I bet you think this is nothing but a cute little 12-in notebook but there's
far more to it than meets the eye now I can check my emails and catch
up on Fallout and there's even more check this out I can pop off the
keyboard and trackpad fold the screen kick out the kickstand and now it's a
massive 17in IMAX enhanced HDR laptop
with a wireless keyboard and touchpad I mean look at this thing it's hard to
believe it's started out the size of an M1 MacBook and weighs just half as much
as hp's other premium 17in offerings and
the leathery little keyboard is even shockingly usable for a folio style
device what's not to love well the price
tag for one thing but we're going to talk about that later first there is so
much cool stuff crammed into this thing that I just can't wait to show you guys
just like I can't wait to show you our sponsor Ridge just when you thought
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carry looking at it it's hard to believe that the HP Spectre fold packs a 12
thread core i7 16 gigs of lpddr5 memory
a terabyte of PCI Express Gen 4 storage from kokia almost 100 W hours of
batteries and an HDR OLED touchcreen that starts out at a better than full HD
1920 x 1255 in clamshell mode and
expands to 2560 by 1920 in tablet and
desktop mode at an old school 4x3 aspect
ratio that turns out is actually pretty great for productivity not only that but
it even outperformed hp's claims reaching a whopping 500 50 nits in HDR
in our lab man we've got Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3 not one but two
Thunderbolt four ports audio by bang and olivon a 5 megapixel webcam and a
battery that takes only 45 minutes to get to a half charge this thing should
be a productivity monster especially if you consider that when it's fully
charged HP claims the beefy batteries should last you 15 and 1 half hours 14
and 1/4 hours 13 and 1/2 hours 12 and
1/2 hours well at least 11 and 3/4 hours
I I guess you can't be wrong about your battery claims if you just put every
possible number on your marketing collateral runtime Shenanigans aside
this thing looks pretty awesome on paper and spoiler alert I ended up kind of
loving it but my initial Impressions were well I don't want to say negative
so early in the video so let's call them unpositive out of the box there is a
learning curve for sure you're reliant on HP software for window Management in
all of the different modes and it kind of stacks up on top of the default
Windows management so God help you if you miss the introductory animation that
shows you the different configs and how to use them once you get the hang of it
though the magnetic system for holding the keyboard in its various positions is
pretty fine but what isn't is this clumsy hack of a USB tether it allows
you to charge the keyboard in desktop mode that's we're looking at right now
and that's definitely a good thing and the Magnetic connection saved me from
snapping the connector off multiple times but HP must have known that having
this loose wire just flapping around on
what is and I kid you not the most
expensive laptop in their entire lineup is not a good look not even our new
cable management gear on LTT Store.com can save this one so I would like to see
HP find a way to charge the keyboard I either with induction or with Pogo pins
in the Next Generation instead of using this bajoran earring looking thing and I
hear you guys it's Bluetooth you idiot unplug it and of course that's the
obvious solution but the Bluetooth was unbelievably buggy on this thing failing
to stay paired sometimes when coming out of sleep or switching between modes or
even failing to pair it all to make it worse I'm getting these constant popups
about keyboard firmware updates I then dutifully click yes and then it takes me
to an internal HP website that needs a login but since I'm neither an HP
employee nor an HP business partner I guess no update for me I mean hey I get
it HP you've only been selling laptops for longer than I've been alive these
little details take time to get right to be clear I'm a reviewer and I could
obviously escalate the issue but my job is to review the product as you would
receive it and given how otherwise good the keyboard typing experience was the
connectivity issues were a real Downer with that said I understand some of the
compromises in this product like the webcam in the age of remote work and
endless Zoom calls there just isn't an ideal place to put a single camera on a
device like this it's going to be poorly placed for at least one of the modes now
the obvious fix would be to add another camera so that you've got one oh I don't
know right in the middle of the hinge or maybe under the display but there not
really a lot of room inside this thing for additional Hardware so a tiny webcam
somewhere more reasonable for a desktop mode would be a welcome addition next
time but the sideways mounted one realistically didn't bother me too much
unlike the pen it's usable but it's also
very losable and this might be an unpopular opinion but I've always felt
that if you're going to give me a stylus you need to give me a secure place to
keep it in clamshell mode it's supposed
to charge at the bottom edge of the fold and it kind of sticks there with magnets
