HP Elite Dragonfly Max overview: Top class substitute convertible with a killer webcam

The HP Elite Dragonfly Max is designed for executives who’re on Zoom calls as significant as they are in in-person meetings. The Elite Dragonfly Max parts a five-megapixel (1440p) webcam that presents twice the resolution of the authorized 720p laptop webcam, and it’s flanked by four microphones for greater Zoom audio.

Provided that it may possibly be years sooner than you come to pre-pandemic chase ranges, I inquire HP’s resolution to outfit the Elite Dragonfly Max with a 13.3-scoot show as a replacement of a roomier 14-scoot panel. Then there’s the worth: It’s sky-high at $2,789 on HP.com. It competes successfully in most ways with diversified top payment substitute convertibles, nonetheless for that ticket the raw CPU efficiency and battery life are swish disappointments.

This overview is segment of our ongoing roundup of the very best laptops. Hotfoot there for data on competing products and the design we tested them.

HP Elite Dragonfly Max parts: First-class

Based totally on its specs, the HP Elite Dragonfly Max model we reviewed has a high-end CPU, immense RAM, ample solid-train storage capability, and plentiful connectivity. Here are the main points:

• CPU: Quad-core Intel Core i7-1185G7
• Memory: 16GB
• Graphics: Intel Iris Xe
• Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD
• Point to: 13.3-scoot, 1920×1280 IPS touch
• Webcam: 1440p with bodily digicam shutter
• Connectivity: Appropriate aspect: Two Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.0, headphone/microphone combo port. Left aspect: SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps Form-A, SIM card
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6, 5G WWAN, Bluetooth 5.0
• Biometrics: IR facial recognition, fingerprint reader
• Battery capability: 4-cell, 56 Watt-hours
• Dimensions: 11.98 x 7.78 x 0.63 inches
• Measured weight: 2.59 kilos (laptop), 0.62 kilos (AC adapter)

Our $2,789 Elite Dragonfly Max is the head-end unit in the freeway. You will be in a space to avoid wasting $550 by opting for the $2,239 baseline Elite Dragonfly Max, which parts a Core i7-1165G7 CPU (which has a chunk decrease clock speeds than its better-end Core i7-1185G7 sibling) nonetheless otherwise the explicit identical configuration. These mounted-configuration units cross out and in of stock, nonetheless the customizable Elite Dragonfly Max, starting up at $2,409 on HP.com, is but every other risk. With it, you may possibly presumably be in a space to build bigger the memory to 32GB and the storage up to a 2TB SSD, and opt for cell broadband. All units characteristic the equivalent 13.3-scoot, Elephantine HD (1920×1080), touchscreen show with HP’s Definite Look privacy characteristic.

Shaded beauty

The HP Elite Dragonfly Max oozes C-suite style with a thin, but rugged magnesium chassis accomplished in an alluring matte shadowy. It’s definite to turn heads in the boardroom or substitute-class piece of an airplane. It’s also rugged: The Dragonfly Max passed MIL-STD 810H checks to cloak its sturdiness against shock, heat, frigid, humidity, and diversified frightful cases. 

The comfy, matte enact is also effective in repelling fingerprints and smudges. May silent you decide to wipe down the scheme, the Dragonfly Max is designed to be wiped down 1,000 times (per HP) with out staining or fading. That’s extra than 19 years of wipes on a once-per-week schedule. The laptop contains a utility—HP Easy Smooth—that disables the touchscreen, keyboard, and touchpad for 2 minutes so that you just may possibly presumably be in a space to wipe down the machine with out causing wacky enter errors. 

Matt Elliott/IDG

There are diversified to hand utilities on board. HP Definite Look can even be toggled on with the clicking of a feature key to retain prying eyes from seeing the contents of your cloak cloak—it makes it on the self-discipline of very unlikely to gaze the show except you are seated right away in front of it. One other utility lowers the temperature of the laptop when it’s in your lap, sacrificing a chunk in efficiency to steer clear of sizzling your thighs. The Dragonfly Max also reduces battery usage when it senses it’s been put in a web, and hastens the wake-up time whenever you happen to decide it out.

