HP Upgrades All-in-One POS for COVID-Era with Engage One Pro System

HP is upgrading its high-end point-of-sale (POS) offering with the planned rollout of its new Engage One Pro AiO. Set to ship in January, HP claims the new system will be its highest-end all-in-one POS offering to date.

The HP Engage One AiO Pro, introduced last week, is designed primarily for large retail and hospitality businesses. It will replace the aging HP RP9 POS system with improved security and support for contactless transactions. The new Windows 10-based system is powered by Intel 10^th Generation Core processors ranging from Celerons to i9s.

HP’s Aaron Weiss

“This will be the world’s most powerful all in one point of sale system delivering what we believe is the strongest price performance value on the market today,” said Aaron Weiss, vice president and general manager of HP’s retail solutions business. Weiss said some of the largest retail and hospitality operators use the current RP9, launched five years ago. HP will discontinue that line when the Engage One Pro ships.

The Engage One Pro will come with the new security technology introduced earlier this year with HP’s commercial PCs. It includes hardware-enforced security, as well as self-healing BIOS. “We have a lot of unique intellectual property that creates a new layer of security at multiple layers of the stack,” Weiss said. “We were able to directly adopt that into our retail point of sale portfolio.”

Increased Versatility and Durability

Weiss said the Engage One Pro builds on the form factor HP introduced with the mid-range HP Engage One. Weiss said the HP Engage One Pro, built with a 24-inch touchscreen display, is more versatile. A new pole mount is designed to offer improved cable management by making it easier to hide them. It offers different I/O hub options including support for a VSA mount, HP’s fan-less hub and support for portrait mode. The latter option will enable partners to configure the new POS systems in kiosks, on countertops and other self-service configurations. The COVID-19 pandemic has created greater demand for self-service and contactless POS solutions, according to Weiss.

“It was already a growing part of the market, but COVID is going to accelerate that part of the market as a total percentage of the TAM [total addressable market],” Weiss said. “In total units, we believe it will increase once we’re past COVID. We’re very hopeful that this product will provide a good solution for customers who are moving in that direction.”

The new system can also withstand new sanitization requirements that COVID-19 has ushered in. Based on HP’s testing, the company said the HP Engage One Pro can handle 10,000 wipe-downs with germicidal disposable wipes. “We wanted to make sure that our customers feel comfortable that this product can withstand all of the cycles of sanitization that are now part of the standard operating process in any in any retail and hospitality environment today,” Weiss said.

While HP markets its POS systems to retailers and hospitality providers, partners have been selling them in adjacent industries. Among them are health care, transportation, manufacturing and banking. “We’ve started to see more and more business in those areas,” Weiss said. “There’s an opportunity for us to cross over and address the needs in those verticals. But from a design standpoint, we will remain laser-focused on the retail and hospitality verticals.”