HP Elite Dragonfly review: Can this two-in-one wing its way into your heart?

The HP Elite Dragonfly two-in-one looks a million dollars. But can it wing its way into your heart?

HP Elite Dragonfly two-in-one laptop

HP pushed the Elite Dragonfly heavily when it launched it last year at a grand event in Tokyo. I’ve been trialing it during lockdown. It’s best described as a lightweight, quickish two-in-one laptop offering long battery life.

It offers built-in security, mobility and privacy features that makes it an enticing combination for on-the-go. It weighs less than one kilogram and I can easily pick it up and carry it in one hand. That’s significantly lighter than Apple’s MacBook Air at 1.29kg.

But you pay a premium for its beauty, features, connectivity and capability.

The Elite Dragonfly is a flexible device; it’s two-in-one with a 13.3-inch display that rotates almost 360 degrees, from fully closed to normal laptop (90 degrees) to the screen being flush beneath the keyboard for tablet mode. The keyboard is not detachable.

It’s certainly attractive with a sleek machined magnesium body in iridescent “dragonfly blue” and a screen to body ratio of 86pc. It has retractable hinges and there’s hardly any bezel, or border around the display edges.

The Dragonfly Elite is built for mobility and privacy with a physical privacy shutter on the 720p webcam and a privacy screen that makes it hard to read the contents from besides you but beware that some units don’t have it. Check with the retailer or HP.

Someone sitting beside you mightn’t be an issue for now with social distancing, but once we’re on planes you could find yourself besides a journalist like me glancing at your screen, so watch out.

Other mobility features include gigabit-speed Wi-Fi 6 and wide area network support.

Security wise, you get HP Sure Recover that’s built into the hardware and firmware so you can recover or reimage your laptop contents from your network.

The screen on entry level models is full HD (1080p) and the laptop is well stocked with ports: two USB Type-C Thunderbolt ports, one USB3.1 port, HDMI4.1, an external Nano SIM slot for setting up wide area wireless, and a headphone/microphone combo port. There’s no SD card slot or Ethernet port so you’ll need an adaptor for those, but in many circumstances you’ll be adaptor free.

HP supplies a brick-style charger for this laptop which plugs into USB-C. You’re best using this for faster charging.

Some features are optional, such as optional 5G connectivity with 4x4 antennas and an optional Tile implant, so you can track the Dragonfly with the Tile system to see whether it’s hidden under a cushion in your living room, and use the Tile network to find its whereabouts elsewhere.

The laptop has an optional HDR400 panel for improved 4K viewing. Again, check with the seller or HP to see if the model you want has it.

I performed my usual tests on this laptop. My test unit was an Intel Core i5 model with 16GB of memory and a 256GB solid state drive retailing at $3395. The Cinebench R15 benchmark returned scores of 49.05 frames per second for graphics performance (OpenGL) and 452cb for CPU performance. That’s reasonable for a laptop, but not stunning.

Graphics performance is okay for a computer with an on-board graphics card but not when compared to systems with dedicated graphics. Remember, you pay more than $3000 for my unit.

I also ran Novabench to compare performance to HP’s cheaper Spectre X360 13, a $1999 laptop that I reviewed in January. Novabench returned 590 (CPU), 155 (GPU), 215 (RAM) and 110 (Disc). Read/write speeds were 739 smf 624 MB/s.

The Spectre X360 in January returned 1643 with read/write speeds of 962 and 359 MB/s.

So I wouldn’t be looking to buy the Elite Dragonfly for computing power and graphics performance alone. It stands and falls on being lightweight, beautiful, having good connectivity and mobility and security features.

Unfortunately the Elite Dragonfly isn’t cheap. HP’s Australian website lists Dragonfly models ranging from $2770 to $4210.

The $2770 entry level model has an eight generation Intel Core-i5-8265U with on-board Intel UHD Graphics 620, a 1080p WLED-backlit touch screen display at 400 nits brightness, 8GB of SDRAM memory and a 256 GB solid state drive.

The highest specced $4210 model has a Core i7-8665U processor, a 4K WLED-backlit touchscreen display with 550 nits brightness, 16GB of SDRAM memory and a 1TB solid state drive.

Finally, there’s the Dragonfly’s wide-screen format. It’s great if you want to watch wide-screen movies, but for everyday business use, I prefer a laptop with a squarer 3:2 aspect ratio display. You can see much more of a document on the screen.

Overall the Elite Dragonfly is a quality two-in-one, and being sleek and lightweight, it looks a million dollars in your hand. But whether its value for money is another question. It’s expensive and you’ll find yourself paying above the $2770 base price for its optional features. From $2770 on HP’s Australian website.