With its new line of productivity laptops, like the HP Dragonfly Pro, HP has been trying to reach freelancers and gig workers. This laptop has a lot of features that make it appealing to people who use their laptop for work, such as a long-lasting battery, a thin and light design, a powerful CPU for fast performance, and a handy one-press key that connects you to customer service if something goes wrong.
HP Dragonfly Pro: Description
And when these features do work, they work very well. For example, the battery life is long enough to get you through a whole workday, and it takes about an hour to fully charge. It’s easy to carry around because it’s light and thin. Most laptop bags can fit it, and it’s easy to use for work. The camera is also good, with lots of webcam features like an auto frame that keeps your face in the middle, automatic colour adjustment, noise removal, and auto colour that lets you choose a colour space preset. All of this is to help your video conference calls go better.
The HP Dragonfly Pro also has a great backlit keyboard with big, easy-to-use keys and a very responsive touchpad. The touchscreen is responsive and easy to use, which makes it a great alternative way to use your machine. However, most freelancers probably won’t use it much, since the idea is to have a more useful laptop. So, even though it only has three USB-C ports and nothing else, which isn’t great for a freelancer who needs this as their main machine, there’s still a lot here that will help the people it’s made for.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Gorgeous design
- Comfortable keyboard
- Long battery life
- Very good speakers
Cons
- Missing cool features that the Chromebook has
- It’s heavier than it should be
- Very few ports
- Fan can be a little loud at full bore
HP Dragonfly Pro: Specifications
| Price | $1,399 |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 7736U |
| GPU | AMD Radeon Integrated Graphics |
| Display | 1920 x 1200 |
| Memory | 16GB |
| Storage | 512GB |
HP Dragonfly Pro: Design
The sleek and elegant look of the Dragonfly Pro makes it stand out from other laptops. It’s one of the cutest laptops I’ve looked at. You can choose either Sparkling Black or Ceramic White as a colour. The second model stands out more, but the first one isn’t bad either. The aluminium chassis of the notebook is machined and has a finish that gives the whole thing some texture.
Just holding the laptop and running your hands over its surface is fun. The Dragonfly Pro is 12.39 x 8.78 x 0.72 inches and weighs 3.53 pounds, so it’s easy to put it in your backpack and carry it around all day. It is about the same weight and size as the 14-inch MacBook Pro (12.3 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches, 3.5-3.6 pounds). But at 2.7 pounds, the Dell XPS 13 Plus is lighter.
It’s easy to open the laptop’s lid with one hand. The lid is sturdy, but you can move it into any position you want. During the time I used the device, the hinges on the lid never made a noise. The only thing I don’t like about the design is that the edges around the screen, especially at the top, are a bit thick.
HP Dragonfly Pro: Display
The only thing I don’t like about the Dragonfly Pro is its screen. Most high-end laptops have at least one higher resolution option than Full HD+, which is 1920 x 1200 at a 16:10 aspect ratio. I don’t think that’s sharp enough for a 14-inch screen, and people who like the sharpest text won’t be happy with the resolution.
It also only runs at 60Hz, while more expensive machines run at 120Hz and have faster refresh rates. Right out of the box, it looks like a nice enough display, but it’s a bit of a letdown. Think about how the 14-inch QHD+ (2560 x 1600) display on the Dragonfly Pro Chromebook looks.
My colorimeter says that at least HP chose a good panel. At 100% of sRGB and 82% of AdobeRGB (most IPS screens are around 75% of AdobeRGB), the colours were a little bit wider than the premium average, and they were accurate with a DeltaE of 1.03. (1.0 or less is considered professional-level). The brightness of 416 nits was more than enough, and the contrast of 1690:1 was great. That’s a lot for an IPS panel, but it’s not even close to an OLED level.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The Dragonfly Pro has one of the best laptop keyboards we have ever used. Even though I usually don’t care much about laptop keyboards, that says a lot. The paint on the notebook’s frame is the same on the keys and palm rests. The soft texture of the backlit keyboard made it a pleasure to type on. When I typed, I also liked how far the keys moved and how much resistance they had. The soft click of the keys is also a nice touch.
