HP Folio 13 review

Hardware / design

Just one glance at the Folio 13 is enough to tell that it isn’t a descendant of HP’s consumer Pavilion or Envy line; it’s much more the offspring of the enterprise or business focused Elitebook or ProBook side of the family. The greyish aluminum lid and palmrest, which are offset by a black soft-touch plastic underside and edges, are almost identical to that of the new Elitebooks. What that means is that no one is going to call the laptop ugly, but "boring" and "not very stylish" were amongst the adjectives a few friends used when I asked them about the design. So no, it’s not as attractive as Lenovo’s IdeaPad U300s, but it’s definitely not as humdrum as the Toshiba Portege Z835; I’d say it’s really your middle-of-the-road ultrabook from an aesthetic point of view. Still, for the price, this is one well-built machine. While it’s not completely clad in metal, there are no creaks around the edges and there’s zero wobble to the screen and its hinge. And that almost-rubberish-feeling bottom gives the system a nice feel in hand when you grab it off a table.

Design isn’t the only place where the Folio 13 doesn’t quite match the competition; it is also both heavier and thicker than all four of the other ultrabooks. That doesn’t mean at 3.3 pounds the .71-inch thick machine is cumbersome to carry — it’s really not — but it’s just not as svelte as the MacBook Air or as light as the Toshiba. Again, though, it really is very easy to hold in one hand. In fact, when I first got the box from HP, I thought they may have forgotten the laptop since the cardboard package felt so light. HP didn’t opt for any ostentatious packaging (perhaps to match the look of the laptop); the machine comes wrapped in a plastic bag and locked in styrofoam holders. My guess is that HP is saving all that luxurious stuff for its Spectre ultrabook.

That added thickness allows for more ports than some of the other ultrabooks. The left edge is stocked with an Ethernet, HDMI, and USB 3.0 ports as well as a SD card reader. The right edge is home to an USB 2.0 jack and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Of course, Toshiba managed to fit all those ports on its .63-inch thin system, but I really do prefer the make and design of the Folio.

The Folio 13 has the best keyboard of any ultrabook to date. While the Asus Zenbook UX31 and Toshiba had well spaced layouts, the keys were incredibly shallow. The soft-coated keys on the Folio, however, don’t suffer from those issues — perhaps, because of the added thickness of the base of the system. The squared-off keys are just the right height and feel great. Sure, the deck on the Lenovo U300s was similarly comfortable, but HP understands the importance of lining the bottom of the deck with a backlight. Yes, you get illuminated keys here, though you cannot adjust the brightness and there’s no ambient light sensor to automatically adjust the light level. However, the F5 key doubles as an on / off switch for the light.

Almost every ultrabook I've reviewed so far has been ruined by a flaky touchpad with integrated buttons, but the Folio 13's touchpad is much better than most. It's still far from perfect, though. The good news is that the ClickPad itself is adequate for navigating. My usual finger positioning — keeping my thumb on the left mouse button and an index finger on the pad — didn’t result in any cursor jumps. It was smooth navigating throughout my testing. Similarly, two-finger scrolling was very responsive: no added pressure was needed to get to the bottom of this very website with light drags.

The bad news is that the hardware itself could be more ergonomic. The 4.5 x 2.5-inch pad is very stiff, meaning that clicking not only takes more effort but is rougher on the side of a finger. Additionally, there isn’t much room between the keyboard and the pad. A few times my palms swiped at the pad as I was writing this review, causing the cursor to jump to another place in the text. This poor palm rejection is something I’ve seen with a number of these ultrabooks and is likely a result of poor software drivers. At least you can easily disable the touchpad by double tapping twice on the small rectangle on the top left corner of the pad. HP's ruined plenty of laptops with bad trackpads in the past, but the Folio 13's unit marks notable improvement both for HP and for ultrabooks in general. Unfortunately, it still can't hold a candle to the MacBook Air's glass pad.

SSD Performance

But don’t underestimate the power provided by the Samsung MZMPA128HMFU SATA II drive. While it isn’t the fastest ultrabook to actually boot up, it does start in 33 seconds and resume from sleep in 4.8 seconds. Comparatively, the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s boots in 25.8 seconds and the MacBook Air in 18 seconds. However, it is faster than the U300s when it came to transferring files. Transferring a 1.8GB file from a USB 3.0 external hard drive took 14.5 seconds when plugged into the 3.0 port and 59.2 seconds when plugged into the USB 2.0 port. It took the Toshiba Portege Z835 twice as long at 35 seconds, though the IdeaPad U300s only took 15.7 seconds (via USB 3.0).

Graphics and heat / FAN

As per usual, the Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics is perfectly fine for watching local or streaming HD video, but not what you’d want around to play Arkham City or some Portal 2. However, the bigger issue is what happens when you fire up a Flash video; despite having HP’s hardware and software CoolSense cooling feature, the bottom of the system gets warm and the fan vents (also located on the bottom) start whirling. The sound actually persists, even long after you’ve stopped playing video. It’s rather annoying, though, yes, I got used to it after awhile.

HP claims the Folio 13 lasts nine hours on a charge, and while I couldn’t squeeze that long out of the 59Wh battery, it is now the longest-lasting ultrabook I’ve tested. On The Verge Battery Test, which loops a series of 100 websites while sporadically downloading some pictures and brightness set to 65 percent, the laptop lasted for seven hours and seven minutes. Not only is that longer than all the competing ultrabooks, but it's longer than the MacBook Air. It's a fairly solid comparison, but because of the dimness of the display on the Folio, it may not be exactly apples to apples. Regardless, the run time is impressive here and you can absolutely leave the AC adapter in the overhead bin on that flight from New York to Vegas.

Things take a more sour tone when it comes to software. My review unit came with Windows 7 Professional, which would bring the cost up to $1,048.99 — that’s the only difference between the Windows Home Premium version which is locked at $899.99 right now on HP’s website. Unfortunately, paying for the business version of Microsoft’s operating system doesn’t wipe the crapware. My review unit came with a number of desktop shortcuts, including link shortcuts to eBay, HP’s Download store, RaRa (HP’s music service), and Zya’s Music Service. It’s blatant marketing on your new desktop, and on top of that, there’s a shortcut to HP’s WildTangent games. It’s one of the worst offending ultrabooks when it comes to crapware, and while it is somewhat forgivable because of its extremely competitive price tag, deleting shortcuts and programs as soon as you take it out of the box isn't going to be fun. On a deeper level, HP has organized folders in the start menu (i.e. put Skype and YouCam into a "Communications and Chat" folder) and created a LaunchBox feature, which lets you group and organize different apps on the Windows Taskbar.