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HP Elite Dragonfly G3 review: the C-Suite laptop

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August 28, 2022

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HP Elite Dragonfly G3 review: the C-Suite laptop

MSRP $2,686.00

“The HP Elite Dragonfly G3 is fast enough for business users and offers superior battery life, together with a sublime and mostly solid construct.”

Pros

• Thin and lightweight chassis
• Elegant aesthetic
• Excellent battery life
• Outstanding keyboard and touchpad
• Solid business features
• Superior videoconferencing with 5MP webcam

Cons

• Performance is below average
• Expensive

On the subject of business laptops that don’t feel like business laptops, HP’s Elite Dragonfly laptops prepared the ground. The standard security measures are in place, but these laptops aren’t afraid to face out in a crowd.

I reviewed the third generation of the Elite Dragonfly, which has morphed from a convertible 2-in-1 into a standard clamshell laptop. It’s an incredibly well-designed and attractive little laptop that hits the sweet spot for businesspeople who wish to stay classy on the road.

Specs

What businesspeople want

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Before a laptop can go off and be extra, it must maintain the fundamentals. The Elite Dragonfly G3 does just that, offering an Intel vPro CPU to support enterprise-level security and management features and HP’s Wolf Security suite to guard against malicious attacks in each hardware and software. The Elite Dragonfly G3 matches other business-oriented laptops like Lenovo’s ThinkPad and Dell’s Latitude relating to supporting large businesses.

With that basic threshold met, what else do business users want? Well, they need laptops designed for the long haul, provided that businesses tend to take advantage of every dime out of their investments — which implies holding onto laptops for longer than many consumers hold onto theirs. So, a business laptop needs a solid construct, even when it sports a skinny and lightweight design.

The Elite Dragonfly G3 is constructed of magnesium and aluminum, giving it each light weight and a mostly sturdy construct. There’s a tiny little bit of bending within the lid and a few flexing within the keyboard deck, but nothing egregious.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The design can also be quite comfortable, with rounded edges along the side of the lid and chassis that make for comfortable use, not to say a sublime feel and appear. The design is minimalist but quite attractive, and the chassis is out there in either a Slate Blue (my review unit) or a Natural Silver color scheme. The display bezels are lined in plastic, which detracts slightly from the premium feel, but they’re sufficiently small to enable a nicely sized machine. The hinge opens with one hand, quite the feat given the sunshine chassis bottom, and it holds the display firmly in place.

Overall, the laptop provides the form of quality aesthetic and cozy construct that any user would appreciate. The two.19-pound weight helps considerably, making the Elite Dragonfly G3 considered one of the lightest laptops we’ve reviewed, and its 0.64-inch thickness makes it a straightforward laptop to slip right into a bag.

Business users may also appreciate the connectivity, which is extensive for such a small laptop. Wireless connectivity meets the newest standards, with optional 5G WWAN support for always-connected web.

A compelling compromise

The standard businessperson depends upon running applications like Microsoft Office, Slack, Teams, Outlook — often all at the identical time. Today’s commonest CPUs provide good enough productivity performance, whether we’re talking about Intel’s Twelfth-gen Core processors or AMD’s Ryzen 6000 chips. The one exceptions are business users who run demanding scientific, engineering, or creative applications like AutoCAD or Adobe’s Creative Suite — but in those cases, they won’t be selecting thin and lightweight laptops just like the Elite Dragonfly G3.

It’s not a machine that’s tuned for prime performance, especially since its Core i7-1265U processor runs at only 15 watts. But even similar laptops with the identical chip rating a bit higher in benchmarks. The Dell Latitude 7330 UL is the most effective example, which outperforms the HP Elite Dragonfly G3 in Geekbench 5 and Handbrake.

Nevertheless, the Elite Dragonfly G3 still receives a bump in performance using its Twelfth-gen Intel processor, which keeps it greater than fast enough to maintain up with the form of workflows it’s designed for. So, while the Elite Dragonfly G3 is removed from a performer, it’s plenty fast for its intended use.

