One of the key selling points for HP’s new Elite x3 smartphone is that you can also use it like a desktop or laptop computer. Pay $799 for the phone and you also get a desk dock that lets you connect an external display, mouse, and keyboard.
Or buy an HP Lap Dock and you can use the phone on the go as if it were a laptop. That option doesn’t come cheap though. Priced at $599, the Lap Dock costs almost as much as the phone itself.
But if you’re still interested, the HP Elite x3 Lap Dock is now available for HP Elite x3 Lap Dock launches for $599 (or you could just buy a laptop) It should ship in mid-November.
While the Lap Dock looks like a compact laptop PC, it basically the shell of a computer. It relies on your phone’s processor, storage, and operating system for everything. Without a phone connected, the Lap Dock doesn’t do very much.
The device has a 12.5 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, a backlit, spill-resistant keyboard, a touchpad, and a 46 Whr battery.
There’s a USB Type-C port for charging and two more USB Type-C ports for data, along with a micro HDMI port and 3.5mm headset jack.
HP’s laptop dock also has built-in Bang & Olufsen stereo speakers and noise cancelling microphones.
The device measures 11.4″ x 7.9″ x 0.5″ and weighs about 2.3 pounds.
I got a chance to spend a few minutes with an HP Elite x3 smartphone and Lap Dock a few weeks ago, and I was impressed by the build quality of the notebook dock. But I’m a bit underwhelmed by the price tag.
Since the Lap Dock is designed as an accessory for the phone, you’re pretty much limited to running Windows 10 Mobile apps unless you take advantage of HP’s WorkSpace enterprise feature, which allows you to connect to a remote server to run desktop software over the internet.
In other words, while some laptop docks like the NexDock and Superbook are basically entry-level solutions aimed at consumers, the HP Lap Dock is very much a high-quality/high-cost solution for business users. For those customers, the $599 price tag might not seem so daunting. For everyone else? You’d probably be better off just buying a cheap Windows laptop.
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“You’d probably be better off just buying a cheap Windows laptop.”
Lol. At $600 you can buy a perfectly decent m3 ultrabook like the ASUS Zenbook (the thing can play Skyrim on the integrated graphics, ffs), or a less trendy but beastly in terms of performance Dell Inspiron.
Just what is the point of this?
“Just what is the point of this?”
Business sales, i.e., people who are willing to spend way too much money on things. I can imagine our CEO, who tries to do everything via his phone, salivating at the idea of something like this. It would allow him to go 100% phone, no more syncing and such when he needs to look at a spreadsheet or send an email longer than three sentences.
No it wouldn´t, he would try it for a week and get back to his previous solution. He would still use syncing with hp servers, now his laptop doesn’t even run all windows softwares and its performance is way worse than his previous laptop but almost the same price.
While that, Windows 10 mobile still looks like beta full of bugs.
With the monthly cost of the hp cloud any CEO will pull the plug on that nonsense.
Continuum will ONLY succeed once if it allows a company to save big money, not spend even more. HP will show how much money they lost and put the fault in Microsoft, it will be hilarious.
Motorola failed with the same idea (Heck, Even unser the same Name “lapdock”)
But i’m Sure hp knows that and won’t do the same errors.
Motorola failed because you had to buy two goddamn data plans to use the thing
what? why?
It was just the atrix phone and a purely hdmi/usb-terminal named “lapdock”
I don’t get why you should have needed to buy two data plans (and afair atrix didn’t even have two sim slots)
Imho the problem was more like “we don’t support all android apps to run on the laptop-screen in full size” but this weird mode how they had an additional browser (firefox, not the webkit-based thing that was named ‘android browser’ back then), 1-2 motorola apps and everything else only ran in a small window that could be blown up to double resolution.
A sad joke. No one is going to pay 600$ for a monitor with a keyboard.I am sure that a simple market research would’ve shown that. How this thing went to production with this business plan…
Part of the reason for the pricing is this isn’t going to be a high volume product at any price.
HP went completely bonkers. These prices are ridiculous.
The price/value proposition is really bad at these prices.
LOL! ASUS ZenBook w/ M3 or the like for $549 – $600. If it were $299 MAYBE but $599?! HP went off the deep end with pricing.
No mention on how you connect your phone… Bluetooth? Usb-c? Something else?
Miracast or USB C. Both options exist.
Love the concept but not the implementation. Agree with most commenters, too pricey for what it does: running Windows mobile apps locally/running OS apps over the internet (crazy). The Android solutions provide low-cost, OTC options. I still wouldn’t run Android on a larger screen – it’s an exercise in frustration.
Still… nice seeing a (small) movement in this area and I think that some aspects of it should be championed. Eventually, we’ll have full-fledged, development-quality computers in our pockets where you can ‘toss’ the screen unto larger devices. And… seamless, ‘hot-pluggable’, phone capabilities in our larger screens.
Just want to say, as an owner of one of these devices, it is the most seamlessly well executed device I have ever owned. Masterful. Great. I would go head to head with any other phone on the market and just wow the pants off people. It is really worth checking this device out.