Laptop in leather
Has HP gone totally mad?
SCORE
PRICE £1,249 (£1,499 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/300folio
This isn’t the first folio laptop design I’ve seen. Way back in the early 2000s, IBM’s ThinkPad division took a select group of laptop “experts” – journalists who reviewed them, such as me, and analysts from firms such as Gartner – to Rome for a secret briefing. The idea was to show prototypes and get our feedback on them; we would get an early sighting and IBM supposedly benefited from some free consultancy.
The one product that sticks in my mind is, essentially, the Spectre Folio. Screen on one side, computer internals and keyboard on the other, folding together in the unique style of a folio. I assured them this was a brilliant idea, so it should be no surprise that the product never saw the light of day.
With hindsight, it was the right decision. This was back in the days of Windows XP and laptop processors that required plenty of cooling. The folio design meant far less space to play with than a conventional clamshell design of the time, so you’d have to make a major sacrifice in either speed or battery life.
Jump to 2019, and there’s a much stronger argument for this design. Intel’s Y series of Core processors provide enough power for day-to-day tasks, Windows 10 is a far more stylus-friendly operating system and manufacturers have had a good few years of working out how to make a 2-in-1 system that’s usable in both laptop and tablet modes. All that’s left is for HP to execute the formula.
Chips are down
I have only one beef with the processor inside this laptop, and that’s its name. If you see a Core i7 badge on a machine – in this case, a tiny one to the bottom-right of the screen – then it’s fair to assume it’s fast. But this is a Core i7-8500Y, and the key letter there comes at the end. In Intel’s world, “Y” denotes an ultra-low power chip that’s designed to work without fan cooling. This one has a 1.5GHz base frequency, two cores, four threads and the ability to jump to 3.9GHz when required.
Factor in a 256GB Samsung PCIe SSD and an adequate 8GB of LPDDR3 memory and you have the foundations of a nippy system. Nippy, that is, if you don’t overface it. Consider this: in the single-core Geekbench 4 test, the Spectre Folio scored 4,670, while the crazily specified Razer and Asus gaming laptops ( see p52 and p54 respectively) managed around 5,250. It’s only when you hit the multicore part of Geekbench that the HP falls behind, scoring 8,334 to its counterparts’ 23,000 or so.
Or look at the photo-editing component of our benchmarks, where we ask the computers to process 20 images. This took around 70 seconds for the Core i7-9750H in the Asus and Razer laptops, while the HP took 121 seconds. So almost twice as long, but you’d still hang around for the end of the race to cheer on the underdog.
When it’s time for intensive video-editing action – transcoding a 6.3GB, 12-minute 4K video file to 1080p – the gulf becomes embarrassing. For instance, the Asus took around ten minutes to complete this task, while the HP kept me waiting for 44 minutes. And in our admittedly tough multitasking test, where we ask computers to simultaneously transcode the video, process the images and play back a full-screen video, the Folio took a staggering 4hrs 20mins. The Asus laptop completed the same task in 12 minutes.
Entertainment system?
If you’re keener to watch video than edit it, however, then the Folio is absolutely fine. Firing up BBC iPlayer revealed a lovely, rich image matched with surprisingly respectable sound quality. There isn’t much bass, but voices come through loud and clear – I’d be happy to watch documentaries on this laptop, for instance, but would use the 3.5mm jack to connect a pair of headphones if viewing an action movie or listening to music. It’s a surprisingly capable gaming machine, too, scoring 26.7fps in the GFXBench Car Chase onscreen test. That’s not quite playable, but indicates that less demanding games will run if you drop the settings down. Admittedly, when I tested this theory on Dirt: Showdown, it left me wanting more, with a score of around 20fps at 720p even when I set the details to low. Think Minecraft rather than Fortnite.
The Folio’s biggest surprise came in the battery test, where it lasted for a miraculous 10hrs 38mins. I say miraculous because it’s such a tiny object. The real miracle is that HP finds room for a 54Wh battery inside this sleekest of chassis, bearing in mind that its bottom half is barely 4mm thick (ignoring the leather). And if you do need to carry the charger, it won’t weigh you down: it weighs 206g and can charge the Spectre to 50% in around 30 minutes.
Leather it
The Spectre Folio is also supremely easy to stuff in a bag, and weighs only 1.51kg. I measured it at 17mm thick (HP’s official stat is 15.8mm), and much of that comes from the leather outer. Not that it’s entirely clear where the leather stops and the laptop begins: the two are fused together in a way that’s both technically admirable and, I suspect, tricky to repair. Note the single-year warranty. There are durability benefits to leather, even if the vegetarians among us would have preferred HP to choose a faux leather option. After two or three years of being bashed about in its suitably executive lifestyle, this is a machine that should look lived in rather than old, as it will resist the scratches and dents that date most laptops.
“Its biggest surprise came in the battery test, where it lasted 10hrs 38mins – the real miracle is that HP finds room for a 54Wh battery”
If you’re a fan of the leathery look, take note that HP has chosen a dark chocolate colour that it calls “cognac brown”. Although you only need to smell it and feel it to realise that it’s genuine leather, from across the room it doesn’t have the “that’s obviously leather” look that you might expect. If anything, it appears artificial, but I suspect that this effect will recede over time.
