HP Elite Dragonfly review
Our Verdict
The HP Dragonfly isn't just a looker that will inspire jealousy from Apple users; it's also a long-lasting 2-in-i laptop that earns serious respect.
For
- Cute, center-catching design
- Ballsy bombardment life (with optional upgrade)
- Brilliant and colorful screen
- A strong set of of security options
- Comfortable keyboard
Tom's Guide Verdict
The HP Dragonfly isn't just a looker that volition inspire jealousy from Apple users; it's likewise a long-lasting two-in-1 laptop that earns serious respect.
Pros
- +
Beautiful, center-communicable blueprint
- +
Epic battery life (with optional upgrade)
- +
Bright and colorful screen
- +
A strong set up of of security options
- +
Comfy keyboard
HP continues to liven up the business organisation-class section of your nearest plane. Information technology seems the copper and black Spectre laptops weren't enough, as the new HP Elite Dragonfly (starting at $ane,664, and tested at $2,298) shocks the system with its elegant blueish-magnesium chassis that'south much lighter than information technology looks. But the Dragonfly'due south beauty is far from simply skin deep, thanks to a beautiful brandish, thin bezels and surprisingly long battery life for a motorcar of this size.
If just the laptop weren't out of most consumers' reach with its high pricing, I'd be recommending this to everyone I know as the PC to buy. The HP Elite Dragonfly is such a good ii-in-1 laptop, though, that it's more than worth its investment; it'southward going to make other laptop makers take notice of HP as a leader in premium laptops — and, yes, even MacBook fans will take notice. That's why it's ane of the best Windows laptops you can buy, and ane of the best laptops on the market.
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HP Elite Dragonfly pricing and availability
The Elite Dragonfly'south got a new version coming, as its Gen 2 model was appear at CES 2021.
With an entry-level price of $1,664 (currently on sale a $2,561 starting price), the Dragonfly is priced to be out of reach of most consumers, intended more for execs on the become. A similarly spec'd Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga costs a lower (but yet pricey) $1,327, while the Intel-based MacBook Air we compared it confronting in the original version of this review now starts at a significantly less expensive $999 — and has the new Apple M1 processor to boot.
We tested a $2,298 (MSRP: $3,536) configuration of HP'due south auto stocked with an Intel Cadre i7-8665U CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD and a 32GB Intel Optane Retentiveness H10 SSD. Oh, and considering this car is meant for those flying in style, it'southward upgraded to a larger, four-cell battery, plus the optional pen and sleeve. That larger battery comes standard on the entry-level Dragonfly, but you tin save $22 if you want to get the two-cell battery (which shaves 0.2 pounds off the Dragonfly'southward weight).
I'd recommend you crash-land upwardly to the $1,811, midrange model, which features a Core i5-8365U CPU, 256GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, Intel vPro security, a 1920 x 1080-pixel and 1,000-nit console, and HP's Sure View privacy-screen technology.
| CPU | eighth-Gen Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 |
| RAM | 8GB / 16GB / 32GB |
| Display | 13.three-inch touch-screen display, 1920 x 1200 or 3840 10 2160 |
| Storage | 128GB / 256GB / 512GB / 1TB / 2TB SSD |
| Ports | USB-C Thunderbolt iii (x2), USB three.1, HDMI 1.four, headphone jack |
| Battery life | 24.5 hours (rated for iv-jail cell bombardment); 12:25 (tested, web surfing) |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi vi/Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Dimensions | 12 x 7.8 x 0.6 in. |
| Weight | two.5 pounds |
HP Elite Dragonfly design: A stunner in bluish
The HP Dragonfly is a laptop so beautiful that it could influence the generation of notebooks that follows it.
The HP Dragonfly, named subsequently the shade of blue that HP painted the machine, is a 2-in-i laptop then cute that it could influence the generation of notebooks that follows it. From its striking hue to its slight argent accent touches and a very grippable texture, this is a laptop whose appearance I tin't crack a joke near (and I love to make fun of any gaps in designs).
At a surprisingly light 2.v pounds and at 0.half dozen inches in thickness, the Aristocracy Dragonfly makes the Dell XPS xiii 2-in-ane (2.ix pounds, 0.v inches), Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (three pounds, 0.6 inches) and Apple MacBook Air (2.8 pounds, 0.half-dozen inches) seem hefty by comparison.
