The HP Dragonfly Pro is a great laptop with some odd extra stuff

For so long as I’ve recognized what computer systems are, HP has been recognized for its labyrinthine customer support. On the pc retailer the place I labored effectively over a decade in the past, new staff had been pressured to name HP as a hazing ritual. However, the corporate — maybe within the wake of plummeting PC sales over the previous months — has pivoted exhausting towards software program and providers this 12 months. Its 2023 roadmap includes positioning itself like, as president of private methods Alex Cho recently put it to me, a “resolution supplier.”

The HP Dragonfly Professional ($1,399 for our take a look at unit with 16GB RAM / 512GB storage) is an early glimpse of what that may appear to be on the patron facet. It comes with some further buyer assist options and providers which, regardless of being elective, have been talked about in HP’s shows, workshops, and publicity supplies about as typically because the efficiency and battery life. Catchphrases like “simplify” and “don’t fear about something” are throughout its web site; “24/7 assist” is entrance and heart. HP needs you to purchase this laptop computer, and it actually needs to repair it for you.

This can be a very nice system. However as a logo of HP’s “options”-focused roadmap, I’m not bought.

I’ve only a few complaints concerning the Dragonfly Professional itself. The 5MP digital camera delivers a high-quality and detailed image for video calls. The audio system aren’t fairly MacBook high quality however do sound fairly good. The (1920 x 1200) contact show appears to be like good and is sufficiently brilliant, reaching 412 nits in testing. The keyboard is kind of comfy, sporting HP’s signature column of hotkeys on the appropriate facet — HP’s needed to squeeze the backspace key a bit in an effort to make room, however I think about that’s one thing you get used to. The (haptic) trackpad can be high-quality. Construct high quality is kind of good, with a sublime type fairly just like earlier members of the premium Dragonfly line.

Okay, so there’s one nitpick I can drudge up: the port choice consists solely of three USB-C, two of that are USB-4 and one among which is 3.2. That’s proper — no headphone jack. Boo. Come on now.

This was the primary AMD Ryzen 7000 laptop computer I’ve been capable of take a look at this 12 months (it’s obtained the Ryzen 7 7736U), and its efficiency didn’t disappoint. In our benchmarks, it beat Apple’s M2 MacBook Professional on multicore Cinebench checks and got here pretty shut on single-core checks. It was fairly shut on gaming efficiency as effectively, averaging solely two frames per second slower on Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s highest settings. I exploit the M2 Air and M2 Professional very often, and I don’t see a visual efficiency distinction on the Dragonfly in my day-to-day workplace work. The Dragonfly is noticeably slower in Adobe Premiere Professional, although, a specific weak point of AMD’s.

Battery life was a sigh of reduction. I averaged 12 hours and 46 minutes of steady work use. I can’t inform you how good it’s to see all-day battery life on a Home windows machine after having spent many of the previous 12 months testing legions of four-hour Intel machines. Extra of this!

This AMD processor actually looks like a dream come true. Sadly, I mentioned this a couple of number of AMD machines last year solely to see them turn out to be not possible to purchase pretty rapidly after launch. So let’s hope that doesn’t occur right here, I suppose.

HP describes the Dragonfly Professional’s goal demographic as “freelancers” — self-employed, cellular, extraordinarily on-line professionals. These freelancers, HP argues in its documentation, “want their PC to work constantly since they depend on it for his or her livelihood. Tech complications and getting assist is irritating and downtime prices them.”

In an ostensible intention to serve this demographic, the Dragonfly comes (optionally) with what HP calls “24/7 Professional Stay Assist.” The primary 12 months is included, after which it’s $10.99 per 30 days. A particular button on the keyboard, etched with two little speech bubbles, opens the service immediately. (Busy freelancers, as I’m positive you realize, don’t need to waste time pulling up the app from their taskbar.) This isn’t a teensy perform key; it’s a giant, very seen devoted key.

I used to be advised on the preliminary launch that you can not remap this key, a indisputable fact that I complained about incessantly in my hands-on video. HP since seems to have modified its thoughts and now tells me that you simply can remap this button. Nice! I’m nonetheless not seeing an choice to remap it within the myHP app on my assessment unit, however HP tells me that it’s coming shortly after launch.

I simply have to say off the bat that I don’t purchase this gross sales pitch. I do know loads of busy, cellular, extraordinarily on-line freelancers. I’ve been one at factors in my life. These are individuals who know the right way to Google issues. They’ll troubleshoot issues on their very own. And most significantly, they’re individuals who purchase laptops anticipating that they’ll work, not that they’ll break down on a regular basis and require frequent calls to customer support. If my pc is screwing up wherever close to typically sufficient that I would like an enormous tech assist button on my keyboard, it’s doable that I’ve made a buying mistake. I’m satisfied that the true goal demographic for this bundle is like, my grandparents who need assistance determining the right way to unmute themselves on Groups.

I do know I don’t have entry to the market analysis HP does, however I simply needed to get that off my chest. Thanks for listening.

However I digress. HP is promoting this service as such an enormous, integral profit that I figured I ought to attempt it out. My expertise was blended. First, the massive assist hotkey is just not notably responsive. I needed to bang it a mean of 4 instances in an effort to get the app to open. There have been events the place it simply didn’t open in any respect. In virtually each case, merely opening the app from the taskbar would’ve saved me time.

After I lastly did open the app, it was additionally frustratingly unresponsive. I needed to click on varied buttons a number of instances and watch varied spinning wheels. I submitted my query via a type. (My audio system had been a bit crackly, and I requested the right way to repair that — that is usually one thing I’d simply Google, however I needed to see how the reside chat labored.) I used to be put in a queue for a number of minutes earlier than a (very good) agent walked me, slowly and punctiliously, via each step to updating my audio drivers, which concerned downloading some stuff and giving them distant management of my system.

It wasn’t horrible customer support, however it wasn’t so distinctive that I’d suggest paying $130 a 12 months to sometimes use it, and it didn’t appear effectively tailor-made to the hurried, tech-savvy freelancer.

Finally, I believe this Dragonfly is nice {hardware}. The dearth of a headphone jack is a disappointment, however the mixture of efficiency and battery life that it provides is healthier than I’ve seen from a Home windows PC in fairly a while.

It’s a disgrace that HP is, each via its advertising and marketing and the literal design of its keyboard, making an attempt to leverage such an amazing system to hawk folks subscription providers that aren’t nice and that they simply don’t want. Perhaps you want a subscription service like this in case you’re shopping for a $500 Pavilion that’s going to be breaking left and proper. In case you’re paying $1,300 for a premium PC, you then actually, actually shouldn’t.