An Impressive Travel Laptop: Living With an HP Dragonfly G4

HP’s Dragonfly G4 is, as the name suggests, the fourth generation of a business laptop HP positions as a little more refined—thinner, lighter—than its traditional EliteBook series of machines. Previous generations were known as the Elite Dragonfly, but as HP has started to use the name for other markets— including the small-business-oriented Dragonfly Pro—the “Elite” part of the name has dropped. Still, there’s no doubt that the Dragonfly G4 comes across as a relatively minor upgrade to last year’s Elite Dragonfly G3, enhanced with the 13th Generation Core processor (“Raptor Lake”) and some unusual extra videoconferencing features.

I’ve been using the Dragonfly G4 for a few weeks now, and it’s impressive—a great machine to travel with, with a nice selection of ports, a very good keyboard, improved security, and an excellent webcam in a very lightweight package.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

One big difference in this year’s model is the processor—an Intel Core i7-1365U. Like Intel’s i7-1355, which I’ve seen in recent looks at the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 and X1 Yoga Gen 8, this has two performance cores (each offering two threads each) and eight efficient cores, thus a total of 10 cores and 12 threads. It has a base power of 15 watts, with a maximum frequency of 5.2GHz on the performance cores and 3.9GHz on the efficient cores (versus a maximum of 5.0GHz and 3.7GHz, respectively, on the i7-1355). Compared to the Elite Dragonfly G3, which had an Intel Core i7-1265U (Alder Lake) processor, it has a higher turbo frequency but otherwise seems similar.

In my tests, despite the faster theoretical maximum turbo, the Dragonfly G4 was generally a bit slower than the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 and a bit faster than the Elite Dragonfly G3 on basic benchmarks. On my tougher tests, a big portfolio simulation in MatLab took a bit more than 43 minutes, a bit of a disappointment since it took the ThinkPad only 38 minutes, and last year’s version 40. (The AMD Ryzen-based Dragonfly Pro took under 34 minutes.)

Converting a large video file in Handbrake took 1 hour and 55 minutes, about the same as last year’s version, and slightly slower than the X1 Carbon (the Dragonfly Pro did this in 1 hour and 9 minutes, much faster). A big Excel spreadsheet ran in 38 minutes, compared with 35 minutes on the X1 Carbon and 36 minutes on last year’s model, though still far better than the 47 minutes it took on a Dragonfly Pro. 

While this was fairly disappointing, performance is still quite good; typical business users won’t notice the difference in most applications. And this could be due to HP’s stated goals of keeping the machine running cooler and quieter. Indeed, the machine didn’t feel as warm. You can control performance through a system control that’s part of the HP Power Manager application, which lets you choose to optimize for temperature, noise, or performance, or let HP’s “Smart Sense” manage this for you. (The numbers above are with the performance setting.) This application also manages battery health with such things as intelligent charging.

On a battery-saving setting, I got over 15 hours on PCMark 10’s Modern Office test, which is quite good. The machine I tested had a 68-watt-hour battery.

In most other respects, the machine is similar to last year’s model, measuring 0.64 by 11.7 by 8.67 inches (HWD), and the model I had weighed 2.54 pounds (3.18 pounds with the included small 65-watt charger). Instead of the 14-inch, 1,920-by-1,200 displays that are now common in this class, the Dragonfly has a 13.5-inch display with a 1,920-by-1,280 display in a 3:2 ratio, which is a bit better for seeing more depth on a web page or word document. The screen hasn’t changed from last year, but it’s still very nice.

Options include touch screens, privacy screens, and OLED displays—in general, I’m a big fan of touch screens. There are lighter weight 13-inch notebooks on the market, but the Dragonfly is very light for its size. It has a solid magnesium and aluminum frame and is available in Slate Blue (which I tested) or Natural Silver.

As before, it has plenty of ports. The left side of the notebook offers an HDMI port, a SIM card slot (which works with optional LTE or 5G modems), and a USB-C/Thunderbolt port, which you can use for charging. The right side has a mic/headphone jack, a drop-down but full-size USB-A port, another USB-C/Thunderbolt port, and a nano lock slot. I’m a big fan of having USB-C ports on either side, which makes charging easier and can reduce desk clutter, as well as having at least one USB-A port.

Perhaps the standout feature of the Dragonfly continues to be the audio and video features. It has two microphones on the top edge and dynamic voice leveling and noise-cancelling features that seem to work well. It has two speakers on the top above the keyboard, and two woofers on the bottom, which sounded good, if not special.

It has the same 5MP webcam as last year’s version, and it’s still among the best I’ve seen in this class of machine, particularly in low light. But this year’s version offers a few new wrinkles that are very nice.

The myHP app, which includes video controls, now lets you attach a second video camera, so you can switch between the two or show the cameras side-by-side or in a picture-in-picture arrangement. The software includes things such as rotating and fixing keystones, making it relatively easy to share a whiteboard or a notepad along with your face. I can see this being a very nice addition to many Zoom or Teams meetings. Other controls in the app include things like appearance filtering, lighting adjustment, and auto-framing. 

The webcam has an electronic on/off shutter that can put a physical shutter in front of the webcam, and though I still prefer a physical shutter, this works. My model included presence detection, which lets you set up Windows Hello to have the machine automatically turn on when you approach and lock when you step away; it worked well. Alternatively, you can use a fingerprint reader with a key located between the right alt button and the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Like other members of HP’s enterprise notebook family, the Dragonfly G4 comes with the company’s Wolf Security, which protects the machine with a self-healing BIOS and a root of trust. It also comes with SureClick, a private browser that runs web pages inside isolated virtual machines to protect your machine from malware. This remains a very interesting idea, although I’ve yet to find a lot of enterprise shops that enforce this. In addition, it runs “untrusted files” in a sandbox as well. While many enterprise customers may run their own security solutions instead, this is a nice extra level of protection for individuals and other firms.

On HP.com, the Dragonfly G4 starts at $1,769 for a model with an Intel Core i5-1335U, 512GB SSD, and a touch screen. A model similar to what I tested with a Core i7-1365U and a 5G modem sells for $2,279. It’s a bit on the pricey side, though note that HP’s prices tend to fluctuate. Still, for that you’re getting a lot of extra features and a machine that is particularly suited for executive use.