HP announces Spectre Fold, a bleeding edge 3-in-1 PC!

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September 18, 2023

The foldable phone market is booming these days. And it was only a matter of time before PC manufacturers tried to get a piece of the “foldable” pie as well. Brands like Lenovo and Asus have already tried their luck with such a device and now, HP has joined in on the fun as well. So let’s check out the new HP Spectre Fold, alongside its features, availability, expected price in Nepal, and so on.

HP Spectre Fold Overview:

Design and Display

Available in a single “Slate Blue” colour, the HP Spectre Fold’s design is a sight to behold. It measures 21.30 mm in thickness when folded or just 8.4 mm when unfolded. Furthermore, this device weighs 1.62 kg with the detachable keyboard and 1.36 kg on its own.

As for the display, it’s got a 17-inch foldable OLED touch panel with a 2.5K (1920 x 2560) resolution. This screen can hit 500 nits of HDR brightness (or 400 nits in SDR mode) and covers a 99.5% DCI-P3 colour gamut. Furthermore, it is IMAX Enhanced-certified too.

Usability and Features

As expected, the HP Spectre Fold can be used in multiple ways. Four, to be precise. Firstly, you can fully unfold the device and use it as an independent 17-inch tablet. Or pop the built-in kickstand, mount it horizontally on the table, and use it with its Bluetooth keyboard for a desktop-like experience.

Then fold it along its hinge and attach the magnetic keyboard on the bottom half to transform it into a laptop with a 12.3-inch screen. Lastly, slide down the keyboard a little bit and it’s a laptop with an extended screen, that you can use with the exclusive one-and-a-half screen mode. For additional functionality, you can also use the HP wireless charging MPP 2.0 Tilt Pen, which comes alongside the laptop.

The HP Spectre Fold apparently comes with a handful of AI features too, that aren’t groundbreaking per se but are welcome nonetheless. These features include automatically turning off your screen when you walk away from the device. And also automatically turning it on when you return back.

Similarly, the screen automatically dims when you look away. It also alerts you and blurs the screen when someone else is behind you for better privacy. Finally, the Spectre Fold also has timely reminder features for extended screen exposures. It reminds you when you have been sitting too close to the screen or when you stare at it for too long.

Performance

Even though the main highlight of this PC is its usability and display, it doesn’t sleep on the performance side of things. The HP Spectre Fold is an Intel Evo-certified device, which should sum up many things we discuss in this part. Powering it is an Intel Core i7-1250U CPU, which is a 10 cores / 12 threads processor with up to 4.7 GHz for max turbo frequency. Whereas there’s no discrete graphics option for this guy and you’re gonna have to make do with the integrated Iris Xe GPU.

And even though this is a last-gen processor, it should be able to handle everyday usage just fine. Furthermore, the HP Spectre Fold comes with 16GB LPDDR5-5200 MHz RAM and 1TB of PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD storage. We have no information on the expandability side of things right now but it’s safe to assume that’s out of the question. Finally, this laptop ships with Windows 11 Home as the operating system.

Battery and More

HP Spectre Fold gets its juice from a 94.3Wh battery, and the company is promising up to 13 hours and 30 minutes of video playback in detachable mode and 45 minutes more in foldable mode.

As for ports, it only has two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C, which doubles down as a charging port as well. It fills up through a 100W USB Type-C power adapter. And thanks to the HP Fast Charge support, it can juice up the battery up to 50% in just 45 minutes. Given the limited number of ports in the device, HP is offering an HP ENVY USB-C Hub in the box for added connectivity options as well.

On the other hand, there’s WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support in terms of wireless connectivity. There’s an HP True Vision 5MP IR camera with a physical privacy shutter up top, which also supports features like auto frame, background blur, natural tone enhancer, and more.

It also has integrated dual-array digital microphones with temporal noise reduction and a mic mute key on the keyboard. As for audio, the Spectre Fold features quad speakers custom-tuned by Bang & Olufsen, and it supports HP Audio Boost and DTS:X Ultra too.

HP Spectre Fold Specifications:

Dimensions:
- Folded: 277.10 x 191.30 x 21.30 mm
- Unfolded: 277.10 x 376.20 x 8.40 mm
Weight: 1.36 kg (without keyboard), 1.62 kg (with keyboard)
Design and Body: All-screen design, Aluminum body, plastic keycaps and speaker enclosure, with an integrated kickstand
Display: Foldable OLED IMAX-enhanced Display, 17-inch touchscreen (unfolded), 12.3-inch (folded), UWVA, 500 nits peak brightness, 99.5% DCI-P3 colour gamut
Resolution: 2.5K (1920 x 2560 pixels)
Processor: Intel Core i7-1250U (Up to 4.7 GHz with Intel Turbo Boost Technology, 12MB L3 cache, 10 cores, 12 threads)
Graphics: Integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics
RAM: 16GB LPDDR5-5200 MHz (onboard)
Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD
Operating System: Windows 11 Home
Webcam, Microphone: HP True Vision 5MP IR Camera with integrated dual-array digital microphones
Audio: Quad speakers with Audio by B&O and HP Audio Boost, DTS:X Ultra
Keyboard: Wireless, full-size, detachable, rudy black soft cover keyboard with HP Imagepad and Bluetooth connectivity
Ports: 2x Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C
Connectivity: Intel WiFi 6E AX211 (2×2) and Bluetooth 5.3
Battery: 6-cell, 94.3Wh Li-ion polymer
Charger: 100W USB Type-C power adapter
Sensors: Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Magnetometer, IR thermal sensor
Stylus: HP Rechargeable MPP 2.0 Tilt Pen (magnetically attachable to the main device for storage and charging), Exchangeable pen tip (2 included)
Colours: Slate Blue

HP Spectre Fold Price in Nepal and Availability

As for the price, the HP Spectre Fold obviously doesn’t come in cheap. HP has started taking its pre-orders for a whopping USD 4,999.99, with shipments slated to start from October. It’s extremely unlikely that this laptop officially arrives in Nepal but in case it does, we expect the HP Spectre Fold price in Nepal to be NPR 800,000.