that is until you pull down the keyboard into extended mode and knock the pen
into your lap or just I don't know dare to move the machine there's also some
magnets kind of in the hinge back here but it doesn't really stay put there
either so I guess it's time to dust off the old high school pencil case roll
into the meeting with your super nice expensive laptop and also your Pikachu
zipup I swear though the point of this review is not to trash on this product
because I really did fall in love with it by the end warts and all there is
nothing like rolling into that aformentioned meeting and casually
slipping a 17-in productivity monster out of your tablet sleeve sure it's not
4K but the 2560 X1 1920 resolution is
totally acceptable for a 17-in display and obviously there's a crease in the
middle but has someone who's been daily driving folding devices for the last
years I promise you guys you'll get used to it quicker than you think and this
one is particularly non bothersome the
Spectre fold is just in its element in this environment it's amazing for
note-taking it's great for multitasking when the conversation drifts off topic
and it's even great for giving an impromptu presentation in a pinch
because the screen is quite a bit bigger even than it sounds think about it the
more square a screen is the more total area that it has per diagonal inch and
it's also a head turner and a legitimate conversation starter when every other
NPC in the meeting is using a freaking MacBook it's just that there is a lot
that I would like to see improved before I spent this kind of money on it the
weight for instance it's certainly light for a 17in laptop but for a 12 or a 13in
which is realistically how I used it most of the time it's pretty heavy and
at just under an inch thick when folded up it reminds me more of the laptops of
my childhood than modern ones and I mean
that in more ways than one remember those old glossy screens that had the
kind of ripple effect under direct light
yeah HP brought that back I didn't find it too distracting day today but I also
can't promise that you'd get used to this one like with the fold down the
middle and that's especially true if you're working an open concept office
with a bunch of foot traffic behind you on the plus side though that might
distract you from the cooling fan the thermal design of this machine leaves a
lot to be desired at idle it's dead
quiet even silent but should you have the audacity to do anything like say
conduct a zoom meeting it sounds like well here I'll let you guys
listen now I could excuse that noise if the performance absolutely rocked and it
should be pretty good the internals of the Spectre fold are virtually identical
to the ASUS Zenbook fold same CPU GPU
RAM speec max resolution and even similar NVMe drives but the performance
doesn't Rock in virtually every test the
ASUS Zenbook fold outperformed the HP Spectre fold with the only big exception
being of course battery life where the HP outlasted the ASUS by an hour in our
full screen endurance test and more than 2 hours at half screen and this seems to
come down to Thermal management while HP had an edge in maximum clock speeds a
seus averaged about 300 MHz faster over
time and 100 MHz faster at the bottom end HP sent over a disassembled unit for
us to investigate this was before we got our CT scanner by the way and the
problem was immediately apparent that's a cooler who do they think they are
apple with these guts no one expected it to be a gaming Powerhouse and the
tradeoff for extra battery life is a valid one and one you personally might
prefer but a shocking number of people do like to play casual games or run
other somewhat intensive applications and it's always painful for me to see
Hardware performing less than its best on that note we fired up a couple of
games then just to see how it fared it got a little confused about what
resolution it should be using it tried to use desktop resolution in clamshell
mode for example but repositioning the keyboard resolved that and then it did
manage a respectable average 60 FPS in both rocket league and DOTA at 1080p so
not not for gamers confirmed but also not for folks who need something
completely bug free or for folks who need something very affordable it's
$5,000 for the one configuration that from our understanding is because Intel
only has one chip that is able to meet the thermal requirements of this chassis
however with all of that said if you are that special someone who saw this thing
and went oh my God that was made for me
and I absolutely can't wait for the inevitably much better second gen I
can't say you're the only one now that the review is done and I just auctioned
my daily driver framework laptop for charity investment disclosure I think I
might just adopt this orphan designer Breed Puppy and hope that it doesn't get
prematurely worn out from being folded in half over and over and over again
while I eagerly await a second gen that hopefully fixes all those little issues
and brings me to sheer Nirvana gigantic
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first purchase if you guys like this video maybe check out the 10 reasons
that I daily drive a foldable or at least did when I made that video now I'm
just back on my broken note 9