Review: HP’s EliteBook Folio G1 is the MacBook as it could’ve been

Apple’s laptop designs used to feel like they were a few years ahead of the curve. When the company introduced things like the aluminum unibody MacBook Pros or both the first- and second-generation MacBook Air designs and even the 15- and 13-inch Retina MacBook Pros, they were impressive because none of the PC makers were doing anything quite like them.

That’s not so much the case in 2016, in part because designs like the MacBook Air and Pro have stood still as the PC OEMs have dramatically improved their own mid- to high-end offerings. You no longer need to buy a Mac to get good build quality, a nice-looking display, respectable battery life, or a non-terrible trackpad. And thanks in part to Windows 10, PCs are offering biometric authentication options and voice assistants that OS X and the Mac don’t have, even if the Mac is still much better at sharing data and interacting with the iPhone.

Apple’s latest laptop design is the MacBook, which is an impressively thin-and-light laptop that makes some key compromises in its pursuit of said thin-and-lightness. HP’s business-focused EliteBook Folio G1 isn’t the first MacBook-alike from the PC OEMs, but it might be the Windows laptop that best marries the virtues of the MacBook to the extra expandability and flexibility of a traditional Ultrabook. It’s on the expensive side, but it’s also the most impressive high-end laptop this side of Dell’s XPS 13.

Look and feel

I originally described the EliteBook as “a MacBook with two ports” and that description is accurate in a lot of ways. It’s a very thin aluminum and glass laptop, and it relies exclusively on USB Type-C ports for charging and connecting to wired accessories.

But HP’s machine makes a different set of compromises than the MacBook. Where Apple’s design sacrifices functionality in the name of making the laptop as thin and light as possible—its single port, its muddy 480p webcam, its low-travel keyboard and trackpad—the EliteBook improves on all of those features, making the laptop a little heavier (2.14 pounds vs. 2.06 for the MacBook) and larger (11.5 inches long and 8.23 inches wide compared to 11.04 inches long and 7.74 inches wide) in the process. The MacBook is thicker than the EliteBook at its thickest point, but the MacBook’s body tapers where the EliteBook’s body doesn’t.

Specs at a glance: HP EliteBook Folio G1 (as reviewed)
Screen	1980×1080 or 3840×2160 at 12.5" (176 or 352 ppi)
OS	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU	1.2GHz dual-core Intel Core m7-6Y75 (Turbo up to 3.1 GHz)
RAM	8GB 1866MHz LPDDR3 (non-upgradeable)
GPU	Intel HD Graphics 515 (integrated)
HDD	256GB SATA III SSD
Networking	Dual-band 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2
Ports	2x Thundebolt 3, headphones
Size	11.5" x 8.23" x 0.47" (292.1mm x 209mm x 11.94mm)
Weight	2.14 pounds (0.97kg)
Battery	38WHr
Warranty	1 year
Starting price	$999
Price as reviewed	Roughly $1,456.50 (1080p) and $1,715.50 (4K)
Other perks	720p webcam, optional Windows Hello IR webcam, backlit keyboard, Microsoft Precision Touchpad, TPM

The EliteBook’s design is also less sleek and clean, visually speaking. There’s an antenna cutout on the EliteBook’s lid, which Apple avoided by integrating the antennas into the laptop’s speakers. The EliteBook’s bezel, especially above and below the display, is quite a bit larger, presumably because the base of the laptop needed to be larger to fit in the ports and the battery and the extra room needed for the travel of the keyboard and trackpad.

So, yes, the MacBook looks a little better, and its engineering is more impressive. But HP’s laptop has the definite upper hand when it comes to actual usability. In practice it’s not so much larger or heavier that it makes a big difference when you’re lugging it around in a bag or using it on a plane. The improved webcam (plus the Windows Hello-compatible IR camera option) makes a big difference for video chat. And that second port means you can drive a display or plug in a USB accessory while charging the laptop at the same time. You’ll still need to own a big pile of special cables and adapters until we make it all the way through the Type-A to Type-C transition, but at least you’ll come out on the other side of it with a pair of really useful ports.

The other nice thing about the EliteBook’s USB ports is that they’re not just USB ports—they both support Thunderbolt 3, enabling 40Gbps of bandwidth and 10Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 speeds. They also open up possibilities for external accessories like graphics cards, although that low-wattage Core M CPU won’t pair well with a $300 desktop GPU.

The bad thing about them is that HP’s systems so far haven’t played nice with other USB Power Delivery-compatible Type-C chargers, possibly due to concerns about poorly made adapters that don’t comply with the spec. This was an issue with HP’s Spectre X2, as well. HP’s adapter will charge many other USB Type-C devices, including all of the phones we plugged it into and Apple’s MacBook. But it seems like HP doesn’t trust others to manufacture power adapters that will work with its systems, which is too bad since Type-C and USB Power Delivery is eventually supposed to make all of these concerns go away.

Finally, let’s talk about the screen. The 12.5-inch 1080p panel in the base model is perfectly fine, and it comes in both touch and non-touch versions (the touch version, which includes the IR webcam for Windows Hello, adds about $122 to the base price according to HP’s site). Viewing angles, colors, brightness, and contrast are all good. There’s nothing to complain about, unless you look at the 1080p panel side-by-side with the 4K version of the screen. The 4K panel’s colors pop, its brightness and contrast are both better, and images and text are all sharper in apps that handle Windows 10’s scaling modes properly (not that a 1080p panel at this size isn’t sharp). It’s a really nice upgrade, but it comes at a significant cost—in actual dollars, in performance, and most importantly in battery life. More on that in the performance section.

One drawback to the EliteBook’s display panel? It’s incredibly reflective, since it lacks an antireflective screen coating like the one on the MacBook. The extra reflections don’t make a huge difference indoors, but if you’re sitting outside or with your back to a window you’ll appreciate Apple’s extra attention to detail.

Keyboard and trackpad

However you feel about the rest of the laptop’s design, both the keyboard and trackpad are excellent. The keyboard doesn’t use any weird switches or have silly layout decisions—it’s just a nice-feeling chiclet keyboard with good travel and firm keys. It’s satisfying to type on without requiring the breaking-in period that most people are going to need for the MacBook keyboard.

The keyboard’s only major feature/quirk is the function keys, which are overwhelmingly focused on “business” things and not multimedia playback as they sometimes are on these keyboards. F1 and F2 control picking up and hanging up calls made in Skype for Business and a handful of other video chatting apps, F3 launches your default calendar app, and F4 mutes the microphone.

The multitouch trackpad is also a pleasant surprise. Trackpads that follow Microsoft’s Precision Touchpad (PTP) spec are the ones that come the closest to replicating the MacBook lineup’s excellent trackpads—Dell’s XPS 13 uses one, Microsoft’s own Surface Type Covers use them, and happily the EliteBook includes one, too. This means it automatically supports all of Windows 10’s window management gestures, and it will automatically gain support for any new ones introduced in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update and beyond.

The EliteBook’s trackpad actually supports two modes of operation. PTP mode is the default and the one that I prefer, but you can switch to “GlidePoint Touchpad” mode in the drivers if you prefer the OEM drivers and customization options for whatever reason. We’ve heard from trackpad OEMs like Synaptics that PTP-compatible hardware could be made to run in either PTP mode or standard OEM mode depending on the firmware and drivers used, but the Alps touchpad HP is using here is the first time I’ve actually seen that decision left up to the user. Hopefully even systems that don’t use PTP mode by default will at least begin offering users the option, since it really does make using Windows with a trackpad nicer than it has traditionally been.