Weighing only 2.59 kilos, the Dragonfly Max is an straightforward chase partner. Compared to diversified top payment substitute laptops, the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310 weighs 2.9 kilos and the better 14-scoot HP Spectre x360 14 weighs 3 kilos. The smaller 12.3-scoot Microsoft Surface Pro 7+ with the Signature cowl/keyboard is only a chunk lighter at 2.42 kilos. In the occasion you are prepared to sacrifice 2-in-1 versatility, the 13-scoot Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano weighs a mere 1.99 kilos.

Stellar show and webcam

The Elite Dragonfly Max’s 13.3-scoot, Elephantine-HD touch show is most outstanding for its brightness rating of an fabulous 1,000 nits. Whereas in a aspect-by-aspect comparability it didn’t appear any brighter with Definite Look disabled than the 500-nit show on my MacBook Pro, it’s nonetheless one in all the few displays I’ve skilled that can even be viewed with out considerations in explain sunlight hours. That you just might silent expose, alternatively, that enabling Definite Look a good deal dims the show.

At any surroundings, the show’s colors seemed incandescent, with deep blacks and vivid whites. Its HP Eye Ease characteristic reduces blue mild, and does so with out at the side of the yellowish tint that you just’ve viewed in diversified solutions. Eye Ease is persistently on and may possibly presumably well’t be disabled, no longer that you just’d decide to. After utilizing the Dragonfly Max for a week, my MacBook Pro’s cloak cloak regarded frigid and blue by comparability. 

My only complaint about the show is its size. At 13.3 inches, with a 16:9 aspect ratio, the show starts to genuinely feel little, in particular whenever you’re making an strive to scroll a immense spreadsheet or doc. I’d happily carry spherical about a extra ounces for a 14-scoot show. 

The Elite Dragonfly Max is successfully outfitted for the videoconferencing era. The five-megapixel webcam above the show can file 1440p video at 30 frames per 2d. With twice the resolution of the 720p webcams chanced on on on the self-discipline of every diversified laptop, the video it captured was once successfully-known, with correct skin tones and colors, and limited noise or graininess. There’s also a bodily privacy cowl. Video calls sound clearer, on account of the laptop’s four microphones—two front-going thru and two world-going thru. 

Who desires passwords when the Elite Dragonfly Max affords biometric alternate options? There’s a separate IR digicam for Windows Whats up face recognition. (The privacy cowl also blocks the IR digicam, so that you just’ll decide to starting up it to make consume of this characteristic.) Alternatively, you may possibly presumably consume the fingerprint reader positioned below the decrease-upright nook of the keyboard.

The laptop’s four audio system—two that fireplace upward on either aspect of the keyboard, two that fireplace from the front fringe of the underside panel—provide fabulous audio output for such a compact laptop. The beefy sound displays obvious highs and mids and one thing equivalent to a bass response—rare for any laptop.

Keyboard, touchpad, connectivity

The keyboard and touchpad are both stellar. The keys offer a agency response with the upright amount of chase, and they’re very unruffled when pressed. The typing trip is aided by the rigid, magnesium chassis, which does no longer flex, even below heavy-accountability typiing. The keyboard parts two ranges of backlighting, and there’s a mic restful button among the many Fn keys that helpfully shines a little LED whenever you happen to are muted. Given its focal level on videoconferencing, alternatively, I used to be once a good deal surprised to safe no devoted Fn keys to originate and end calls. The touchpad was once correct in recording my mousing gesture and supplied agency clicks, and its matte enact made for comfy gliding, even for the length of a moist July’s week of testing.

Matt Elliott/IDG

The highlights of the Dragonfly Max’s port different are its pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, nonetheless I wish they were break up at some level of every aspect of the laptop as a replacement of both positioned on the upright edge. I’d also cross the USB Form-A port from the left edge to the upright, on story of it’ll likely be old fashioned to join a mouse, and most folk are upright-handed mousers. 

Matt Elliott/IDG

HP Elite Dragonfly Max efficiency

In our testing, it was once the greater of times and it was once the worst of times for the Elite Dragonfly Max. It turned in fabulous utility efficiency, nonetheless it surely exhibited lackluster multimedia capabilities and battery life.

