Image credit: Sam Rutherford/Engadget
While it demonstrates the potential of 2-in-1s, the Spectre Fold still needs to be more pricey at $5,000.
Occasionally, a business will risk losing money on a truly innovative product because its founders decided to take a risk. The Spectre Fold is HP’s exact implementation of the idea. Although it shares an internal processor with last year’s ASUS Zenbook 17 OLED, HP’s flexible-screen laptop is noticeably more streamlined, lightweight, and thin than its predecessors. If you’re interested in next-gen hybrid designs, consider purchasing the Spectre Fold. The problem is that for $5,000, it will destroy almost everyone’s budget.
Display
The 17-inch LG OLED display, which measures 2,560 x 1,920 pixels, is the show-stopper of the HP Spectre Fold. It has an outstanding color gamut of 99.5 percent of DCI-P3 and lots of brightness, 400 nits for SDR video and up to 500 nits for HDR. Even more crucially, it features highly narrow bezels and nary a crease. Thus, with its 12.5-inch screen, the Spectre Fold looks identical to any other little ultraportable in laptop mode. In an instant, though, you can activate what HP calls Expanded mode by lowering the keyboard; this gives you the viewing area of 1.5 screens, or you can use the kickstand to elevate the laptop to its full 17-inch display.
Therefore, depending on your requirements, you receive the ideal screen size for your material or workspace. As a kid who loved Transformers, I think there’s magic in a compact, all-in-one device you can throw in your backpack and go. (However, I am still unsure whether the Spectre Fold is more akin to Perceptor or a bot closer to Reflector.)
Design
However, HP shows off its abilities in the Specter Fold design. Unlike the Zenbook 17 Fold’s clumsy design and faulty peripherals, you can tell that HP paid close attention to detail. When not used, the kickstand folds neatly against the system’s body, making it virtually invisible. The keyboard and HP’s bundled pen are kept fully charged by concealed magnetic charging coils, and when closed, the keyboard fits neatly inside the system. Comparatively, ASUS’s flexible Zenbook (4.04 pounds, 1.25 inches) is thicker and heavier than this package, which weighs only 3.58 pounds and is 0.84 inches wide when closed.
In contrast to the ASUS machine, there is hardly any setup required. The Bluetooth connection was stable, and the keyboard linked itself automatically when the Spectre Fold booted up. Despite their rather inconvenient placement, the Spectre’s two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports ensure that you’ll always have one, no matter what mode your system is in. With the accompanying dongle, the Spectre Fold can have two additional USB-A ports and an HDMI connection, guaranteeing it will never be short on connectivity. Considering that this category of laptops has only been around for a short while, the end product seems remarkably well-made.
A 5-megapixel webcam that supports Windows Hello is one of the Spectre Fold’s most excellent features, but depending on the laptop’s mode, the camera’s position might be a pain. The webcam defaults to portrait rather than landscape mode in an all-in-one configuration. On top of that, there’s a sensor on the left side of the screen, making it tricky to get a good shot while holding the laptop steady.
The Spectre Fold’s processor is the only component that lacks an air of sophistication compared to the rest of its specs. An Intel Core i7-1250U processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB solid-state drive are available in just one configuration. While this may not seem remarkable for a device of this cost, HP claims it selected this particular CPU to accommodate the Spectre Fold’s incredibly tiny chassis, which measures just 0.33 inches when unfurled. In any case, it’s fast enough for most productivity needs. Just know that you won’t be able to play any significant games or edit videos on it.
Battery Life
Battery life is usually considered devices like these, essentially glorified idea devices. Contrary to popular belief, the Spectre Fold outlasts conventional ultraportables regarding battery life. Its 10 hours and 29 minutes on PCMark10’s Open Office rundown test was slightly lower than that of the ASUS Zenbook S13, which came in at 10:39. That was while using a laptop. Battery life decreased to 8:31 hours, a decrease of two hours when the 17-inch panel was fully extended.
The Bottom Line
Although many people still doubt flexible display devices (and for good reason), the Spectre Fold, which retails for $5,000, is the most impressive product this technology has to offer thus far. This machine is designed to be compact and easy to store, but it can also be expanded to accommodate larger workspaces. Plus, it folds up small enough to fit easily into a bag. With this flexible display, you get all the advantages of a portable monitor with almost none of the disadvantages, and it fixes nearly every problem with earlier bendy efforts from Asus and Lenovo.
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