The Q Exactive HF benchtop Orbitrap mass spectrometer shows excellent performance for the analysis of complex proteolytic protein digests, analyzed in 30, 60 and 120 min run times. Average data dependent scan speed of 16-18 Hz over the whole gradient is obtained on the Q Exactive HF MS using a HeLa proteolytic digest. Q Exactive HF MS significantly improves productivity for shotgun, bottom-up analysis compared to the Q Exactive Plus MS: ? 2x shorter analysis time with approx. the same no of unique peptide identifications. ? Up to 50% more identified peptides with shorter gradients.