Early Verdict
From our experience with the HP Dragonfly Pro, it's shaping up to be a great laptop that combines solid performance, battery life, portability, and visuals. But it remains to be seen how well the platform management framework, actual battery life, and 24/7 customer support will work in practice.
Pros
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Thin and light for excellent portability
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Simple yet elegant design
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Great processor and features
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Keyboard and touchpad feel great
Cons
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No news on price and availability
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How well do the PMF and 24/7 support work in reality?
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Before CES 2023, HP showed off its upcoming offerings for the current year and we got to check out a wide range of products that ran the gamut between professional laptops and more casual affairs. One of its consumer laptops, the HP Dragonfly Pro, was one of the most impressive products at the preview event, and for good reason.
It comes in two colors, a full HD touchscreen, incredibly lightweight at only three and a half pounds, and a solid quality webcam, all while running a Ryzen 7 CPU. The keyboard features a simple yet practical backlight that’s lovely to type on with well-sized keys that should reduce typos. Meanwhile, the speakers use Harmonix to simulate bass while the overall sound reaches 80 decibels in volume.
The HP Dragonfly Pro comes in two configurations, the 16GB RAM and 32GB RAM versions, and both utilize AMD’s PMF tech to better augment performance depending on the situation.
HP Dragonfly Pro: Price & availability
The HP Dragonfly Pro will be available this spring at the official HP website. However, at this time there are no exact release dates, regional availability, or pricing. According to the official press release, those will all be announced closer to the launch window.
Once that information is revealed, TechRadar will be sure to report on that, so stay tuned to our ongoing coverage of the laptop as well as the rest of the upcoming HP line of products.
HP Dragonfly Pro: Design
The HP Dragonfly Pro is made for hybrid office work, which means the focus is on lightweight, a thinner form factor, and simple elegance. It comes in only two colors, Ceramic White and Sparkling Black, with the latter featuring speckles that resemble a night sky and turning an otherwise standard color into something more visually appealing. Ceramic white was our favorite, however, as it’s already an up-and-coming color among laptops and here it looks absolutely stunning.
It features a thin and light form factor as well, a mere 0.72 inches, and only weighs three and a half pounds. The display size is a 14-inch touchscreen with full HD and the webcam is 5MP IR with a shutter button and a bigger focus on performance. The picture quality is already quite good but it’s enhanced by the standard HP webcam fixings like auto frame that keeps your face centered, the auto color that lets you choose a color space preset, automatic color adjustment, and noise removal.
The keyboard is backlit which is not only great for late-night typing but adds a beautiful visual element. And the touchpad uses haptic feedback for an even more responsive experience. There are also touch buttons, with one that can be customized to best suit your needs. In all, it’s a simple yet lovely laptop that is made for convenience and portability.
HP Dragonfly Pro: Performance
The HP Dragonfly Pro seems to be built for consistent and fast performance, based on the needs of the average remote office worker. It comes with the AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, which is an excellent processor that nearly matches the Intel Core i7 and that can handle plenty of productivity work as well as conference calls and even some gaming. It comes in two configurations: the 16GB RAM with 516GB of storage space, and the 32GB RAM with 1TB of storage space.
HP also states that the battery life is up to 16 hours, which — if true — would be absolutely incredible. The laptop also supports fast charging and is claimed to get a 50% charge in 30 minutes. What should also help with both performance and battery life is the AMD platform management framework (PMF), which adjusts performance levels based on current usage. The tech uses skin temperature, acoustics, and other sensor data to determine the current workload and how to then adjust the performance levels to best suit it.
Sound quality has also been improved according to HP, as the speakers use Harmonix to simulate bass. And it can hit up to 80 decibels, which is about equivalent to a busy downtown street, an impressive number for such a thin and light laptop. HP stated that these features made to enhance performance and battery life were a huge focus for AMD and specifically developed for HP’s laptop line.
HP Dragonfly Pro: Early verdict
While we won’t know how certain features — like the battery life and PMF — will hold up until we can get a model to test ourselves, it seems that a lot of thought and care has been put into tricking out the HP Dragonfly Pro. Combined with the stunning visuals of the laptop — especially the Ceramic White color and keyboard — we may have a winner in terms of the best laptop for hybrid workers.
Another feature that sounds great on paper is the 24/7 support. HP claims that not only is the support managed by real people but they’re trained specifically on the Dragonfly Pro so they're specialists on the device who can immediately dive into the issue and troubleshoot it (at least that's the claim, anyway). It’ll cost a monthly subscription but if this service turns out to be as amazing as it sounds, it’ll be another excellent feature that’s sure to make the life of the average worker that much easier.
The only other issue is the lack of pricing and availability, which depending on the cost and how easy it would be to get your hands on it, could make or break this laptop. Hopefully, HP will have some good news for us in a few months.