The Dragonfly Pro’s haptic touchpad is responsive and has never failed to read my gestures or swipes. The haptic feedback works pretty well, but compared to the MacBook Pro, it’s not as strong. You can change the feedback, though, by using HP’s settings software.
HP Dragonfly Pro: Performance
After all of that, we can talk about the most interesting parts of the HP Dragonfly Pro: how well it works and how long its battery lasts. This product was made with the help of AMD and a custom Ryzen chip based on Zen 3+. AMD said right away that it wasn’t interested in traditional benchmarks like PCMark 10 or Cinebench, which I did run. It put responsiveness at the top of the list, noting that anything that takes more than a second will stop your work flow, or that if it takes 100 milliseconds to sort a spreadsheet, it’s seen as happening right away.
AMD did this in part with its Performance Management Framework, which changes the amount of power being used on the fly. Another thing that was kept in mind was that the user should never have to touch the power slider. Your laptop should be smart enough to use more power when it needs to and less power when it doesn’t. Quick side note: When I tried to change the power slider, it just went back to balanced, so my benchmark scores are a bit strange.
They are not made by HP. As someone who reviews laptops for all ecosystems, this is how I see things. One is that you always feel like you have to give something up. Some new, fancy laptops have a faster refresh rate, but you should probably turn that off because it uses a lot of battery life.
HP Dragonfly Pro: Battery Life
HP says that the Dragonfly Pro can play videos for 15 hours on a single charge and can stream music for 12 hours. On our battery test (continuous web streaming over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness for 13 hours and 23 minutes), the notebook’s battery died in the middle of the night. It beat the average of 9:53 in that category. It also lasted longer than the ZenBook 14 (10:52) and the XPS 13 Plus (13:30). (7:35). In the end, the MacBook Pro 14 with a time of 14:02 was the only laptop left.
HP Dragonfly Pro: Heat
The Dragonfly Pro works both hot and cold. We watched a 15-minute video in full-screen mode and took measurements of important parts of the laptop, starting with the touchpad, which read 89 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s good that it’s below 95 degrees, but the middle of the keyboard is noticeably hotter at 100 degrees, and the bottom of the laptop reached 98 degrees.
Price and availability
As of press time, you can buy the HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook directly from HP’s stores in Ceramic White or Sparkling Black for $999. It will soon be available at more stores and business distributors.
At this price point, the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition is a similar machine that focuses on modularity, repairability, and sustainability. The Asus Chromebook Flip CX3, on the other hand, is a more traditional, maybe less impressive, but very versatile machine. We think HP’s entry has a better industrial design than the others and is very competitive in terms of media and performance.
Final Words
The HP Dragonfly Pro is a very good idea. Freelancers who depend on their devices to make a living would love a laptop that is easy to use, works well, and has support available 24 hours a day. Even more so now, when so many people work from home. I like what HP is trying to do, but I think they missed the mark in a few ways.
The Dragonfly Pro has a sleek design, a bright screen, and a comfortable keyboard. Since it lasted for more than 13 hours in our test, this laptop should easily get you through a workday. It also lasted longer than the Dell XPS 13 Plus by a few hours. The XPS 13 Plus, on the other hand, is a lot lighter.
FAQs
Can the HP Dragonfly run games?
The 512GB SSD gives you a lot of space to store games and other files. The only thing that might be bad about the laptop is that it has a small screen, which might make it hard to see some games. Overall, though, the HP Elite Dragonfly is a great choice for gamers who want a powerful and portable laptop.
Is HP Elite Dragonfly touch screen?
HP Elite Dragonfly 13.3-inch Touchscreen 2-in-1 Notebook 1920 x 1080, Core i7 i7-8665U, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, Intel UHD Graphics 620, and in-Plane Switching (IPS) Technolo. If you double-tap, you can see the whole thing.
