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On last week’s Chrome Cast, we discussed at length the current state of premium consumer Chromebooks and how HP’s upcoming Dragonfly Pro could alter that landscape. We use and review premium Chromebooks all the time and our perspective is probably a little skewed. So, I thought it would be great to hear from you, the general consumer, as to just how much you’d be willing to pay for a “prosumer” device like the HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook.
If my guess is correct, the HP will come in at a right under the $1K mark at $999. That’s entirely a guess and I can assure you that HP has been very tight-lipped about the MSRP and will remain so until closer to its official release date – whenever that may be. Based on previous device like the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook and Google’s own Pixelbook, I feel like the Dragonfly is worthy of this premium price tag and those consumers that want the best ChromeOS has to offer will gladly pay that price.
That said, our user poll tells a bit of a different story. As you can see below, a scant 11.7% of voters said that they’d be willing to pay more than a thousand dollars for the Dragonfly Pro. That’s not too surprising to me but what did shock me a bit was the overwhelming percentage of users that said $799 is the max they’d be willing to pay. Only 28.2% said that they’d bump up over the $800 mark for a prosumer device like the HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook.
That leaves 60.1% of our voters willing to pay up to $799 for a device of this calibre. That lends a lot of weight to my earlier assertion that the consumer Chromebook market is still in an adolescent state and buyers still have an expectation that hardware is “cheap.” In my opinion, that makes the launch of the HP Dragonfly Pro crucial to the health and growth of this segment of the Chromebook market. As a matter of fact, this week’s upcoming episode of the Chrome Cast covers exactly that subject as we take an in-depth dive into how the Dragonfly could shape the ecosystem in the coming year. Be sure to check out the latest episode tomorrow.
