Price:$4,999.99 Display: 3:4 17-inch 2.5K (2560 x 1920) foldable OLED, touch and stylus support, 400-500 nits max brightness, VESA True Black HDR 500, 99.5% DCI-P3, IMAX Enhanced certified CPU: Intel Core i7-1250U GPU: Intel Iris Xe RAM: 16GB LPDDR5, 5,200MHz Storage: 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen 4 SSD Ports: USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 w/ Power Delivery (2x) Battery: 94.3Whr, 100W USB Type-C fast charging Size: 277.05 x 376.1 x 8.5 mm (unfolded), 277.05 x 191.31 x 21.4 mm (folded) Weight: 1.354 kg/2.99 lbs (without keyboard), 1.624 kg/3.6 lbs (with keyboard)
The HP Spectre Foldable PC comes with a Bluetooth-connected keyboard and an active stylus in the box. The keyboard can be used in three different ways: when the Spectre Foldable PC is fully unfolded, the keyboard can be used wirelessly off an internal battery; when the PC is in its laptop posture, the keyboard connects to the bottom half with magnets, and also charges in this position without cables; finally, the keyboard can actually slide down the Spectre Foldable PC in this laptop posture to reveal half of the lower display, which can be used for enhanced multitasking. You also get a nice wrist rest.
The stylus is pretty typical for a Windows pen, but it does also connect magnetically to the Spectre Foldable PC and charges automatically.
Nice picture of the different modes. BTW I’m pretty impressed with the 3.6lbs weight. It’s got a way bigger screen (17” vs 14.4”) and has way more battery (94Wh vs. 58Wh) than my laptop studio, and yet it weighs 0.2lbs less.
We had hands on with a couple of these about a month ago, though we weren’t allowed to run any tests.
The weight feels all the more amazing given the size and the display, observationally looked gorgeous.
One tidbit from when they were shown to us was the focus was very much on versatility of the display and they almost downplayed any expectations of raw performance.
That could be due just to the engineers present (one of the leads on the displays) but I also wonder if perhaps that might be a tradeoff for the remarkable weight and overall feel of the device which was truly top notch.
I suspect several of our customers will be interested in one of these, so hopefully we will be able to run our full tests on one soon.
The weight is amazing and I like the design as well, as well as the seperate touchpad in the keyboard part. The price is of course pretty insane and I am not sure how much they will sell of these, maybe mainly managers/executives and a few tech enthusiastic prosumers? One big letdown I think is the limited port selection, especially for a 17" device. At these prices I would have expected minimal of 3 usb ports and a micro-sd slot (which the SLS 2 will have according to leaks). The 16 gb of ram is also a bit too limited. Still cool device though, if I would have enough money to burn I would buy one.
The Lenovo with its origami stand lets you use it unfolded in either landscape or portrait mode. The HP seems to only offer landscape with that stand. Seems like an oversight considering the price is pretty much 2x.
We haven’t formally tested one yet, but I and a couple of my engineers have had hands on with one.
Though it comes from PC Mag, it tracks pretty close with our impressions which is that while technically impressive, it has too many compromises unless you have a very specific use case.
BTW: My above criticism extends to all foldable PCs so far which is that you need to have a specific use case (which I apparently don’t have), otherwise they are too many compromises.
It is nice to see that LG (like HP) also offers a TouchPad on the keyboard (I think that was an oversight with the earlier foldable Windows tablets from other brands). And nice that it also supports pen input. Just wish they can somehow cut off 33-50% off the price in a newer iteration (maybe some kind of ‘entry’ model with i5 cpu etc.).
To be honest I was also wondering what the advantage of the Spectre would be compared to a Lenovo. Thinner, lighter, better software? Ok, it comes with a dongle and a hub which I suppose is nice, but twice the price nice? Not so sure.
Its like the review mentions that it is an iterative update but yeah with twice the price tag. But the Spectre is at least something I would probably buy if I would have money to burn, while with the lenovo one is just too unrefined.
The Gizmodo review seems pretty subjective. He finds it too large at 17" which I can understand (personally I think the sweet spot sits between this and Neo), but otoh 17" is quite nice to get work done.
I’m guessing it won’t be long before we see substantial discounts. I’m sure their corporate sales is hard at work but this is a machine that screems for odd user cases (we are all here), hence payment from personal funds. Hardly the machine for office wonks.
Brad’s overview showing some stylus action @~7:40:
TLDW there is no crease bump; bad news is the jitter is about as bad or slightly worse than other MPP HP devices .
Folding pen digitizers are proving to be a tough nut to crack.
On the one hand, EMR requires a thicker sensor layer, making it necessary to split the halves on Samsung devices, resulting in the interpolation offset/inconsistency.
Going with AES lets you use the touchscreen digitizer, but the thin profile prevents good shielding, resulting in high jitter.
This is looking like it’s going to require more advanced firmware/hardware to fully solve: perhaps a next-gen MPP 3.0 (if MS doesn’t abandon/kill it ) or the much-rumoured Apple foldable AES tech.
A good in depth consideration, both pros and cons. His conclusion that it needs a better use case and some software innovations to take advantage ring true IMHO…
) or the much-rumoured Apple foldable AES tech.