Bottom line: HP has introduced a new 3-in-1 designed to mimic the functionality of a tablet, laptop, and desktop in a hybrid form factor. It’s a neat concept but one that’s almost certain to be hamstrung by excessive pricing.
The HP Spectre Foldable PC features a 17-inch 2.5K (1,920 x 2,560 resolution) foldable OLED touchscreen that operates at up to 500 nits of brightness in HDR (standard 400 nits). Fully unfurled, the system functions as a 17-inch tablet. Flip out the built-in kickstand, turn it on its side, and you have entered desktop mode.
Rotate the screen 90 degrees, fold it in half and add the magnetic keyboard on top of the bottom half to transition to standard laptop mode with a 12.3-inch diagonal screen. Sliding the keyboard down activates one and a half mode (an expanded screen mode) and opens Windows Snap with HP customizations.
Powering HP’s hybrid is Intel’s Core i7-1250U, a 10-core chip with a dozen threads. It is paired with Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM (onboard), and a 1 TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD. The Spectre Foldable packs four speakers with audio by Bang & Olufsen, a five megapixel webcam, up to 12.5 hours of battery life, and has a solid selection of I/O ports. Windows 11 comes pre-installed out of the box, and the wireless Bluetooth keyboard is also included.
The machine measures 277.05 mm x 376.1 mm x 8.5 mm (10.9 in x 14.8 in x 0.33 in) when unfolded and weighs 1,354 grams (2.99 pounds) without the Bluetooth keyboard or 1,624 grams (3.58 pounds) with it.
The HP Spectre Foldable PC is available to pre-order from today at Best Buy starting at an eye-watering $4,999.99, and will be available in limited quantities directly from HP in October. The sky-high asking price is impossible to ignore, especially considering competitors like Lenovo and Asus previously introduced similar concepts for thousands less. What’s more, the fact that they are only being produced in limited quantities suggests HP doesn’t believe they are going to sell very many units.
