HP’s Elite Dragonfly Max is the nicest enterprise laptop computer I’ve ever used. That doesn’t imply it’s the finest, all issues thought-about — on the subject of efficiency, battery life, and options, the Dragonfly has fierce competitors from the Latitudes and ThinkPads of the world. But there’s no enterprise laptop computer on the market that matches the magnificence of a Dragonfly. It’s a modern, gentle, and exquisite laptop — and that magnificence is a giant a part of its hefty, hefty price ticket.

Right, the value tag. Before we get into this: The most cost-effective Dragonfly Max has an MSRP of $3,347 (presently listed at a still-expensive $2,409.84). You should buy my check mannequin for, oh, a reduced value of simply $2,622.24. That places the Dragonfly Max out of attain for most individuals. And frankly, given the machine’s small however noteworthy record of drawbacks, I do suppose it’s too excessive. But it’s a beautiful laptop computer, it’s actually enjoyable to make use of, and it’s an excellent case research within the very peak of what a laptop computer may be.

There are two Elite Dragonfly fashions you possibly can presently purchase: the Dragonfly Max, and the Dragonfly G2. Both have been upgraded to Eleventh-Gen Intel processors and DDR4 reminiscence — HP tells me they’re aimed toward “mobile users who loved Dragonfly, but want an even faster and smarter device”. There are some new good options together with AI noise discount for video calls, and new safety features like a tamper lock. The Dragonfly Max provides an upgraded 5MP digicam, an additional microphone, a blue gentle defend, a brand new black colour, and some additional safety features.

The different noteworthy distinction is that the Dragonfly G2 has quite a lot of totally different configurations: You can select between 5 processors, three shows, two batteries, and numerous sorts of storage, in addition to a variety of add-ons, and costs are all throughout the board. You could make just a few changes to the Dragonfly Max, however its choices are way more restricted — two processors, one display screen, one battery. It’s focusing on a really particular deep-pocketed enterprise consumer.

One factor to notice: all Dragonfly Max fashions include Sure View Reflect, one of many Dragonfly line’s largest calling playing cards. SureView mirror is a privateness display screen that makes it very tough for potential snoops to see what you’re doing. It’s non-obligatory on the G2, and prices an additional $145 over the usual show.

If you’re not shopping for the Dragonfly for its suave design, you’re shopping for it for Sure View Reflect. I’ve examined just a few totally different privateness screens, and Sure View Reflect is hands-down the most effective one. If I moved my head a bit to the facet, or angled the show barely up or down such that I wasn’t dealing with it head on, I mainly couldn’t make out any of its contents. Someone sitting subsequent to me on a prepare and even peering over my shoulder would’ve had hassle gleaning any information. It’s a formidable characteristic, and doesn’t visibly influence display screen brightness or glare a lot in any respect. (Of course, in case you’re in a scenario the place you’ll be collaborating or shifting your head round rather a lot, you possibly can all the time flip the characteristic off.)

Sure View apart, the Dragonfly Max’s contact show is sort of correct and vivid, and delivers a whopping 1,000 nits of brightness — a quantity that’s uncommon for something that’s not a devastatingly costly enterprise laptop computer to succeed in. (Enabling Sure View will dim the show, in fact.) It’s appropriate with HP’s Wacom AES 2.0 pen, which is (frustratingly) not shipped with the machine, because it did with earlier Dragonfly generations. It prices an additional $74.

I do have a pair different complaints. For one, the display screen is 16:9, which is falling out of style on costly laptops for a motive. Lenovo has adopted the roomier 16:10 and three:2 facet ratios on a variety of its premium ThinkPads, and HP ought to do the identical with the Dragonfly. Both supply extra vertical area and a extra snug multitasking expertise. Additionally, the display screen picks up fingerprints and smudges very simply, and so they weren’t trivial to wipe off. These aren’t as seen as they’d be on a dimmer display screen, however they did cheapen my viewing expertise a bit.

The different motive you may want the Max over the G2 is its upgraded digicam. The Dragonfly Max has a 5MP webcam with a separate infrared sensor. Webcams are sometimes a weak level of otherwise-stellar laptops, and this webcam definitely improves upon the likes of the MacBook Air. It does a greater job in low gentle than I’m used to seeing from webcams, and colours had been pretty correct. Coworkers on a Zoom name remarked that they may make out surprisingly minute particulars of my feed: strands of hair, my nostril stud, and so forth. Of course, that doesn’t imply it delivers a nice image — my image was a bit washed out with the sunshine from my window, and there was nonetheless noticeable noise. It’s a very good expertise, however not one thing I’d purchase the Dragonfly Max simply to get.

The webcam additionally has a bodily shutter that’s straightforward to click on forwards and backwards (although it’s tiny and black, so discovering it takes a little bit of guesswork). The separate IR sensor means Windows Hello facial recognition works even when the shutter is closed. You also can register with the fingerprint reader positioned beneath the appropriate arrow key, which didn’t give me any hassle.

Paired with the webcam are 4 microphones (two front-facing and two back-facing) with AI noise cancelation. These picked up my voice simply superb in video conferences, and may be killed simply with the F8 key.

