Open it up and you’ll find a power button along the inside, with a bright white keyboard staring back at you, inside that metallic gradient that looks quiet snazzy.
Switch the power on and the screen comes to life, loading Windows 8 in no time, which we suspect is that 32GB solid-state storage helping it along with the 2GB RAM.
Upon first glance, it’s easy to see where HP has cut down on performance for the budget $299 price, and the screen is one of those areas: it’s an older style of display and fits in-line with the Twisted Nematic (TN) panels from computers where you had to set the screen to the right angle to see the colours correctly.
It also lacks the oomph in brightness you might come to expect from laptops, and while it’s easy enough on the eyes — and supports a high definition resolution of 1366×768 — this is by no means a spectacular screen.
But it definitely works, and in a machine where you’re looking from one specific place, as well as hitting below the $400 mark, we’re fine with this sort of panel, since it’s not like a tablet and needed to be used from several angles.
Get to using the machine and for the most part, you’ll be relatively happy, with the Stream letting you load apps in both the modern Windows 8 and older Windows desktop (7) interface, which means apps from old and new both run here.
The storage can post a bit of a problem some of the time, because the included 32GB doesn’t mean there’s a lot, even if Microsoft is trying to sweeten the deal with 1TB of online storage you’ll probably never use. Seriously, it’s 32GB here, though you do get a full-height SD card slot, so expanding the storage for movies, music, and photos shouldn’t prove difficult at all since SD cards are so cheap these days.
Using the computer will be like using a regular laptop without a touchscreen because, well, this is a touch-less Windows experience.
To help you get around, you’ll find a decent keyboard and a reasonable mouse, and we’ll happily say that we like the keyboard much more than the mouse.
For the keyboard, there’s a good amount of travel with a solid click, and you won’t find yourself needing to exert too much energy to make the keys strike down on the letter. We typed this review on the keyboard and found minimal errors, which is a solid result from our point of view. While it’s not our favourite keyboard ever, certainly for the size, it’s not half bad.
The trackpad could do with some work, though, HP going with a rectangle about as wide as the space bar positioned a little to the right. Obvious buttons can’t be seen, but they’re available, found underneath the trackpad as you use it.
You’ll find pinch and zoom gestures working here, as well as the standard two finger scroll, though the click can sometimes not register as well as it should, an issue which may come from a very shallow button. In a way, it reminds us of the sort of button-less trackpad LG once used in its laptops, with an odd and unfulfilling click available when you’re trying to hold the mouse down to select text.
Certainly, the trackpad will get you through using the computer, though if you need to get more in depth with using the mouse, we’d certainly grab an external mouse for longer uses here.
Over to the battery, and we’re pretty satisfied with what the HP Stream 11 can do here, providing around 5 to 7 hours in our tests, which saw us writing this review, surfing the web, reading emails, and general use of the computer.
That’s not bad at all, and a result that should see a student through the six hour school day provided they’re not using the computer through lunch and recess, which isn’t too shabby at all.
And if they are, the small power charger is at least another positive.
Being a budget machine, you can’t expect the best of the best, though HP’s Stream 11 does nail a few things down, such as the balance, the feel, and a keyboard that is comfy and offers enough travel and no change to the layout to make it a breeze to get work done on.
That said, the inclusion of 32GB of storage isn’t a win, especially when only 17GB is available to the user out of the box. That means anyone who needs to install a fair amount of apps will probably need an SD card pretty quickly, though we’re at least happy that the included space isn’t down to the paltry 16GB we see from so many other brands.
No touchscreen is one that some people may find a touch frustrating, especially since Windows 8’s desktop mode isn’t loaded by default out of the box, which is a strange omission from HP since it can certainly enable that.
We’ve included instructions on how to do that below, but given the lack of a touchscreen — definitely a cost cutting thing — it would have been handy to see Windows 8.1 move straight to the desktop, though this will be much, much easier when Windows 10 rolls around later this year.
Conclusion
While the screen and mouse could certainly be better, HP’s Stream 11 packs a solid punch when it comes to a laptop for anyone on a budget.
Frankly, we’re reminded of netbooks circa five or six years ago, with an 11 inch screen that works at the right angle and a computer experience that anyone can take with them.
It’s worth noting that this is totally different from the budget Windows tablets we’re seeing of late, and while some of these beat the Stream 11 from screen choice and touch experience (which helps to use Windows 8), the Stream 11 is a great choice because of the solid and comfortable keyboard packed into a computer that can handle its own and does so with a design that doesn’t come across as ordinary.
At $299, HP’s Stream 11 is ideal for people who need a keyboard and is totally worth checking out.
