HP Intros Its First Ultrabook, the 13.3-Inch Folio

So far, Ultrabooks certainly haven't turned into the huge success story that Intel has hoped for, but HP entrance into this field will certainly improve things quite a bit if we are to judge by the the strong specs of the outfit's recently unveiled Folio 13 and its attractive $899 base price.


At this price, HP manages to undercut not only the MacBook Air which starts at $1,299 (967 EUR), but also other Ultrabooks such as Asus' Zenbook UX31 and the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s both of these retailing for $1,100 (819 EUR) in a similar configuration.

Speaking of technical specs, the Folio 13 is built around a low-power 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M processor with dual computing cores which is seconded by 4GB of system memory and a 128GB mSATA SSD.

Power is provided by a six-cell battery that HP states it can last for up to 9 hours, which should make the Folio 13 quite an interesting option if it can deliver on this promise.

All of this hardware is fitted inside a 18mm (0.7 inches) thick chassis weighting 3.3 pounds (1.49Kg), that also includes the13.3-inch BrightView display with a native resolution of 1366x768 pixels.

The port selection is also fairly robust with USB 3.0, HDMI, Ethernet, and USB 2.0, while a memory card reader and a combined headphone/mic jack round up the list. 

We're glad to see that HP has added USB 3.0 connectivity in the Folio 13, but even more interesting than that is the inclusion of a backlit keyboard, as this is one of the features that we most appreciate on the Toshiba Portege Z830 Ultrabook.

The HP Folio13 also can be configured with a range of Microsoft Windows 7 operating systems, including Windows 7 Professional. The Ultrabook is expected to become available on December 7 with a base price of $899.99 (roughly 699.9 EUR).