HP Stream is a new lineup of notebooks and is targeted to those who are looking for the best bang for the buck from a Windows 10 powered notebook. There are several models announced by the company and all of them carry a price tag that’s less than $250.
Unfortunately, this level of affordability and that too from HP can only mean one thing; there are several compromises that the manufacturer must have made.
Coming to the first model, the new HP Stream 11 will be one of the cheapest notebooks in the company's 2016 line-up, and carries a $199 sticker when it hits shelves on August 24. That gets you an 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 display and powering up the miniature notebook is an Intel Celeron N3060 dual-core processor. Additionally, HP also paired it with 4GB of memory and 32GB of flash storage, together with Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.2. The biggest perk of owning the notebook isn't performance, but large battery timing, with the company suggesting that you’ll get up to 10 hours and 45 minutes of use from a single charge.
Ports include a USB 3.1, one USB 2.0, HDMI, and a combo headphone jack/microphone input, together with a microSD card reader. There's also a webcam, Dolby DTS Studio Sound, and a fanless design with no moving parts. There’s also a 14-inch model with the same hardware specifications, but you do get an extra USB 3.1 port, while the memory card slot will accept full-sized SD cards rather than just microSD.
This price of this notebook is $219. Once again, we’ll remind you that these notebooks have not been catered to those who are looking for high-performance computing from a laptop, but affordability and high battery life is what HP has in mind. Looking at their price tags, and seeing which company’s brand name is stamped on them, we’d have to say that it’s not a bad deal after all.