We compared the Elite Dragonfly Max against two diversified high-end 2-in-1 convertibles,  the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310 and the HP Spectre x360 14, every of which parts the Core i7-1165G7 CPU; and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 7+, a 2-in-1 with detachable keyboard, which uses a Core i5-1135G7 CPU. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano is in accordance to the Core i7-1160G7 CPU; it’s no longer a convertible, nonetheless it surely’s a in an identical design sized top payment substitute laptop successfully worth brooding about. All five programs characteristic 16GB of RAM and integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics.

Matt Elliott/IDG

Our first benchmark is PCMark 10, which measures efficiency on day to day computing work at the side of office productiveness responsibilities, web browsing, and video chats. It’s a conclude flee—pretty significant any contemporary laptop can handle mainstream functions with ease—nonetheless to its credit, the Elite Dragonfly Max accomplished first among the many five top payment substitute machines here. 

The tale changes whenever you happen to gaze at purer CPU efficiency. We first gaze at Cinebench, a invent of CPU stride. The Elite Dragonfly Max’s numbers aren’t unsightly, nonetheless they path those of the same competition by a predominant margin.

Matt Elliott/IDG

We consume the HandBrake utility to rework a 30GB movie to Android desk format, an intensive project that taxes the CPU—and the laptop’s capability to retain it frigid. Here, once more, the Elite Dragonfly Max trailed the competition.

Matt Elliott/IDG

The Elite Dragonfly Max is not any longer the first thin, mild, and little laptop to falter on CPU efficiency on story of of thermal constraints. On the opposite hand, it’s worth noting that the Dell XPS 13 9310 2-in-1, the most the same machine in our comparability, blows it out of the water on both checks. 

Though Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics is surprisingly factual, as our checks non-public proven, no longer one in all the Iris Xe-outfitted laptops here will be puzzled with gaming machines, in particular the Elite Dragonfly Max, which introduced up the rear on our 3DMark benchmark.

Matt Elliott/IDG

Whereas about a of the lackluster efficiency above can even be chalked up to the boundaries of smaller laptops, the battery life is the ideally suited disappointment. We take a look at laptop battery life by looping a 4K video utilizing the stock Windows Movies & TV app, with cloak cloak brightness situation to about 250 nits and the amount dialed to 50 percent, with headphones plugged in.

Matt Elliott/IDG

It may possibly per chance possibly probably presumably per chance appear harsh to ding a laptop that ran for on the self-discipline of 11 hours on battery, nonetheless select into consideration the competition. Definite, the Elite Dragonfly Max, with a 56Wh battery, outlasted the Surface Pro 7+ and its 50Wh pack. However the Dell XPS 13 9310 2-in-1 has a 51Wh battery, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano has a 48Wh battery, but both lasted longer than the Elite Dragonfly Max. (The HP Spectre x360 14 has an outsize advantage with its 66.5Wh provide.). You’ll be in a space to rep thru all nonetheless the longest workdays on a single ticket with the Dragonfly Max, nonetheless competing units appear to be extra atmosphere pleasant.

Competing priorities

The HP Elite Dragonfly Max boasts a ideally suited, rugged enclosure and a host of considerate utilities that substitute execs are definite to revel in. It also affords a ideally suited (if little) show, surprisingly significant audio output, and a 1440p webcam that puts 720p cams to shame. Its first-payment invent and long list of parts assist to justify its lofty ticket, nonetheless its efficiency on the whole left us looking. Even a refined disappointment is noteworthy when a laptop’s ticket approaches the $3,000 ticket. 

• The HP Elite Dragonfly Max will turn heads with its handsome invent, and its webcam will build you the envy of every Zoom name. The 13.3-scoot show is probably going to be too little whenever you don’t chase equivalent to you old fashioned to, alternatively, and likewise you’ll rep greater battery life from competing top payment substitute convertibles.

  Pros

  • Ravishing, rugged chassis
  • Stellar show
  • Excessive-res webcam
  • Very just correct utility efficiency
  • Two Thunderbolt 4 ports

  Cons

  • Point to can genuinely feel little
  • Middling multimedia efficiency
  • Merely moderate battery life