HP Folio 13-2000 review

HP Folio 13-2000 — one of the first ultrabooks, still light

The Folio 13-2000 is a 2011 ultrabook — among the very first wave of machines built to Intel's new thin-and-light specification — with a Core i5 2467M and 8GB of RAM. At $122 it sits less than half the general-laptop median of $248. The profile: weight 1.5 kg (light, 17% below class median) as the one genuine strength, against performance 2.2 (low), graphics 0, and a reliability index of 2 — the lowest tier of service-life expectation.

What the Folio was

A 13-inch wedge of aluminum built to prove Windows laptops could be MacBook-Air thin: 1.5 kg, low-voltage Sandy Bridge silicon. The concept won; this particular implementation is now fourteen years old. The i5 2467U's two cores at 1.6 GHz deliver a performance index of 2.2 against a 43 median — the honest number for a machine whose priority was always weight over speed.

The trade-off, stated honestly

Light weight is the strength and remains true today — few machines in this price band are this portable. But graphics 0 rules out anything GPU-accelerated, and reliability 2 versus a 54 median is the decisive caveat: the battery, keyboard and hinges have had a long life already. The honest role is a carry-only companion for light document and browsing duty, with expectations set accordingly.

Price trajectory

From an original $900 to $122 today at 6% per year, with a further projection to $108 (an 11.64% drop) over two years. Most of the value loss is long since realized; what remains is a small residual tied to the chassis rather than the compute.

Where it sits against peers

Pricier neighbors are the HP 17-p023ng ($137) and Compaq Presario CQ60 ($135); cheaper options are the Compaq CQ58 ($115) and Lenovo 100-15IBY ($108). Sideways sit the Inspiron 15 3542 ($123) and IdeaPad Z575 ($122). None of those rivals matches the 1.5 kg weight — but all of them out-compute the Folio. The choice in this band is portability versus literally everything else.

Bottom line

A piece of ultrabook history that still delivers its one promise — low weight — while failing every modern performance expectation. For a buyer who values the carry above all and asks only light duty of the machine, it works at minimum cost; for anyone else, same-priced rivals are the rational pick.