Bottom Line
The HP Stream 13 is a
very inexpensive full Windows 8.1 ultraportable laptop, but its long
battery life, looks, and speed resemble that of a much pricier system.
The HP Stream 13 ($229.99) is an attractive ultraportable laptop
priced to compete with inexpensive Chromebooks, as well as closeout
specials in Sunday papers and on deals websites. It's a full Windows 8.1
PC for users who can't bring themselves to use a browser-based laptop,
and it's attractive and speedy enough to hold its own with more
expensive notebooks. It's a versatile PC for just under $230, and our
first Editors' Choice for budget ultraportable laptops.
Design and Features
The Stream 13$229.99 at HP is thinner and lighter than the desktop replacement Dell Inspiron 15 Non-Touch (3531)$305.99 at Amazon
it's priced to compete with. It measures about 0.77 by 13.25 by 9
inches (HWD) and weighs 3.33 pounds, so it's easy to carry around. It'll
fit perfectly on an airline tray table or on your lap at the local
Starbucks while you write your latest TPS report or term paper.
The system comes in a bright blue, which HP calls Horizon Blue, with a
dark-blue to light-cyan gradient on the keyboard deck. (The system is
also available in Orchid Magenta.) It's quite handsome, and looks like
it has higher quality plastic than some of the inexpensive entry-level
laptops and Chromebooks we've seen. The white chiclet-style keyboard, a
nice contrast to the chassis hue, is full size and easy to type on, and
the one-piece touchpad is responsive. The keyboard isn't backlit, but
that's to be expected at this price level.
The 13.3-inch, 1,366-by-768-resolution screen is bright enough for
use in a dimly lit room. Naturally, text and user elements display
larger than on 11-inch screens with the same resolution like on the Acer Aspire E3-111-C1BW$303.99 at Walmart and the HP Stream 11 (11-d020nr)$199.99 at Amazon. The 13-inch screen on the Toshiba CB35-A3120 Chromebook$239.99 at Amazon is full HD (1,920-by-1,080 resolution), but that system is more than $100 more expensive and isn't Windows-compatible.
If there's any minor flaw in the Stream 13's screen, it's that it has
somewhat narrow viewing angles. If you are looking at the display while
situated too far to the sides or vertically, images will look washed
out or dark. In-Plane Switching (IPS) screens like the one on the HP Chromebook 11 (Verizon LTE)$299.00 at Best Buy
have better viewing angles and display smoother text, but the Stream
13's LCD is certainly fine for a budget laptop. The speakers are capable
of playing loud enough for a small room, but they are a little tinny.
Storage is on the light side: 32GB on an eMMC solid-state drive (SSD)
and 2GB of system memory. After the initial setup, only 17GB on the
drive is free. The 32GB still doubles the 16GB total we've seen on most
of the current Chromebooks. You can supplement storage locally with
either a USB drive or by using the system's microSD slot. HP includes a
one-year subscription to 1TB of online cloud storage on Microsoft
OneDrive and use of Office 365 Personal with the system. Note that if
want to continue with both services you'll have to pay $69.99 a year or
$6.99 a month after the first year. Still, for that first year, you'll
have fully functional copies of Access, Excel, Outlook, OneNote,
PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word. The license also includes one install
of Office on your phone and on one tablet as well. Wireless connectivity
is standard 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
In addition to the microSD card slot, the system's HDMI port, headset
jack, two USB 2.0 ports, and single USB 3.0 port are all on the sides
of the system. The three-cell, 36-watt battery is non-removable. The
system comes with a one-year warranty.
Performance
The Stream 13 uses a 2.16GHz Intel Celeron N2480 processor with
integrated Intel HD graphics. That doesn't sound too impressive, but
remember that the system's SSD helps speed things along. Reboots are
quick, and launching most programs only takes seconds. The Stream 13
returned a respectable 1,771 points on PCMark 8 Work Conventional,
thanks to the combo of the Intel processor and eMMC SSD. That's better
than most budget laptops with traditional spinning hard drives,
including the Dell Inspiron 15 Non-Touch (3531) (1,554 points) and the Lenovo G40$639.99 at Amazon
(1,581). 3D gaming scores aren't worth talking about: Suffice to say
any sub-$500 laptop returned single-digit frame rates on our game tests
and are best suited to playing basic browser games like Angry Birds.
Multimedia scores are good for the category: 9 minutes 50 seconds on
the Handbrake video encoder test and 13:31 for the Adobe Photoshop CS6
test. The Dell Inspiron 15 Non-Touch (3531) lagged behind by a couple of
minutes (11:00 Handbrake; 14:21 CS6), and the Lenovo G40 took much
longer than 15 minutes on both multimedia tests. Since they have
identical internal components, the HP Stream 11 performed within a few
percentage points of the Stream 13 on most of the benchmark tests.
Essentially, the Stream 13 is best at day-to-day tasks, but can handle
the occasional photo or video edit, as long as you have some time to
finish each task.
Battery life is where the HP Stream 13 shines.
It lasted 9 hours 9 minutes on our battery rundown test. That's hours
better than the Acer C720P-2600 (7:20), Dell Inspiron 15 Non-Touch
(3531) (6:19), the HP Pavilion 10z
(6:38), the Lenovo G40 (5:56), and the Toshiba CB35-A3120 Chromebook
(7:04). The only system that beat it in this price category is the HP
Stream 11 (9:23), and that's by only by a scant 14 minutes.
The HP Stream 13 is a great laptop for the money. It reverses the
conventional wisdom that you have to pay a premium for an ultraportable
laptop, and it undercuts the pricing of most of our recent Chromebook
review units by anywhere from $20 to $100. It's quicker than other
Windows PCs at or above its $230 price tag, thanks to a relatively
speedy eMMC SSD. If you have constant Internet access or a spare $12 to
$40 for a 64GB microSD card, you won't have to worry about running out
of room on the 32GB SSD. Competitors include the Editors' Choice for
entry-level detachable tablets Asus Transformer Book T100TA£294.98 at Amazon,
which has double the SSD space and a few more hours of battery life,
but is $170 more expensive and has a much smaller 10-inch screen. The
Editors' Choice for budget laptops Dell Inspiron 15 (I15RV-6190 BLK),
also is an alternate choice with a larger 15-inch screen and quicker
performance, but it is also more expensive (by $120) and has much worse
battery life. Overall, the HP Stream 13 is the all-day portable PC I'd
pick for under $250, and is our first Editors' Choice budget
ultraportable laptop.
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