One design touch I wholeheartedly love is the way the screen folds out when you want to bring it closer to you. Rather than a tent mode of a conventional 2-in-1, you place pressure on the lower half of the screen and it flips away from the leather “lid”. You can then fold it fully back upon itself to create a tablet, or rest the screen in front of the keyboard so that only the touchpad is viewable. Great for watching films and for making presentations.
HP supplies an active stylus in the box too (charged via USB-C), but don’t be fooled by the official publicity photos that show a loop in the case for hooking it into. Just like the majority of styluses that come with tablets, you’ll be constantly playing hide and seek as you hunt for it. At £80 it’s worth hanging on to, though, not least because it’s practical: for all those people who got excited when I mentioned presentations earlier, a click on the end of the pen flips through slides while a double-click sends you back. It becomes second nature surprisingly easily.
With no texture to the screen, writing on the Spectre Folio using the stylus is never going to feel completely natural, but it is possible. My usual experiment to see how well OneNote recognised my scrawled notes failed as ever, but if you have neat handwriting then you may get usable results: when I slowed things down, it recognised around 90% of my words.
Ergonomics
And what about when you want to use the Folio as a laptop? Not for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised. Considering how little room the keys have to travel, the keyboard is a fine companion on a commute, in part due to its generously sized keys. All the cursor keys are clearly separated, there are no stupid positioning decisions and the single-height Enter key is easy to hit every time. I would have liked it to be quieter, with a clackety sound that’s almost reminiscent of a typewriter once you get going, but at least you know the keys have been struck.
HP has sacrificed the size of the touchpad, and, combined with the use of Synaptics drivers (rather than Microsoft’s superior Windows Precision drivers), it isn’t the most responsive of beasts. I suggest you factor in the cost of a Bluetooth mouse to avoid aggravation. All that said, it’s still usable and I found it just about adequate for navigating the 13.3in Full HD screen.
It performed well in our technical tests, with a particularly strong contrast ratio of 1,789:1 (no doubt one of the reasons why films looked so good). A Delta E of 1.67 is also excellent, while it covered 95.3% of the sRGB gamut – it’s clear that HP has invested in a top-tier display.
Little wonder, then, that it protects it with Gorilla Glass, but I found it reflective under indoor lighting; there’s no clever technology to diffuse direct lights. The good news is that you can pump up the brightness, with a peak of 341cd/m2.
Here I must make a confession to HP, because when testing the screen I initially didn’t believe it was 13.3in. In the end I fished out my ruler to double-check the screen’s dimensions because all the leather casing at its edges make it appear smaller than 13.3in ultraportables such as the Dell XPS 13 ( see issue 296, p54), where there’s barely any bezel at all. Naturally, the Spectre Folio is wider and deeper than the Dell, with a 320mm width versus 302mm and 235mm depth to 199mm.
Nor is there much room for ports, with HP making do with two Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports on the right-hand side and a USB-C 3.1 port on the left. If you plan to use this laptop as your day-to-day machine, a port replicator is a must. HP sells a basic one for £30, but a hunt online
“Having used the Spectre Folio 13, I confess both affection for it and confidence that it could do the job it’s intended for”
will reveal USB-C port replicators (complete with handy Gigabit Ethernet ports) for £50 or less. Wireless connectivity comes from Bluetooth 4.2 and 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) as you’d expect, but HP tucks away one last surprise at the rear of the screen: a SIM slot. This uses the Intel XMM 7560 LTEAdvanced Pro modem, promising download speeds of up to 1Gbit/sec. Finally, note that HP includes an IR webcam that supports Windows Hello facial sign-in. It’s a Full HD camera that’s adequate for Skype calls – it helps that the microphone is excellent – but with a washed-out finish to images you won’t be rushing to use it to capture home films.
Flipping bargain?
When advertising this leather-clad laptop on the front cover of the magazine, I wrote the line “Has HP gone mad?” The truth is, it hasn’t. When I first heard about the Spectre Folio 13 I thought it was an interesting experiment but nothing more; certainly not something I’d come close to recommending. Having used it, though, I confess both affection for it as a piece of design and confidence that it could do the job it’s intended for. It has limitations, of course, but none of these get in the way of a machine that can do serious work – with the possible exception of the 256GB SSD, which is stingy at this price. I still question how many people are willing to spend this much on a laptop that looks so different to a regular machine – you’d need serious chutzpah to pull this out in a first meeting – but I’ll give credit where it’s due. HP, you’ve created something truly different. And, in 2019, that’s an amazing feat.
SPECIFICATIONS Dual-core 1.5GHz Intel Core i7-8500Y processor Intel UHD 615 graphics 13.3in 1,920 x 1,080 IPS touchscreen display 8GB LDDR3-1866 RAM 256GB M.2 PCIe SSD Full HD IR webcam 2x2 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.2 USB-C 3.1 2 x Thunderbolt 3 USB-C SIM slot (supports LTE) 54Wh li-ion polymer battery 320 x 235 x 15.4mm (WDH)
1.49kg Windows 10 Home HP Active Pen 1yr limited C&R warranty