HP continues together with sustainable materials in its high-end laptops, although its present pronouncements are barely extra conservative than they’ve been in previous years. As was the case on the first-gen Dragonfly, the keyboard is created from 50 p.c PCR DVDs, and 80 p.c of mechanical elements are recycled materials. The Max’s bezels are 45 precent post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastics and 5 p.c ocean-bound plastics — the early-2020 Dragonfly’s bezels had been 35 p.c PCR plastic. But a number of the Max’s different pronouncements are a little bit of a step down from the earlier Dragonfly. The speaker enclosures are 45 p.c PCR plastics and 5 p.c ocean-bound plastics, whereas the earlier Dragonfly’s speaker field was 50 p.c PCR plastics and 5 p.c ocean-bound plastics. And 90 p.c of the Dragonfly Max’s cowl is recycled magnesium, whereas the earlier Dragonfly’s whole chassis was 90 p.c recycled. Still, it’s good to see HP pursuing sustainability with its high-end strains.

The excellent news for buyers, although, is that the recycled supplies do nothing to cheapen the chassis. The Dragonfly Max has a easy and comfy texture, and feels fairly sturdy. It has a placing, premium look rivaled solely by HP’s personal Spectre line in current months. An indicator of low-cost plastic is that it accumulates fingerprints in a short time, however the Dragonfly remained smudge-free after over every week of testing. (The lid picked up just a few, however they had been solely seen underneath brilliant gentle and had been simply wiped away.)

Open the machine up, and also you’ll discover a dizzying record of safety features focusing on C-suites and IT departments. New to those Dragonfly fashions is a tamper lock, which is supposed to detect when a possible hacker has popped the chassis open to fiddle with parts — if this happens, the PC would require a BIOS password to be entered earlier than it boots once more.

Within the OS is Sure Click, a safe browser that opens web sites inside a CPU-isolated digital machine. That means any malware you choose up whereas utilizing Sure Click might be remoted from the remainder of your system, and can disappear whenever you shut the browser. It additionally presents protected viewing for PDFs and Office paperwork. I dinked round with it, and it was very straightforward to make use of, and conveniently ported over all my bookmarks. It has a barely totally different colour scheme from common Chrome, so I by no means combined up my tabs.

The machine comes preloaded with a laundry record of different software program. There’s Sure Sense, which scans each file you obtain for malware, and may detect “zero day never-before-seen threats”, per HP. There’s Sure Run, which retains essential processes operating if malware tries to close them down. There’s Easy Clean, which might briefly disable the Dragonfly’s keyboard, touchscreen, and touchpad so that you (or another person) can wipe it down with out unintentionally booting it up. And there’s a Tile tracker inside, which you should use to find the Dragonfly Max in case you lose it through Tile’s large crowd-finding community. It’s straightforward to arrange and use, particularly if you have already got a Tile account.

Those are simply the standout options of the Dragonfly Max — every thing else about additionally it is onerous to beat. It helps Wi-Fi 6 and non-obligatory 5G. It’s fairly gentle, at simply 2.49 kilos and 0.63 inches thick. The audio (through two upward-firing and two downward-firing audio system) is great, with bass and percussion which are audible, if not robust. The keyboard is a delight, with simply the correct amount of click on and journey. There’s a surprisingly sturdy port choice for such a skinny machine, together with two Thunderbolt 4, one combo audio jack, one HDMI 2.0, one USB 3.1, one nano lock slot, and one nano SIM slot. And the chassis by no means bought uncomfortably scorching, nor had been the followers ever loud.

The processor — a Core i7-1185G7 with assist for Intel’s vPro, did a very good job with every kind of duties, together with heaps upon heaps of tabs and movies. I solely noticed a minor slowdown as soon as, after I was utilizing the Battery Saver profile and attempting to leap between Slack and Chrome whereas operating a Zoom name within the background. Switching off Battery Saver nipped that within the bud. Intel’s Iris Xe built-in graphics can help in GPU-intensive duties or video games like Overwatch, although you wouldn’t wish to use the Dragonfly as a main gaming machine.

Battery life, although, was my largest disappointment. I took the Dragonfly Max by way of my regular workday, juggling round a dozen Chrome tabs with some Spotify or YouTube streaming and Zoom calls on medium brightness with Battery Saver on, and it lasted a median of seven and a half hours. That end result was remarkably constant inside 20 or so minutes, no matter battery profile or what I did with Sure View. That’s not a devastating end result, and it means the Dragonfly Max could make it by way of near a full day in case your workload is just like mine. But it’s disappointing contemplating the competitors — I bought over 11 and a half hours out of the earlier Dragonfly, and the Dell Latitude 9420 broke 10 whereas on the Battery Saver profile. And, in fact, every kind of extra inexpensive shopper laptops can final for much longer.

The Dragonfly is a superb machine to purchase, in case you can afford it. I particularly don’t begrudge IT departments for having a look — companies typically purchase these items in bulk and aren’t paying full value. Almost each facet is nice, and there are options you actually can’t get wherever else. If you’re in search of a mix of an embedded Tile tracker, an efficient privateness display screen, a 2.49-pound chassis, and a 5MP webcam with a separate infrared sensor, the Dragonfly Max is mainly your solely possibility.

But given how a lot cash HP is asking for this factor, I can’t assist however take a look at even delicate drawbacks with a reasonably crucial eye. I don’t want a laptop computer to be utterly flawless to be able to suggest that you just spend over $2,400 on it (or upwards of $3,000, relying on the day) — I’m prepared to forgive a squeaky keyboard or an oddly-placed port right here and there. But I do want it to have all-day battery life. I want its display screen to not be coated in smudges. In this 12 months 2021, I want it to not be 16:9. And, sure, I in all probability do want it to ship with a stylus. For that motive, I feel most customers are in all probability higher suited to the common G2, which begins as little as $1,819 and is way more customizable.

The Max is a luxurious product, on the finish of the day. It’s not a lot a realistic buy (for many of us) as it’s a proof of idea — what might a laptop computer be if cash had been no object? The reply, because it seems, is: very good, and really costly.