The HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook is neat, however what’s with the RGB?

For years, the HP Elite Dragonfly has been one of the glossy, luxurious, and exorbitantly costly enterprise laptops you should buy. The new Dragonfly Pro is HP’s try and market these fashions to a broader, consumer-focused, and extra price-conscious viewers. There’s a Windows-based Dragonfly Pro, and there’s a Dragonfly Pro Chromebook, and whereas we don’t know the pricing but, the hope is that they are going to be cheaper than their enterprise counterparts.

I spent a couple of minutes with the Dragonfly Pro Chromebook and the Dragonfly Pro, they usually appear good. They’re well-built and pretty-looking (and I’d be shocked in the event that they weren’t, coming from HP). They are available in black and white choices. But the very first thing you’ll most likely discover is that the Chromebook has an RGB keyboard.

Is this a gaming Chromebook? No, HP’s representatives instructed me. To my information, that is the primary Chromebook with an RGB keyboard that’s not explicitly being marketed to cloud avid gamers. It’s actually a nice-looking keyboard, and it’s removed from the obnoxious presence that you simply’ll see on many RGB gaming rigs (hiya, Asus), however I’m nonetheless not sure about it. RGB is already one thing that the gaming laptop computer house has been shifting away from through the years, and for the mainstream shopper that this line ostensibly targets, I wonder if it is perhaps a bit… a lot.

Oh, and there’s the show. This, if it lives as much as HP’s claims, may find yourself being among the best Chromebook shows available on the market this yr. It’s obtained 2560 x 1600 decision, and it’s mentioned to achieve 1200 nits of brightness.

I have no idea of any present laptop computer that will get almost this brilliant. I’ll say that trying on the Dragonfly Pro Chromebook’s display didn’t like, harm my eyes or something, however it did present fairly a visual photograph in HP’s brilliant and crowded demo space. That may actually be an asset for people who usually work whereas out and about. On the opposite hand, one wonders the way it may impression the Dragonfly Pro Chromebook’s battery life — the U-series processor is an effective signal on that entrance, however the high-resolution display and colourful keyboard are probably unhealthy ones.

Other Dragonfly Pro Chromebook specs:

• twelfth Gen Intel Core i5-1235U with UHD built-in graphics — previous at this level, however that’s typically the way it goes in Chromebook-land.
• 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 256GB PCIe NVME SSD storage
• Four audio system (two up-firing, two down-firing) with audio by B&O
• 3.33 kilos, 12.4 x 8.7 x 0.7 inches
• 8MP digital camera
• Four-cell, 51.3 Wh Li-ion polymer battery with 96W USB-C energy adapter

The second member of the Dragonfly Pro line is the common Dragonfly Pro — the Windows iteration. This one has AMD processors (the Ryzen 7 7736U with Radeon Graphics) and was co-engineered with AMD — which makes me very enthusiastic about efficiency and battery life however fearful about availability.

Compared to the Chromebook, this one is a little more all the way down to earth. You can rise up to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. There’s a 1920 x 1200 contact show, a haptic trackpad, Thunderbolt 3 help, and a 5MP IR digital camera. There isn’t any RGB keyboard on this one, however there’s one aspect of the keyboard I really feel I need to focus on — the brand new hotkeys.

On the facet of this keyboard, there are 4 hotkeys. One pulls up the digital camera, one pulls up the management heart, there’s one you’ll be able to remap to no matter you need, after which there’s one with slightly speech bubble on it that pulls up what HP describes as “24/7 live concierge support.” That is a service it’s important to pay for.

Now, I’m certain there’s a trial interval that provides you free entry to this service for some period of time after you purchase a Dragonfly Pro. HP additionally instructed me that whereas they haven’t finalized pricing for this service, the charge will likely be “low.” Still: it is a keyboard key that doesn’t truly do something until you pay a subscription charge. 

I hate this. If you subscribe to HP’s concierge service and also you need a straightforward method to pull that up, you’ll be able to put a shortcut in your desktop. But corporations shouldn’t be promoting keyboards with whole hotkeys which can be ineffective until you pay an additional charge. Oh, and you may’t remap it. Don’t fear, I requested.

Aside from that, each of those Dragonfly Pro gadgets appear probably like neat methods to get good {hardware} into individuals’s fingers at decrease costs (particularly contemplating how costly a few of HP’s most premium shopper {hardware} is lately). The HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook and HP Dragonfly Pro are each anticipated to launch this spring, with pricing nonetheless to be introduced.