What'due south amazing about this laptop's lightweight design, though, is that the car doesn't feel flimsy for information technology. I've tested other magnesium-vanquish machines in the by, merely unlike them, the Dragonfly doesn't buckle or bend when you grip or apply pressure level, thank you to internal reinforcements. Besides, HP's provided an oleophobic blanket to the Dragonfly'southward machined metal shell, making it easy to wipe away whatever smudges.
One thing you won't detect with your eye but that will brand y'all tip your cap to HP is that the Dragonfly is the beginning laptop with ocean-leap plastics (recycled materials that would typically exist headed to the ocean) inside of its vanquish (Dell's used the fabric in its packaging before). That material is used in the speaker box of the Dragonfly, and HP marks this every bit only part of the get-go of the company'southward efforts to employ recycled materials.
HP Elite Dragonfly ports
The HP Dragonfly also offers a great port choice, with dual Thunderbolt 3 USB-Cs, HDMI-out, a USB iii.1 port and a headphone jack. The ThinkPad X1 Yoga packs all that, plus a second USB three.1 port and an extension port for Ethernet and docking. The MacBook Air sadly offers only a pair of Thunderbolt 3s and a headphone jack.
HP Aristocracy Dragonfly security and durability
The best keyboards permit you hit the ground running, and the HP Dragonfly has one of my favorites.
With business laptops, at that place are basics and there are cool perks in ruggedization and security features that help convince companies they're making a solid investment. Thankfully, the HP Aristocracy Dragonfly doesn't settle for the bare minimum.
Outset off, the Dragonfly packs processors with Intel's vPro technology, a tabular array-stakes-level characteristic that's in that location for IT pros to offer remote management help. HP's besides bestowed its self-healing BIOS technology, so your computer tin can fight low-level attacks. On top of that, there's a fingerprint reader below the bottom right corner of the keyboard.
Without those, we'd be docking points. Simply the Dragonfly also goes above and beyond with its physical webcam guard, which is an elegantly pocket-size switch that signifies your privacy by covering that pigsty with a two-tone circle of diagonal lines. It'southward not the first webcam shutter ever, but information technology's the showtime I've seen that actually looks neat.
The Dragonfly, like all of HP's Elite-model business laptops, has passed xix MIL-STD-810 tests, ensuring that it'south not going to bend or break nether force per unit area. Those tests checked the machine's power to survive drops, farthermost temperatures (both loftier and low), blasts of sand and other accidental damage.
HP Elite Dragonfly brandish: As pretty as its crush
The Dragonfly'due south thirteen.3-inch, 1920 x 1080-pixel screen proved to be a great console for watching the Bond flick No Time to Die's trailer, every bit I could see each small smudge on Daniel Craig's confront, savour the icy blues of his eyes and catch the verdant trees in a landscape behind a bridge that 007 was rappelling off of.
Co-ordinate to our colorimeter, the Dragonfly produces 117% of the sRGB spectrum, which approaches the 122% premium laptop average and competes closely with the 113% score from the XPS 13 2-in-1. That score narrowly beats the 106% rating from the ThinkPad X1 Yoga and the 100% from the MacBook Air.
The Dragonfly'due south screen gets pretty brilliant, too, emitting up to 373 nits. That outshines the 362-nit category average and the 342 nits from the MacBook Air. The ThinkPad X1 Yoga gets fifty-fifty brighter, hitting a maximum of 402 nits, as did the 516-nit Dell XPS 13. On this Dragonfly console, you become an excellent range of viewing angles, equally colors stay potent at upward to 60 degrees to the left and right.
As I tapped, pinched, pulled and swiped on the Dragonfly'due south touch on screen, I saw excellent responsiveness with fast reaction times befitting such a luxury laptop. Scrolling through news manufactures on the internet also proved smooth.
HP Dragonfly keyboard and touchpad
The all-time keyboards let yous hit the basis running, and the HP Dragonfly has one of my favorites. On my first run through of the 10FastFingers typing test, I hit 79 words per minute, a betoken off my fourscore-wpm boilerplate.
My fingers flew similarly well on the Dragonfly's two.v 10 iv.3-inch glass touchpad, which offers buttery-smoothen scrolling. Two-finger zoom in and out gestures, as well as Windows 10'southward iv-finger window-navigation commands, also functioned as well as could be expected.
HP Dragonfly audio: The weakest link
As I listened to Daughter Talk's "Bounciness That" on the Dragonfly, I noticed that the machine got plenty loud, more than filling 1 of our small conference rooms. The laptop produces so much audio, in fact, that I felt the need to play tunes at around lx% volume, because sound bled out of said room and reached my nearby colleagues, who started laughing at how loud information technology got. 1 even called information technology "an awesome picayune speaker."
