HP Stream 11-y010nr - Review 2022

In 2022, Microsoft and HP started to lower Windows laptop prices to better compete with upstart chromebooks: Like its Chrome Bone rivals, the 2022 version of the HP Stream 11 provided relatively lilliputian CPU power or storage space, merely worked with documents and information files stored in the cloud. Today's Stream eleven-y010nr ($199), refreshed with a newer Intel Celeron chip and 4GB of memory to back up Windows 10 Habitation, is a budget laptop that carries out the same strategy at the same low price.

Instead of a roomy hard bulldoze or SSD, it has just 32GB of eMMC flash storage. Just it comes with a year's subscription to Office 365 Personal (annual renewals are $lxx), which gives y'all not simply the office suite but 1TB of OneDrive cloud infinite—comparing favorably to near chromebooks' 100GB of Google Bulldoze for two years. With its super-budget price, the Stream 11 is useful and beautiful plenty to send with your child to middle or loftier school as his or her first notebook, merely don't expect to do more than bones tasks.

A Colorful Compact

At 0.71 by xi.8 by eight.1 inches (HWD), the Stream is a little bulkier than the Editors' Option Dell Inspiron 11 3000 Series (3162) (0.78 by 11.five past vii.7 inches) or the Lenovo Ideapad 110S (0.vii by 11.5 by 8). The HP and Dell weigh 2.six pounds each to the Lenovo'southward two.43, but all three are near every bit portable every bit it gets, piece of cake to toss into a bag or a child's backpack, or to utilise in a lecture hall or airline seat.

The example is textured blue plastic that's is a fiddling lighter and less garish than the Bali Blue of the Dell 3162. Build quality is decent; in that location's little flex in the screen though there is some in the heart of the keyboard tray. We capeesh the Dell XPS-style pair of virtually full-width feet that give the Stream a nonskid bottom for desk-bound placement. Opening the lid reveals a broad bezel effectually the display and a set of white keys that dissimilarity nicely with the blue, even if they practice lend a sort of Fisher-Toll "My Start Laptop" expect to the organisation. The touchpad is a slightly darker shade of bluish.

Happily, the HP has dual-ring 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, forth with a minimal set of ports. On the left side you'll detect a lock slot, a USB 2.0 port, and an sound jack. On the correct are the connector for the pants-pocket-sized AC adapter, a total-sized HDMI port, a microSD card slot, and a USB 3.0 port, which oddly is too tight and gummy for us to insert our favorite flash drive merely works OK with another. (Note that an updated version of the laptop tin can be purchased directly from HP that includes a USB-C port rather than our USB 3.0 connector.)

The Stream 11's multimedia capabilities are out of a Cracker Jack box: The webcam higher up the screen captures pale, fuzzy images, while the bottom-mounted speakers' sound is fairly authentic but lacks volume and bass, and gives the occasional crackle of static when playing MP3s.

Getting the Basics Right

The keyboard commits the aforementioned sin nosotros've complained about with other HP laptops—skipping inverted-T cursor arrow keys in favor of a row with half-sized up and down arrows sandwiched betwixt full-sized left and right. The four team with the Fn cardinal for Dwelling house, End, Page Up, and Page Downward. On the positive side, the keyboard is full-sized, with Control and Delete keys in their proper lower left and top correct corners respectively and a handy height row of part keys for adjusting screen brightness, audio book, airplane mode, and more.

Travel is shallow, which makes the typing feel somewhat flat and plasticky, just also fairly snappy, with good feedback. We scored seventy and 80 words per infinitesimal in two cracks at an online typing test, with 3 or four errors each time (with a tailwind, we can manage xc wpm with just one or ii errors on our daily-use desktop replacement laptop).

The eleven.6-inch display has a paltry 1,366-by-768 resolution, which is not surprising at this price. As long equally you go on the effulgence turned upwardly and keep yourself centered in front of the brandish, the view is fine, with pleasing colors and contrast and sharp black-on-white focus for word processing and web browsing. The lack of in-aeroplane switching (IPS) technology, however, means you tin can approximate what happens if you move to 1 side or haven't adjusted the screen's tilt properly—colors first become done out and then look like old-fashioned photo negatives.

Gamers Demand Not Apply

The Stream eleven features Intel'due south Celeron N3060, a i.6GHz (two.48GHz turbo) dual-core processor with integrated graphics, along with the previously mentioned 32GB of eMMC flash that's both far slower and far smaller than a more plush laptop'southward solid-country bulldoze. Launching programs takes several seconds, and after installing Function nosotros had as petty as 2GB of costless space left; we clawed back 4GB more by uninstalling a previous version of Windows, but you lot won't be installing many apps across, peradventure, a favorite browser and a few utilities. You tin as well bolster the storage using a microSD menu.

The HP scored 1,590 points in our PCMark 8 function-productivity benchmark, substantially tying the Dell 3162 (one,566 points) but slightly trailing its 2022 counterpart (i,757). These scores, all the same, indicate acceptable power for creating documents and presentations.

Editing photos and videos is another story, equally the Stream took a leisurely 14 minutes and 35 seconds to consummate our Adobe Photoshop workload—crushed past the five:02 time of the Core m3-powered Dell Inspiron xi 3000 ii-in-1 (3179) — and was slower than its contest, even the Atom-based Asus Transformer Mini T102HA, in our Handbrake video-editing and encoding test.

In our bombardment rundown test, the HP's stamina proved sufficient for a piece of work or school 24-hour interval (8 hours and 36 minutes), but it was outlasted by the Dell 3162 and peculiarly the Asus Mini. As for entertainment, we've yet to find an entry-level, integrated-graphics laptop that'southward suitable for anything beyond solitaire and casual games, and the Stream is no exception, posting simply a handful of frames per 2nd (the threshold for smooth gameplay is xxx) in our Sky and Valley game simulations.

No Powerhouse, But Cute and Capable

You need to approach the Stream 11 with appropriate expectations—yous won't get befouled-burning operation, and you won't go ample storage or a broad-viewing-angles brandish. But you lot'll get a notebook that's perfectly able to handle routine productivity work, with the bonus of Office 365 Personal and 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage for $200. While it fills its scanty disk space quicker than a chromebook, information technology works amend offline and makes USB or Wi-Fi printing easier than Google's Cloud Print rigmarole. If you lot've got a family, information technology'due south a virtually ideal way to give each of your kids his or her ain (peradventure commencement) laptop. For existence all about the value, the HP is a skillful super-budget ultraportable. The Dell 3162 remains our Editors' Choice in this category, though, thanks to its long battery life and respectable performance.