brown leather feels pleasant to the touch and helps keep the device in one place on otherwise slippery surfaces, like glass, marble or granite.

The WLED backlit screen is impressively vibrant, and the IPS panel offers wide viewing angles, which is useful when adjusting the screen to various modes. The screen is impressively thin, though the bezels, especially at the top, which houses a webcam, and at the bottom, which displays the HP logo, are quite thick.

The Spectre Folio includes a stylus, which makes the price a little more palatable. It’s got a nice heft to it when in use, and the screen reacts quickly and smoothly to drawing and writing with it.

The keyboard is large and evenly spaced between keys, which makes it more comfortable to type on. However, as is often the case with 2-in-1 devices, the key travel is shallow, which means it doesn’t feel very responsive when typing. The spaces between the keys are also backlit, which offers a pleasant effect, and can help you type when in low light conditions.

Port-wise, you only get three USB-C ports, which can double as a power supply. It keeps the body slim, but it means if you have lots of legacy USB devices you’ll struggle for ports, and there’s no microSD slot either. It's important to note that while two of these USB-C ports are Thunderbolt 3, one is USB 3.1, which means it has a slower data transfer speed.

At 320 x 234 x 15.2mm (12.60 x 9.21 x 0.60 inches) and weighing 1.50kg (3.3lbs), this is an impressively-compact and light laptop.

HP Folio Spectre has a SIM port for mobile LTE data. This allows you to insert a SIM card into the laptop and connect to the internet via a cellular connection.

The Intel i7-8500Y processor is an 8th generation chip from Intel with two cores and base frequency of 1.50GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.20GHz. So, it’s not the fastest processor, or the most adept at multi-tasking, but it has an impressively low TDP of 5W. This allows for a fanless design that keeps the HP Folio Spectre impressively thin, while being almost entirely silent when in use

Here’s how the HP Folio Spectre performed in Techradar suite of benchmark tests:

Cinebench CPU: 279 points
Graphics: 43.08 fps
GeekBench: 4,966 (single-core); 8,785 (multi-core)
PCMark 8 (Home Test): 2,805 points
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 7 hours and 51 minutes

The HP Folio Spectre configuration which were reviewed comes with an 8th generation Intel Core i7-8500Y processor, 256Gb SSD and 8GB of RAM, all of which make Windows 10 feel fast and responsive during day-to-day tasks.

While it should go without saying that a laptop of this price can run Windows 10 without an issue, that’s unfortunately not always the case with some laptops. However, for the most part, the HP Folio Spectre does a very good job, though unzipping files on the device took a while.

The Intel i7-8500Y processor is an 8th generation chip from Intel with two cores and base frequency of 1.50GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.20GHz. So, it’s not the fastest processor, or the most adept at multi-tasking, but it has an impressively low TDP of 5W. 

This allows for a fanless design that keeps the HP Folio Spectre impressively thin, while being almost entirely silent when in use. It also means battery life is prolonged – more on that in a moment.

In Techradar benchmarks, the HP Folio Spectre lagged behind rivals such as the Dell XPS 13 and Huawei MateBook X Pro, both of which come with quad-core Core i7 processors, which does make a difference when it comes to performance.

The speakers are by Bang & Olufsen, but unfortunately they don’t quite match the expected quality.

Graphics are handled by the integrated Intel UHD Graphics 615 GPU. It does the job of displaying Windows 10, apps and media at 1080p, but don’t expect to play any graphically-challenging games on this thing, or edit videos.

Battery life

Although the HP Folio Spectre did a good job, lasting 7 hours and 51 minutes in Techradar battery benchmark, where they run a looped 1080p video at 50% brightness, it was still far off the 18 hours promised.  Still, almost eight hours is still a very decent amount of time, and means you should be able to go a full workday without needing a charge.

Techradar Final Verdict

The HP Folio Spectre is a gorgeously-designed convertible laptop that looks – and feels – incredibly premium. That’s just as well, really, as the price tag is just as luxurious.