HP Spectre Foldable PC review: so innovative, so expensive

You’re unlikely to use the laptop in tablet mode unless you rest it on a surface. Although quite thin, it’s just too large to hold comfortably. One plus: the batteries are split between each half of the display, providing a more balanced feel. But if you set it on a desktop, you’ll have an expansive screen for digital handwriting and drawing. Clamshell mode with the keyboard on top felt completely natural, and desktop mode is excellent if you have the space to spread everything out. Overall, I found usability to be excellent.

Compared to the Asus, the Spectre Foldable PC is arguably a more elegant solution. To begin with, it’s thinner at just 0.33 inches versus 0.51 inches and slightly lighter at 2.99 pounds versus 3.3 pounds. This is because HP’s kickstand is a simpler design that integrates into the back of the tablet, while the Asus version is an extra layer on the back that folds out. That makes the Spectre Foldable PC thinner and lighter when folded as well, with and without the keyboard enclosed. The kickstand is rubberized, and so it has some grip that keeps the tablet in place at up to a 120-degree angle.

The keyboard charges when it’s attached magnetically to the lower half of the display, keeping it topped off during use. The Asus keyboard is charged separately, which is a lot less convenient. The same is true for the HP active pen included in the box, which connects magnetically to the side of the keyboard and tablet and charges while connected to the latter.

HP paid a lot of attention to the details, and it shows. If you’re concerned about sustainability, HP also covered that with various components that use recycled materials.

The Spectre Foldable PC is made of a 90% recycled magnesium alloy and felt rigid across all its various surfaces. It exudes quality, which it should for $5,000. I have some concerns with the durability of the display fold, but that’s true of all foldable displays. The mechanics are well-designed and certainly appear robust — it’s rated up to 25,000 folds — but only time will tell if it avoids issues. The display is likely to be folded less often than foldable smartphones, which should add some long-term reliability.

The keyboard is excellent, with large keycaps and light and snappy switches. It’s one of the better external keyboards I’ve used. While it’s narrower than the keyboards on the typical 13-inch laptop, it didn’t feel cramped to me. That contrasts with the equally narrow keyboard on the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3, which felt much less comfortable.

It must come down to the height of the keycaps and how the keyboard is arranged because otherwise, I can’t explain the difference. I was immediately typing on HP’s keyboard at full speed, while I struggled to get used to Microsoft’s. The touchpad is large enough with a precise surface and quiet, confident clicks.

Connectivity is limited to just two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one of which is used for charging. They’re located on opposite sides of the tablet, making charging convenient in all modes. There’s no audio port, which is disappointing, particularly given all the space to build one in. Wireless connectivity is up to date.

Finally, the webcam is a 5MP version that provides excellent, detailed image quality. There’s a physical privacy switch that turns it on and off. The Spectre Foldable PC makes for an excellent videoconferencing solution in desktop mode. There’s also an infrared camera for logging in via Windows 11 Hello facial recognition, which always works best with tablets.

HP also included user presence-sensing technology with a separate AI chip that can lock and put the laptop to sleep when the user steps away and wake it back up when the user returns. The screen can be automatically dimmed when the user looks away, and a privacy alert feature notifies when someone else is looking at the display. The technology also enables gesture controls that allow for pausing, resuming, and scrolling through videos.

Good enough performance, but just barely

The Spectre Foldable PC uses a 12th-generation low-power Intel CPU, the Core i7-1250U. Normally, I’d penalize a laptop, particularly one that’s so expensive, for using a last-gen processor. However, HP wanted a 9-watt chip for maximum efficiency, and Intel hasn’t released a 9-watt 13th-gen version. The Core i7-1250U has 10 cores (two Performance and eight Efficient) and 12 threads, and on paper should provide competent productivity performance.

We don’t have many similar machines to compare against, but performance doesn’t depend on the form factor. In our comparison group, which includes the Asus Zenbook Fold 17 and Lenovo Yoga Book 9i, the Spectre Foldable PC was relatively fast among other machines using the same CPU. Naturally, it fell behind laptops running faster processors.

Ultimately, the performance was good enough for the laptop’s intended uses. That includes typical productivity tasks like web browsing, email, Office applications, inking on the tablet, etc. But things will be slower in more demanding tasks like creativity and apps that use multiple cores.

Battery life was surprisingly good. In clamshell mode with the keyboard attached and drawing some power, the Spectre Foldable PC lasted roughly 8.5 hours in our web-browsing test and about 12 hours in the PCMark 10 Applications battery benchmark. I expected battery life to be less in tablet mode, given that half the display is turned off when running as a traditional clamshell. With the display folded and the entire surface in use, I saw around nine hours in web browsing and 11.25 hours in the PCMark 10 test. So, the results were mixed, and I have no good theories as to why. For some reason, the laptop wouldn’t complete our video-looping test, with the video randomly stopping and requiring a manual restart.

These results place the battery life above average among all laptops. You might get close to a full day’s work, depending on your workflow. That’s a bit better than the Zenbook Fold 17, which lasted around eight hours of web browsing.