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Before I joined the tech-journalism ranks, I wrote on topics as diverse as Borneo's rain forests, Middle Eastern airlines, and Big Data's role in presidential elections. A graduate of Middlebury College, I also have a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University.
I've appeared on CBS News, in USA Today, and at many other outlets to offer analysis on breaking technology news. The Stream 11 has a front-facing camera that offers startlingly low-quality video, even by the relatively low standards of modern laptop webcams. The entire field of view is filled with noise and distracting artifacts, even in a brightly lit room. Audio quality from the stereo speakers isn’t much better. Laptops typically need a score of at least 4,000 on this test to be considered excellent, so the Stream 11 is a long way off. Part of the deficiency here may be ascribed to the eMMC storage, whose performance is limited versus the more capable SSDs on more expensive laptops. Other tests that we usually run, including our Handbrake video render, our Photoshop filter test, and 3DMark's graphics trials, were beyond the Stream 11. What about video encoding? At this point, you might be able to guess, but the HP Stream 14 is not meant for this kind of work. To see how ill-equipped the machine is, we ran HandBrake 1.4, an open-source video transcoder for converting multimedia files to different resolutions and formats. The HP Stream 14 was fighting for its life in this test, taking almost two hours to complete the benchmark. High-end laptops tend to do it in well under 10 minutes. Graphics TestsLikewise, the Stream 11's CPU muscle is virtually non-existent as measured by the Cinebench test. Cinebench uses all available CPU cores and threads to render a complex 3D image. It’s the sort of task you’d probably never want to perform on the Stream 11 anyway. In GFXBench's 1440p Aztec Ruins test, the HP Stream 14 maintained an average of 7 frames per second during the tests. Surprisingly, the 1080p Car Chase test ran at an average of 33 frames per second, so there's some hope for the machine if you decide to play something simple. Really simple. Battery and Display Testing The dreary numbers continued as we ran Primate Labs’ Geekbench Pro, another CPU stress test meant to simulate real-world applications. The HP Stream 14 came in dead last again, owing its poor performance to its Celeron processor. Forget about running more than a couple of apps at one time while using it. PROCESSOR: Intel Celeron N4020. SCREEN SIZE: 11in. MEMORY: 4GB. STORAGE: 64GB. OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 11 Home. SCREEN TYPE & RESOLUTION: HD (1366 x 768), anti-glare. BLUETOOTH: 5.0. PORTS: USB Type C, 2 USB Type A, HDMI,1 microSD media card reader. GRAPHICS CARD: Intel UHD Graphics 600. BATTERY LIFE: Up to 13.5 hours. The Stream 11 lasted for more than 11 hours on our video rundown test, which involves playing a 720p video at 50% screen brightness with Wi-Fi turned off. (Note: Since our video file is too big to fit on the Stream 11’s internal storage drive, we played it from an external SSD.)
The HP Stream 14 posted on-par numbers (for a budget laptop, that is) in the brightness tests, besting both Lenovo laptops at the 50% brightness setting, while at the 100% setting actually overtaking the HP Laptop 14-dq2020nr and keeping pace with both the Inspiron and the IdeaPad 3. That said, the screen output was underwhelming even at top brightness, put next to a mainstream or business laptop. As for color-coverage testing, the results were quite similar across the whole test group, suggesting these are all screens cut from the same (display) cloth. You shouldn’t expect an enjoyable gaming experience, either. The Stream 11 recorded an average of just 6 frames per second on our Unigine Superposition benchmark, and that’s at the most forgiving 720p Low preset. We aren't able to get our 3DMark test to run on some extreme-budget laptops, but we were able to get our GFXBench 5.0 benchmark up and running on the HP Stream 14. The same couldn't be said for the other laptops in our comparison (thus we haven't charted those results here), but rest assured that the numbers were as ho-hum as you'd expect. Budget laptops equipped with integrated graphics chips have come a long way, but still can't really play games well, and definitely can't handle anything too graphics intensive.HP Inc UK Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA FRN 973346) and acts as a credit intermediary and not a lender, offering credit products provided by a limited number of finance providers. Such credit products may not be suitable for everyone. Borrowing more than you can afford or paying late may negatively impact your financial status and ability to obtain credit. Wireless connections include Bluetooth and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The laptop doesn’t support Wi-Fi 6, but at this price we don’t expect it to. Over several days of testing, the Stream 11 easily stayed connected to my home wireless router without any dropped connections. (Photo: Molly Flores)
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