This is the premium Chromebook’s biggest test

Image: HP

The most exciting Chromebook I've seen in a while is the one from HP. The device, which mixes high-end specs with premium hardware design, was announced back in January. HP has finally revealed the price of the consumer version of the Dragonfly Chromebook, and it will cost $1,149.

Okay, so that is not as bad as it could be. The highest starting price I've ever heard of is $2,165 for the Enterprise model of the Dragonfly. It's a lot.

This device will have all kinds of high-end features. It will be the first Chromebooks with Intel's vPro platform, a staple of high-end business PCs. It has a screen option that can hit a whopping 1,000 nits of brightness, an HDMI port, and 12th Gen Intel processors. Current generation Intel chips don't hit Chromebooks quickly.

I thought that the price of the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook was quite high when it was released, but I was wrong. The high-end Chromebook has been tried by other companies. At the time of its release, the Pixelbook was the most innovative hardware of its time. Both of these devices stopped just shy of the $1,000 mark, but we still didn't see either as excellent value for their price tags.

The base price is $1,149. The base model will have a Core i3-1215U, 8GB of memory, 128GB of storage, and a QHD+ touch display, but not 1,000. That is very expensive, even in a Chromebook. Many people will probably want more when they shop in the Dragonfly price range.

Image: HP

The Dragonfly is in an odd place. There are not many competing options for high-end Chromebooks. You can buy a very well-built Windows laptop at this price. High-end business laptops are not good deals. They tend to be an arena where manufacturers can show off their engineering because they are targeting customers with bottomless pockets.

That doesn't mean that there aren't people who would go for this over something like an HP Spectre or that there aren't benefits that Microsoft can claim. Good hardware won't be enough for Chrome OS to become commonplace in the C-suite, it will need to be able to match the software support that Windows currently offers. If the Dragonfly Chromebook is as good as it looks, Chrome OS will need to step up to the plate, and how well it does that may hint at the future of the premium business Chromebook as a category.

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