HP Chromebook 11 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 15, 2013 2:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- HP
- Chrome OS
- Chromebook
Battery Life & Charging
Chrome OS has never struck me as being particularly optimized for low power consumption. Despite using relatively power efficient hardware and being paired with a 30Wh internal battery, the Chromebook 11 barely lasted 5.4 hours in our web browsing battery life test. Local video playback was even worse at 4.8 hours.
Under heavy multitasking scenarios I wouldn’t be surprised to see more significant drops in battery life as well.
Charging is the other unique aspect to the Chromebook 11. Rather than a proprietary connector to an AC adapter, the Chromebook 11 features a standard microUSB connector for power. I asked Google if the Chromebook 11 implemented the USB Power Delivery specification, designed to deliver up to 60W over microUSB, unfortunately the answer there was no. There's a 200 kΩ resistor between ground and the ID pin of the Chromebook 11's charger serving as the signal that the charger can pull more current and supply up to 15.75W over the microUSB cable/connector.
You can charge the Chromebook 11 using any microUSB cable + charger combo, although power delivery will be limited to whatever the charger supports. You’ll also get a warning under Chrome OS:
Similarly, the Chromebook 11’s charger can be used to charge other microUSB devices but only at the maximum rate supported by the device.
When connected to the Chromebook 11, the bundled charger quickly ramps up to 3A @ 5.25V after a brief period, presumably where it confirms that the attached device is capable of handling increased current delivery.
Charge time is incredibly quick thanks to the 15.75W charger. The adapter draws a maximum of 21W at the wall (just under 80% efficiency, no 80Plus certification here it seems) and can completely charge the Chromebook 11 in roughly 2.5 hours.
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Homeles - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
"There is absolutely no reason to get this over any of the upcoming 8.1 Bay Trail hybrids/netbooks coming out this fall."Had you actually passed kindergarten, you'd have been able to comprehend the following sentence, and therefore would be making such an asinine comment:
"There are clearly better options on the market today, either Snapdragon 800, a quad-core A15 based design or my personal pick for this type of a machine: Intel’s Bay Trail."
Do the world a favor and learn how to read. In the meantime, please refrain from spewing your garbage on the internet.
SM123456 - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
It is a brilliant screen and a damn goof keyboard and touchpad.meacupla - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
Poor battery life AND performance?I guess something had to be compromised at that price point.
Onkel Harreh - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
I agree the 5250 is poor. However, I think battery life is acceptable as an entry level netbook - more expensive ultrabooks can more or less meet these results. The battery life being poor is only relative to the use of a (supposedly) low power ARM chip and compared to tablets.ShieTar - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
Well, the performance is very comparable to the current class of 10" tablets, and the screen is marginally larger, but at a lousy resolution (a quarter of the pixel number of a Note 10.1), and a lower brightness. There is really no reason why the battery life of this machine should be this poor. Maybe it can still be fixed by a software update.Tibbs - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
On the Display page: "Although the 11.6-inch display boasts a pedestrian 1136 x 768 resolution"Surely you mean 1366 x 768?
eiriklf - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
I seriously doubt snapdragon 800 would be noticeably better than the exynos dual here, the snapdragon 800 just cannot keep up with any of the single task benchmarks you posted, and although it has four cores there is no more memory bandwidth than the exynos has. Now baytrail on the other hand would be a great improvement.BMNify - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
Chrome OS is a joke of an operating system, better to spend slightly more and buy the upcoming Baytrail Windows 8.1 convertibles.tipoo - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
The Intel powered 14 inch version is only 299, I'd be hard pressed choosing this one.fmillmd - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
I really like my original cheap $199 Acer Chromebook. It has lived up totally to my realistic expectations, email, surfing, researching. correspondence and blogging. I use it now more than all my other desktops and laptops and prefer the Chrome OS now by far over iOS, Mountain Lion Mac OS and Windows 8. Simple very fast. I can utilize the scads of add on extensions to complement and add estoeric task specific extensions to do more specific tasks and have not found anything I that I need that I cannot find an app-extension to perform. I find in this age of persvasive presence WiFi hotspots that when I do travel, I can always easily use it online and have not found this a hindrance at all. I have long backed up file on all my machines to both Cloud based services and ext HDs and can replicate those cautionary practice exactly on the Chromebook without a high learning curve. And the setup is nonexistent, it is just easily available. I now await premium Chromebook models to evolve and come out with faster chips, and larger on board memory and storage as Google refines their core Documents Sheets etc. apps to be used offline in the future as well. As an accesssory machine that will surprise the new buyer in that it will easily take over all but the most CPU intensive tasks like big time pix and video editing, it will not disappoint.