HP EliteBook Folio G1 review: A beauty that’s fundamentally flawed

It’s possible the EliteBook Folio G1 is the ultraportable you’ve been dreaming of. Ever since the sub-1kg MacBook arrived on the scene, Apple’s featherweight has been breaking hearts and emptying bank accounts across the globe and – HP’s stratospherically expensive Folio 1020 aside – competitors have been in irksomely short supply. Now, finally, HP has provided a MacBook alternative that doesn’t require you to recant your allegiance to Microsoft.

HP EliteBook Folio G1 review: Design

Spending north of £1,000 sets a certain level of expectation, but the Folio G1 delivers. The look and feel is unashamedly luxurious, and HP has squared off the soft, rounded curves of the Folio 1020 to give the Folio G1 a sharply angled makeover. If polished diamond-cut CNC aluminium is your thing, you’ll love it.

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Build quality remains impeccable. HP has subjected the Folio G1 to a barrage of military tests – the MIL-810-STD certification, if you’re wondering – which consist of dropping the device 26 times from 76cm onto a hard floor, caking it with dust and subjecting it to extremes of altitude and temperature. Pretty much your average day in the Alphr office, basically.

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Suffice to say, this is a featherweight laptop that’s certified to survive a battering and live to tell the tale. Rigid plates of metal are clasped together with a chromed cylindrical hinge, and the Folio G1 has a reassuringly solid heft to it. It’s not heavy, though: the 4K touchscreen model here weighs only 1.07kg, and the cheaper Full HD model knocks that down to 970g by dumping the touchscreen and the protective layer of Gorilla Glass. The Apple MacBook is only 150g and 50g lighter respectively.

HP EliteBook Folio G1 review: The most refined ultraportable yet?

Sitting down with the Folio G1 for the first time is a revelatory experience. Up top, the 12.5in 4K touchscreen is pin-sharp, capable of reaching squint-inducing brightness levels and gloriously colourful thanks to the wide-gamut, high-DPI panel. The ability to reach out grab, prod and interact with onscreen elements is a welcome bonus (take that, Apple), and the keyboard and touchpad below are also more than capable of giving the MacBook a run for its money.

Display testing results
Maximum brightness	462cd/m2
Contrast ratio	1,341:1
Colour accuracy	Average dE 1.93, max dE 6.09
Colour gamut coverage	98%

The keyboard, in particular, is a highlight and continues HP’s winning streak. Where the MacBook’s wide, short-travel keys aren’t everyone’s cup of tea (full disclosure: I personally think they’re great), the Folio G1 feels just like a good keyboard should. Each key gives roughly twice as much travel as the MacBook, and typing feels markedly more positive as a result. The touchpad doesn’t quite scale the same world-beating heights, but this is mainly because it lacks OS X’s intuitive array of gesture controls. The hardware itself works flawlessly, and the ability to disable it with a quick double-tap in the top-left corner is handy, too.

If you’re scouring the photographs for a traditional USB port, though, stop now. HP has equipped the Folio G1 with two Thunderbolt 3-enabled USB Type-C ports and a headphone jack. That’s your lot. To be fair, though, that is 100% more connectivity than you get on the MacBook, and the MacBook’s port is slower, supporting “only” USB 3.1.

And if none of this sounds remotely exciting, then get this: the Folio G1 has an infrared 720p webcam. Somewhat disappointingly, this isn’t specifically to improve to your night-time selfies but is instead intended to take advantage of Windows 10 Pro’s facial-recognition login feature, Hello. Combine the webcam, TPM 2 authentication and your face, and you have a super-secure login mechanism that doesn’t require you to type a single thing.

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HP EliteBook Folio G1 review: Performance and battery life

Fall for the charms of the Folio G1 and – at least if you’re in the UK – you’ll be presented with two choices. The cheaper of the two models (currently £1,139 at store.hp.com/uk) partners a 1.1GHz Core m5-6Y54 with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a matte Full HD display. The top-end model, meanwhile, bumps up the price to £1,379, but has a 1.2GHz Core m7-6Y75 with vPro support, 8GB of RAM, a slightly smaller 240GB SSD and a 4K touchscreen. Considering that a MacBook with Core m7 processor, 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM costs £1,249 inc VAT, that’s fairly competitive.

I tested the faster of the two and, in my time with it, it was flawless. I am something of a fan of Intel’s Core m processors, though. As long as you don’t task them with heavy, extended workloads, they routinely feel as quick as devices with similar-generation Core i processors. This limitation did mean that the Folio G1 took its sweet time with our video-encoding and multitasking tests, but it’s right up there where I’d expect it to be compared with rival devices.

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HP has dropped the ball in some ways, though. One disappointment is that high-speed NVMe SSDs aren’t an option on the Core i5 and core i7 models in the UK. Instead, you’ll have to make do with standard mSATA solid-state drives, which seems a shame. The SSD in my review unit didn’t come close to the speeds of the drives in the Apple MacBook. Admittedly, the difference in real-world use may be slight, but that’s little consolation. The ability to whisk around gigabytes of data in mere seconds can make a tangible difference when you’re really pushing a laptop to the limit.

Battery life presents me with a different dilemma. According to other online reviews, the cheaper Full HD version actually fares pretty well for stamina – it’s not far behind the 2016 Apple MacBook. On the pricier model I have here, however, the 4K touchscreen takes its toll. With four times the pixels of the Full HD variant, power consumption soars, and in our video-rundown tests, with the screen calibrated to 170cd/m², the HP lasted a paltry 4hrs 41mins. That’s not even half as long as the Apple MacBook, which lasted 10hrs 12mins.

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HP EliteBook Folio review: Verdict

In the midst of the 1990s, back when some marketing genius first coined the term “ultraportable”, the technology simply was not up to the job. Achieving an acceptable balance between performance, usability, build quality and battery life was impossible; sacrifices had to be made. Slow processors, low-resolution screens and dreadful battery life were the norm.

Now, in 2016, HP is attempting to show just how far we’ve come with the EliteBook Folio G1. It’s beautifully constructed, light and powerful enough to do almost everything you could ask of it. But with barely enough battery life to scrape halfway through the working day, you have to wonder what HP was thinking when it decided to put in such a power-hungry 4K touchscreen.

Until I can get my hands on the longer-lasting Full HD version, there’s only one thing I can recommend: buy an Apple MacBook instead.