The Dragonfly's got a little room to meliorate, however, in audio quality. While I started the Girl Talk song with my head bobbing to the beat, I chop-chop noticed Bun B'southward sampled vocals coming through a bit muddy, an result I besides noticed when listening to The National's "Looking for Astronauts," as Matt Berninger's lyrics didn't hitting as hard.
I tried to ameliorate the audio issues using the included Bang & Olufsen Sound Control app. Its sound options weren't enough, though, as I'd already set sound to Music. The two other options, Voice and Movie, only introduced other issues, messing with the instrumentals on Sum 41's "Fat Lip" and St. Vincent's "Regret."
HP Aristocracy Dragonfly operation: Solid merely not the fastest
The Dragonfly's small, lightweight chassis packs mode more endurance than it has any right to. This blue beauty lasted a full 12 hours and 25 minutes.
The high-finish HP Dragonfly we tested sports an 8th Gen. Intel Core i7-8665U processor and 16GB of RAM, providing speedy operation. I saw zero slowdown when I split my screen with the 4K remaster of Wham!'southward "Last Christmas" video on YouTube and a dozen Chrome tabs (including Giphy and the Google doc for this review).
The Dragonfly's fourteen,071 score on the Geekbench 4.3 general-operation criterion is a bit below the sixteen,357 premium laptop average and the 15,113 from the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (Intel Core i5-8265U, 8GB of RAM). Still, the Dragonfly's score blows the 7,880 from the MacBook Air (Intel Core i5-8210Y with 8GB of RAM) out of the water. The XPS 13 ii-in-1 (Intel Core i7-106G7 CPU, 16GB of RAM) did even better, with a xix,225 showing.
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The 512GB G.ii PCIe NVMe SSD (with 32GB Intel Optane 3D XPoint SSD) in the Dragonfly copied 4.7GB of files in 12 seconds, for a speed of 424.1 MBps. That ties the rate from the 256GB M.two PCIe NVMe Opal two SSD in the ThinkPad X1 Yoga but falls behind the 513.65 category average.
On our HandBrake test, which times a laptop's conversion of a 4K movie to 1080p resolution, the Dragonfly posted 22:23, which could be better. The ThinkPad X1 Yoga finished in 19:07, while the premium laptop average falls in the middle, at twenty:48.
The Intel UHD 620 GPU in the Dragonfly won't enable superlative gaming, merely this laptop sneaks a small-scale amount of prowess out of its integrated graphics. The Dragonfly ran the Clay 3 racing game at 31 frames per 2d. That might autumn below the 59-fps premium laptop average, but it'southward the aforementioned charge per unit nosotros saw in the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (which also packs the Intel UHD 620).
HP Elite Dragonfly bombardment life: Soars for hours
The Dragonfly's small, lightweight chassis packs way more endurance than it has whatsoever right to. Our battery test (web surfing at 150 nits) drained the bluish beauty of a full charge in 12 hours and 25 minutes, clobbering the 8:43 premium laptop average, the 8:51 time from the MacBook Air, the 10:18 from the ThinkPad X1 Yoga and the 10:57 fourth dimension from the XPS 13 2-in-1.
Of course, this time comes from a Dragonfly with the four-cell battery, and you can downgrade from that version if you want to save $22 and shave 0.2 pounds off the weight. Personally, I'd continue the four-jail cell bombardment.
HP Aristocracy Dragonfly estrus: Cool up top, warm down below
The Dragonfly can go a little warm. Later we streamed fifteen minutes of full-HD video on the laptop, our rut gun clocked the laptop's underside at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is above our 95-degree comfort threshold. The touchpad (82 degrees) and keyboard (93 degrees) didn't breach the limit. When I tested the Dragonfly, I spent some time typing with it in my lap, and while I felt a little heat, information technology didn't become a trouble.
Bottom line
The HP Dragonfly's well-baked, cute display; lightweight design; and robust security features combine to give you a laptop that'south every bit nice to look at every bit it is to use. If simply it didn't cost then much that I winced when I saw our testing unit's price. You could save $300 by opting for the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga, but you'd be dropping over two hours in battery life in exchange. That said, the HP Aristocracy Dragonfly truly earns the Elite branding, equally this laptop's elegance and endurance add upwardly to utter excellence.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/hp-elite-dragonfly
Posted by: sandersfingir.blogspot.com
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