FOLDABLE SCREENS are everywhere now. We first saw them pop up in the mobile world, then they made their way to monitors with the likes of Corsair’s Xeneon Flex, and now we have them in laptops, too (if this can even be called a laptop). You see, the HP Spectre Foldable is technically a laptop, an all-in-one, and a tablet. Its downfall is that it’s a $5,000 tablet with sub-$1,000 performance.
Yeah, that’s kind of the problem with the HP Spectre Foldable. On the surface, it is an incredibly versatile device. You’ve got a crisp, beautiful OLED panel with some solid pixel density, that is entirely foldable, with a detachable, magnetic wireless keyboard and mouse combo. That allows you to do a few things: first, you can just use it as a full-on display plus a wireless media keyboard. There’s a kickstand embedded into the back of the product—pop that out, and you get a full-size 17-inch 2560x1920 16:10 display. Alternatively, flatten it out entirely, turn the keyboard off, and you’ve got a chunky 17-inch tablet instead.
The real party trick comes when you bend the screen in half, however. Fold that into a laptop shape, and you can attach the keyboard in a number of different ways: either on the bottom half of the screen entirely to turn it into a remarkably compact laptop, or pull that keyboard down a touch, and you can give yourself a bottom half display as well. HP has included a bit of software wizardry here, too, that will shift the resolution and Windows display to compensate, accurately detecting the keyboard on top, which also simultaneously charges wirelessly when in position.