With competent if not impressive business performance out of the best way, the following query is how long does the Elite Dragonfly G3 last on a single charge of the battery? That’s incredibly necessary to businesspeople, who’re more apt to take their laptops on the road. When flying from one side of the country to the opposite, you wish a laptop that can make all of it the best way without worrying about whether the airliner provides the facility you wish.

Here, the HP did significantly better. In actual fact, it’s a class-leading laptop relating to battery life, demonstrating that HP created a solid compromise between performance and longevity. There are 68 watt-hours of battery capability tucked away contained in the laptop’s diminutive chassis, which is a good amount for the 13.5-inch 3:2 WUXGA (1,920 x 1,280) low-power IPS display. The Elite Dragonfly G3 makes great use of its battery capability and lower performance tuning to show in some impressive battery life scores.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

It’ll last just below 12.5 hours in light web browsing and nearly 19 hours in local video playback. For actual work, you’ll get less, but there’s little question it’ll last a full business day of labor on a single charge — after which some.

The ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 7 is the one of its rivals to return near competing with it here, and it’s still a few hours behind.

Creature comforts and conveniences abound

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

HP paid great attention to making a laptop that’s incredibly comfortable to make use of. That features the keyboard, which has large keycaps, excellent spacing, and lightweight, snappy switches that make for fatigue-free typing.

It’s considered one of the higher keyboards on a business-class machine. The touchpad is large with loads of space on the palm rest because of the three:2 display, and its glass surface is smooth and precise with confident yet quiet button clicks. A touch display is optional and never included in my review unit.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

HP inbuilt some nifty privacy features, starting with an electronic shutter for the webcam that’scontrolled by a key on the keyboard. There’s also user presence detection, which might lock the laptop and put it to sleep when the user walks away and wake it back up when the user returns. It worked well during my testing and, in truth, I needed to show off the feature to conduct my battery tests.

The display on my review unit was the low-power non-touch 13.5-inch 3:2 WUXGA+ (1,920 x 1,280) IPS display. I discovered it to be shiny and colourful with loads of contrast, and my colorimeter agreed.

Colours were right on the premium average by way of sRGB and AdobeRGB gamma and accuracy, which leads to a display that’s plenty colourful for productivity work and media consumption. Brightness was well above our 300-nit threshold at 398 nits, and contrast was excellent at 1,610:1, smashing through our preferred 1,000:1. While creators want wider colours, business users will find this display quite nice.

Two downward-firing and two upward-firing speakers provide a surprising amount of volume for such a small laptop, with clear mids and highs and a touch of bass. The audio system is greater than ok for videoconferencing, augmented by two-way AI-control noise reduction, in addition to the occasional Netflix bingeing session.

Speaking of videoconferencing, the webcam is a high-resolution 5MP model with an infrared camera, and HP inbuilt several tools to make for the highest-quality video and the most effective experience during videoconferencing sessions. There are the standard lighting adjustment and background blur capabilities, together with an Appearance Filter to smooth out the rough edges and Autoframe to permit the user to maneuver around while still remaining centered within the video.

Finally, Windows 11 Hello passwordless login is provided by each facial recognition and a fingerprint reader. Each methods worked quickly and reliably.

A top-of-its-class business laptop

The HP Elite Dragonfly G3 is a business laptop masquerading as a sublime, premium consumer laptop. It has the whole lot a business needs and the whole lot a business user wants. It’s not the fastest laptop, nevertheless it’s fast enough, and its battery life is stellar. The undeniable fact that it’s incredibly thin and lightweight is just icing on the cake.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is Lenovo’s own attempt at a more premium business laptop, nevertheless it still holds onto the classic ThinkPad DNA. However the HP Dragonfly G3 has higher battery life and a more modern design, without the trimmings of an older era of business.

The Elite Dragonfly G3 is one of the vital elegant and cozy business laptops you may buy, and it’s the most effective example of the following generation of business laptops.

Editors’ Recommendations