HP announces Snapdragon-powered Elite Folio convertible

HP has announced the Elite Folio, a new convertible laptop with an Arm CPU. Like 2019’s Spectre Folio, this device has a design that lets you pull the screen forward to rest between the keys and the trackpad for media consumption or touch-first work, or it can lie flat on top of the bottom shell for tablet-style use.

The Elite Folio has a 13.5-inch 3:2 1920 x 1280 display, which is a nice upgrade over the Spectre Folio’s 16:9 panel. HP has made use of some of the extra height by including a stylus silo above the keyboard. While the Spectre stood out for its leather finish, the Elite Folio now uses “vegan leather,” which is to say it’s not leather. But it should feel better than regular plastic, at least.

The processor is Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, and there’s also LTE and 5G connectivity through the X20 and X55 modems. The Folio can be configured with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. There are two USB-C 3.2 ports and a headphone jack. HP is claiming up to 24.5 hours of battery life when watching locally stored video files, but we’ll have to see for ourselves how that plays out in more realistic workloads.

The Spectre Folio was a unique product with a few clear flaws: the screen’s aspect ratio, some bad speakers, and an unreliable trackpad. We know the first one has been fixed with the Elite Folio, at least — hopefully we’ll be able to find out about the others soon enough. It’ll be out next month, and HP hasn’t announced pricing information yet.