HP ELITE DRAGONFLY X360 13 G2

HP ELITE DRAGONFLY X360 13 G2 with an Intel Core i7-1165G7,16GB of RAM, 1TB PCIe solid-state drive (SSD), HP’s Ultra HD (3840×2160) Sure View Reflect privacy screen. The configuration comes in at a very premium price that aimed again at a specific kind of business user

Design

The HP ELITE DRAGONFLY X360 13 G2 design is the attention to detail. HP clearly gave a great deal of thought to crafting a laptop that addresses not just the typical needs of business users, but some things that many people might not have thought about. Consider the laptop’s “cleanability.” Not only can you use common household wipes to clean and disinfect the laptop up to 1000 cycles  but HP created a simple “HP Easy Clean” utility that shuts off the touchscreen, keyboard, and touchpad so you can clean the machine without extraneous keypresses and touches. The Elite Dragonfly is an incredibly well-designed laptop in the ways that matter most.

 Performance

The Elite Dragonfly I reviewed is equipped with an 11th-gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 CPU. That makes it an excellent choice for large organizations. Although the laptop was equipped with a slightly faster version of the Tiger Lake Core i7, I suspected that the thin chassis might limit performance given the need to more carefully control thermals. The HP ELITE DRAGONFLY X360 13 G2 didn’t perform terribly, but it was a bit underwhelming compared to the competition. The Elite Dragonfly felt plenty quick doing typical productivity tasks.

Keyboard and Touchpad

HP makes great keyboards and Touchpads. The Elite Dragonfly and G2 have a new and even better version. To begin with, the keyboard is solid; that is, it’s consistent across every key. That’s unusual, and it makes the typing experience more efficient and less fatiguing because your fingers aren’t experiencing a different feel as they fly around the keyboard. The switches are firm but not too firm, providing just the right amount of feedback, with a springy bottoming action that makes each key very precise. Although the laptop is small, We found key spacing to be plentiful and the keycaps are nicely sized. The user find himself typing faster and more accurately on this keyboard than any other. The touchpad is as large as it can be given the bezel size and 16:9 aspect ratio display and it’s extremely comfortable to use. The clicks are subtle and quiet, with a quality feel to them. Of course, this is Microsoft Precision touchpad, so multi-touch gestures are sure and precise.The display is touch-enabled, of course, and it’s responsive as usual. It supports HP’s Wacom AES 2.0 active pen with 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, tilt support, and USB-C charging.

Display and Audio

The HP ELITE DRAGONFLY X360 13 G2 comes with one display option, HP’s Sure View Reflect privacy screen at a Ultra HD 3840×2160 resolution and an old-school 16:9 aspect ratio. This is an unusual display that has two distinct personalities. With the privacy mode turned off, the display is incredibly bright at a rated 550 nits There seems to be something about the display technology that makes our usual colorimeter testing more difficult, and try as I might, I couldn’t get up to such lofty brightness. The contrast was excellent at 1380:1 and black text popped on a white background. Combined with the outstanding keyboard, this is a great writer’s laptop. The audio quality is excellent thanks to four Bang & Olufsen-tuned speakers, two upward-firing on each side of the keyboard and two downward-firing on the bottom of the case. Its own dedicated smart amplifier drives each speaker. HP touts the laptop’s bass, which is a valid boast — not only was the volume very loud and undistorted, with mids and highs that were clear and lucid, but there was a noticeable touch of bass as well.

Security and Privacy

HP carried over the various security and privacy features that we liked so much in the original Elite Dragonfly. It has vPro support as an option, meaning large organizations can integrate the laptop into their management systems. It also features HP Sure Start, which provides a security controller built directly into the motherboard and provides a layer of isolated and encrypted physical protection of the BIOS and boot-up process. As we said about the original model, the Elite Dragonfly Max exceeds most other business-class laptops in terms of the sheer number of business-oriented features.

Battery

The HP ELITE DRAGONFLY X360 13 G2 ships with a 56 watt-hour battery and a Ultra HD display. As it turns out, battery life was not quite up to the same standards. Where the first-gen Elite Dragonfly hit 10.5 hours in our web-browsing test, the Max made it to 9.75 hours. Now, anything close to 10 hours in this test should be considered a good score, but more laptops have recently been hitting this number and beyond. The Elite Dragonfly Max score is now closer to average than standing out, and while it promises a full working day of battery life, some other recent laptops are stronger.