HP Elite Dragonfly Business-Convertible Review: Lighter than 1 kg only with the smaller battery

The case of the Elite Dragonfly is made of a magnesium alloy, which consists of 100% recycled materials. The latter also creates the dark blue, which looks brighter or darker depending on the lighting. The manufacturer does not use strong color accents; there are only silver elements at the edges of the hinges as well as the logo on the lid. The bezels are black and covered by the touchscreen glass. The convertible definitely looks good and is still pretty restrained for office environments. The bezels at the sides are very slim, but still comparatively wide above and below the screen. The magnesium alloy reminds us more of plastic than aluminum when we touch it and the surfaces feel pretty "warm" and almost a bit velvety. The quality impression of the device is still very good and the surfaces are not very prone to dirt or fingerprints.

We are almost completely convinced by the stability. The base unit is very torsion-resistant and only the center of the keyboard will slightly flex under pressure, but this should not be a problem during your typical typing. The lid is slightly more flexible, but definitely benefits from the additional layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for the touchscreen. We could not provoke ripples on the screen, even with concentrated pressure from behind.

The two hinges are very firm and it is not possible to open the lid with just one hand, but they still cannot prevent a slight bouncing when you use the touchscreen, for example. It is a convertible, so you can obviously open the lid by 360 degrees and use it as a tablet. Thanks to the low weight, this is also possible for prolonged periods of time.

The Elite Dragonfly is the most compact convertible in our comparison, together with the HP Spectre. As mentioned before, we are reviewing the model with the larger battery, so it tips the scale at more than 1 kg (~2.2 pounds). However, it is still very light at just 1.139 kg (~2.5 pounds).

Many manufacturers take the easy way and only equip modern devices with slim USB-C ports, but HP utilizes the available space very well and along with USB-C they include a regular USB Type-A as well as a full-size HDMI output. The layout on the other hand is not ideal, because both USB-C ports, which are also used to charge the device, are slightly shifted towards the center of the device. HP unfortunately waives a microSD reader and includes a Nano-SIM slot instead. Maybe they could have implemented a combined slot (similar to many smartphones).

HP equips the Elite Dragonfly with a modern Wi-Fi 6 WLAN module (Intel AX200), and we can get the most out of it with our reference router from Netgear (nighthawk RAX120). We had to update the Wi-Fi drivers, but then we got transfer rates of around 1.4 Gbps. The integrated LTE module is definitely a big advantage and makes sure you can use the Internet on the road independent of public Wi-Fi networks.

If you look at the security features, there are no major differences between the Elite Dragonfly and the regular EliteBooks. All the important hardware and software solutions of the manufacturer are available.

The webcam above the display is equipped with a mechanical shutter, so you can avoid unwanted usage. The quality of the 720p webcam, however, is not good and you will see a lot of picture noise even in good lighting conditions. The results do not appear very sharp, either. At least the color reproduction is okay; we have already seen much worse examples.

Warranty and service options are also identical to the EliteBook models. In addition to on-site repairs, you will also get spare parts for the next couple of years. The default warranty is a three-year on-site service.

The best description for the touchpad is inconspicuous – in a positive way. There is sufficient space (11 x 6.5 cm/~4.3 x 2.6 in), the gliding capabilities of the smooth glass surface are very good and gestures work well. Even small movements are executed very reliably.

You can obviously use the capacitive touchscreen for inputs as well, and we did not notice any problems here, either. The box of the Elite Dragonfly also contains the HP Active Pen 3 in black (Wacom), which can easily be recharged via USB-C. In addition to a separate USB cable, you also get different replacement tips for the pen. We did not notice any problems with the functionality. HP also sells this pen separately for about 80-90 Euros (~$88-$99).

HP offers different ULV processors for the Elite Dragonfly, including CPUs with support for Intel's vPro technology. Our test model is powered by the Whiskey Lake Core i5-8265U with four cores and sufficient performance for daily office tasks. HP offers models with newer Comet Lake CPUs, but they should not be noticeably faster because the TDP configuration of the Elite Dragonfly is very conservative, which in return has a positive effect on the system noise (but more on that later).

The Turbo Boost is very limited and the performance is noticeably reduced after a little while. The four cores run at 2.9-3.0 GHz (26W) for about 15 seconds, but the clock drops to 2.4 GHz (17.5W), 2.3 GHz (16W), and 2.2 GHz (14.5W) during one single Cinebench Multi run. During the second run, the value levels off at 4x 2.0 GHz (12.5W), so we are already under the typical 15W mark for Intel's ULV processors. The performance is at least stable on battery power.

This means the Elite Dragonfly cannot convince within the comparison group and is sitting in last place, so it is hardly the right choice for CPU intense workloads. There are no Ice lake CPU options (with much faster iGPUs) due to the missing vPro support.

The subjective system performance of the Dragonfly is very good, but the results in the synthetic benchmarks are comparatively low. One reason for that should be the unusual SSD solution, because HP uses an SSD from Intel that combines 32 GB Optane storage with 512 GB SSD storage (QLC 3D NAND from Intel) on one drive. In theory, the small, but fast Optane storage is supposed to accelerate the loading times of applications and compensate for the disadvantages of QLC NAND. To be honest though, you don't really notice any of that in practice, and you do not notice a difference to fast PCIe-SSDs from other manufacturers. However, there are situations (e.g. transfer of many files), where the fast cache will be full and you then notice the low performance of the QLC chips.

We are not sure why HP decided to use this solution. We would have preferred a "traditional" fast PCIe-SSD in a flagship device like the Elite Dragonfly, but this seems to the be case for the 1 TB model only.

The graphics calculations are handled by the familiar UHD Graphics 620 from the processor, and there is no difference to the Dragonfly with the newer Comet Lake U CPUs. The integrated GPU is perfect for simple multimedia tasks and the playback of high-resolution videos, but it will quickly reach its limitations when you want to play games. The device does not pass the Fire Strike Stress Test at 81.6%, so you can expect a drop of FPS after a couple of minutes when you play games.

The small fan of the convertible quickly reacts to peak load and often starts spinning during light workloads (like the launch of an application, for example). HP could have optimized the configuration of the fan profile a bit better. What we cannot complain about is the noise of the fan, because we cannot provoke more than a quiet murmur, even under maximum load. You will not hear the fan in larger office environments or outdoors, only in very quiet environments.

It was quite interesting that the fan of our test unit sometimes continued spinning after we put it into standby (for a few minutes). We did not notice any electronic noises/coil whine.

The pretty restrained fan also has an affects the surface temperatures, because we still measure more than 47 °C (116.6 °F) at the upper center area of the bottom cover, despite the low performance. This is the spot that covers the CPU heatsink and the heat pipes. The keyboard on the other hand stays much cooler (little more than 40 °C/104 °F), so there are no limitations except for slightly warmer fingertips. There are no problems with the surface temperatures while idling or during light workloads.

The four speakers of the HP Elite Dragonfly create a surprisingly rich and spatial sound, especially for such a compact device. As per usual, it lacks bass, but it is still very good for the playback of some music or videos. Voices sound very clear as well, which is particularly helpful during video conferences or Internet calls.

Our consumption measurements do not reveal any surprises, and the comparison devices are pretty close, especially in low workload scenarios. Attention: The maximum level of the keyboard illumination will increase the power consumption by about 1.4W. We determine a maximum consumption under load of 44.7W, but this value drops after a couple of minutes to 26-26W. The power adapter is rated at 65W, so it can still charge the battery even when you stress the laptop.