we never really have to worry about
this laptop not lasting through
whatever project we’re working on.
Taking it out of our backpack
again and again, jotting down
notes, banging out quick news
articles in the press room at a show
and even taking notes using the
touchscreen. This is all stuff that
puts strain on the laptop’s battery,
and we’re pleased to report that
the Dragonfly holds up.Software and features
Being a professional device meant
to play nice with IT departments,
this is a very secure laptop. The
boot sector is protected by HP
Sure Start, which means even if
the computer gets compromised,
you’ll always be able to recover it- something that’s definitely not a
given these days. Even if an attacker
deletes the BIOS, this feature will
overwrite whatever the attack did.
And if you get a model with HP
Sure View, you’ll also be able to
protect your screen from anyone
trying to read what you’re working
on over your shoulder.
Because this is such an expensive
piece of kit, it’s really only for those
that have the cash to throw at a
premium device. If you’re
constantly on the go, having a
laptop this thin, light and gorgeous
is definitely appealing, especially as
it has the battery life and CPU
power to get through any work.
And while there’s Wi-Fi everywhere
these days, the fact you’re able to
continue working in a taxi without
having to clumsily tether it to your
phone is a godsend.
Easily the best laptop out there
for travelling professionals. It’s
thin, light, powerful and stylish.get an HDMI, 3.5mm audio and two
Thunderbolt 3 ports – either of
which can be used for charging.
Over on the left, you’ll find a
solitary USB 3.1 Type-A port, the
power button and a Nano SIM slot.
You can find the Dragonfly with a
1,000 nit 1080p display with Sure
View, or opt for a 550 nit 4K display,
and we’re sure both of those look
absolutely phenomenal. The model
HP sent us for review, however, was
a 1080p display at 400 nits, and
while it’s not as good as we
imagine the other display options
are, it’s definitely bright enough
and colourful enough to keep up
with our Photoshop needs.
The speakers are a winner here,
too. HP continues to lead the pack
when it comes to speakers in
Windows laptops as far as we’re
concerned. Rather than tucking
them under the laptop to fire
sound impotently into the table,
they project sound upwards. We
don’t imagine a lot of people are
going to use the Dragonfly for
jamming out to music, but that’s
what we did with it, and will
continue to do so until HP
demands the review unit back.
And the keyboard is sublime.
Considering how thin this laptop is,
HP could have easily got away with
putting a shallow clicky affair in
here (think Apple Butterfly
keyboard), but it didn’t. Instead, this
keyboard feels like you’re literally
typing on a cloud, and it’s just
about as loud as you’d imagine that
simile going. Even when we’re
furiously typing up a last-minute
opinion piece, we can barely hear
the keyboard.Performance
The Dragonfly is only packed with
8th-Generation Whiskey Lake
processors with vPro, so it’s not the
fastest Ultrabook out there. But it’snot exactly far behind, either. We
could go on at length about the
lack of serious improvement
generation-on-generation with
Intel’s processors, but the fact is
that this laptop is more than fast
enough for everything you’d
throw at it.
With 16GB of RAM, the Dragonfly
is more than capable of keeping up
with our manic Chrome tab habits.
In fact, we can’t get it to slow down
with our normal workloads, no
matter how many things we try to
do at once.Battery life
Where this laptop particularly
impresses is in its battery life. We
lived with this device longer than
we typically do with a laptop, but“What makes this portable PC indispensable
for travelling, though, is the LTE integration”
Upgrade
HP Elite Dragonfly
March 2020 | |^83
i
HP Elite Dragonfly
Supplier HP
CPU Intel Core i7-8565U (quad-core, 8MB
cache, up to 4.6GHz)
GPU Intel UHD Graphics 620
RAM 16GB
Screen 13.3-inch 1080p
Storage 512GB PCIe SSD
Connectivity Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, 4G
LTE, 2x Thunderbolt, 1x USB-A, HDMI
Weight 990g
Dimensions 30.42 x 19.76 x 1.6cm