HP Spectre Folio Review: A Luxurious Leather-Clad Beauty

We tested the Spectre Folio as it shipped from HP to ensure we get the same out-of-box experience as our readers, with the latest Windows updates installed. Many variables can affect performance, so our comparisons should serve as a reference point. Our benchmarking kicks off with storage, CPU, and GPU tests to get an idea how the Spectre Folio performs in day-to-day tasks for these high-level subsystems.

ATTO Disk Benchmark Peak Sequential Storage Throughput

The ATTO disk benchmark provides a glimpse into how responsive the Spectre Folio is for day-to-day tasks. HP installed a Samsung PM961 PCIe NVME SSD, which is the OEM equivalent of the 960 Evo. It features TLC V-NAND and promises read speeds up to 2,800 MB/s and writes up to 1,100 MB/s. 


The Folio's Read speeds edge close to the rated speed at ~2,600 MB/s. Its Write speeds surpass Samsung’s rating by 300 MB/s for 1,400 MB/s writes, surprisingly. The Spectre Folio definitely feels snappy to boot, when launching apps and file copying, thanks to the Samsung PM961. 

Cinebench R15 3D Rendering On The CPU And GPU

Cinebench tests the CPU and GPU independently and provides a glimpse of raw performance. The test is based on Maxon’s Cinema 4D modeling software that’s used in movie productions.


It’s hard for the Spectre Folio to keep up with processors in laptops that drive five-times its TDP, which shows in Cinebench’s CPU test. The 5W Core i7-8500Y puts up a good fight and falls 20-percent behind the Surface Laptop (2017)’s 25W TDP Core i5-7200U. It also falls slightly behind the Kaby Lake Core i5-7Y54 in the HP Envy X2, which could be attributed to better thermals that allow it to Turbo for slightly longer periods. 

Geekbench 4 Single and multi-core

Geekbench 4 is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real world processing workloads in image processing and particle physics scenarios. We tested the HP Spectre Folio in Geekbench 4’s single and multi-core test workloads.


Geekbench performance is predictable with the Spectre Folio. It’s dual-core processor can’t keep up with quad-core notebooks in multi-core tests. However, the single core performance is comparable to other 8th-Generation Intel Core processors, respectably.