Review: HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook Laptop

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HP may make another range named “Envy,” but it’s the Elite Dragonfly that truly invokes the green-eyed monster. It’s a device with a hefty price tag that’s made for business users but has features to attract anyone looking for a thin, light, high-end productivity laptop. 

At CES 2023, HP revealed that the Dragonfly name would finally be bestowed upon consumer models, with a new Dragonfly Pro and Dragonfly Pro Chromebook. But before that happens later this year, there’s the matter of HP’s ChromeOS-flavored addition to the current business range.

This is one of the best Chromebooks you can buy—brace for a screeching handbrake of a caveat—if you can stomach the hefty price. You’ll be getting a stylish, lightweight, and delightful productivity laptop, but with a few flaws. It's an achievement in hardware that falls foul of perfection. Here’s why.

Writing, browsing, and planning are a joy on the Elite Dragonfly Chromebook. There are few devices on the market that welcome you into productivity quite like this one—not the new Dell XPS 13 (6/10, WIRED Recommends), nor HP’s luxe consumer Spectre x360 14, which features in our best laptops guide. 

The Intel Core i5-1245U vPro, 8-GB RAM, and 256-GB SSD configuration had no trouble munching through 20+ tabs. The keyboard plays a big part, with a solid amount of travel and a pleasingly light crunch of feedback. Appropriately, the review you're reading now is being written on said laptop, and getting words on the page as speedily as this is blissful. 

Unfortunately, two points let the productivity package down. The haptic trackpad simulates an unsatisfying “click,” though it is accurate and well-sized. And under more intensive productivity workloads, the battery life only manages around 6 hours. Your mileage may vary, as it did throughout my testing, sometimes managing closer to 8 hours on less hectic days.

The 3:2 display boosts productivity further, with the squarer display adding more screen real estate for your essays, web pages, spreadsheets, and more. The image quality is a tad underwhelming, especially for a $1,000-plus machine. No real complaints, but you’ll find better panels on devices cheaper than this, with OLED becoming more common on sub-$1,000 laptops. Anti-glare is an optional add-on and is sorely needed, as it’s quite the reflective display. 

So what of the business focus of the Elite Dragonfly Chromebook? On top of the Intel vPro processor, which enables easier and deeper device management, as well as an added security layer, there are a few more touted inclusions. There’s a physical privacy shutter for the webcam, which you’ll find on some non-business-focused laptops, and the option to add an HP Sure View display. My review model didn’t feature this tech, but I’ve tried it before and it’s always worked as advertised—a toggle-able feature that prevents onlookers to your left and right from seeing what’s on your screen. A neat trick. The webcam itself provides a detailed image, and the microphone delivers decent audio. Neither is jaw-dropping, but you’ll get no complaints from colleagues. 

This Chromebook is one of the most expensive you can buy, so you’re well within your rights to expect a taste of the good life. Fortunately, the design lives up to this. It’s gloriously thin and remarkably lightweight. The joy of working on this day to day, moving this light machine deftly from home to desk and wherever else you go along the way, is palpable. The magnesium and aluminum hybrid isn’t quite as flashy as a MacBook or Dell XPS 13 Plus (7/10, WIRED Recommends), but it still soars above plastic and looks luxurious.

There’s a solid selection of ports, despite this sleek business laptop’s diminutive size. You’ll find 2x Thunderbolt 4, a USB-A, an HDMI, a microSD card reader, a SIM tray, and a headphone jack. There’s a volume rocker on the left side, which strangely doubles up on audio controls with keys in the function row. Regardless, it’s a handy inclusion. As a 2-in-1 laptop, the Elite Dragonfly Chromebook also comes with a stylus. It’s comfortable to hold and is reassuringly accurate—but on ChromeOS, its functions are limited beyond note-taking and simple sketching.

The speakers aren’t up there with the best of them in the thin-and-light productivity laptop stakes. They’re passable for taking in movies and TV shows, as well as calls with your colleagues, but for music the sound becomes harsh as you push to louder volumes. Highs are pretty good, but the bass is shallow, and mids are weirdly tinny. Not what you’d expect from an expensive device like this.

From the stylish, high-end design to the breezy user experience, the Elite Dragonfly seems like a great match for typical productivity users, but there’s an awkward third wheel in this relationship—ChromeOS. As a machine for a student who spends time browsing the web and in Google’s suite of products, it ticks all the boxes—except for the high cost. But as a business laptop, ChromeOS presents compatibility issues. 

Does your company use Slack or Microsoft Office? You’ll be forced to rely on the web versions or the Android apps, which are typically slower or awkwardly sized. Those looking to do some very light editing will have to step to Android for the likes of Adobe Lightroom, and it’s not a great app—better to go for another option on a different device altogether.

I’m not convinced a Chromebook will work for anyone wanting a business laptop in 2023, and that makes the incoming consumer-aimed HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook (and its strange RGB-lit keyboard) all the more interesting. Alternatively, the original Windows version of this laptop still exists. Having tested previous models, I’d say it nails productivity just like this version. However, even with the benefit of a more flexible operating system, the high price remains. For more well-rounded options, look to picks from Asus, Acer, and Lenovo in our best Chromebooks guide.