HP Chromebook 11 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 15, 2013 2:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- HP
- Chrome OS
- Chromebook
Final Words
A company that can very easily be held as complicit in the mismanagement and decline of the mainstream PC industry, HP did nothing short of a tremendous job with the Chromebook 11.
Under Google’s influence, HP has built a near perfect example of what an entry level PC should be. It boots fast (< 13 seconds even in dev mode), has a great display, comes with dual-band 2-stream 802.11n WiFi, has good sounding speakers, looks stylish, is light and feels well built. The keyboard is great and even the clickpad isn’t as bad as it is on far more expensive PCs. You honestly get one of the best examples of a portable machine for $279, and that’s without even relying on the benefits of Chrome OS to help sell the bundle. Anyone looking for a glorified web browsing, email checking, internet terminal will be right at home with Chrome OS. Flash works and you obviously get what’s arguably the world’s best web browser. You don’t have to worry about updates, malware or viruses, all of that is taken care of for you. It’s the modern typewriter equivalent, a true entry level computer, and HP/Google have done an excellent job in bringing this to market.
Chrome OS is extremely purpose built and it is something that should bring about great concern to those at Microsoft. I personally don’t have a problem with Windows 8, but purpose built is hardly a phrase that applies to the OS - at least if you’re talking about it on a more traditional PC. I suspect by the time we get to Windows 9, Microsoft will have a better answer to the critics of 8/8.1, but that gives Google and its Chrome OS partners at least another year of marketshare erosion. At the beginning of this mobile journey I remember x86 being an advantage for Intel, and we all know what happened to that. Similarly, I remember Windows/Office being advantages for Microsoft. If Microsoft doesn’t find a quick solution for making low cost Windows PCs just as well executed as Chrome OS devices, it’ll find itself in a world where Windows no longer matters to entry-level/mainstream users.
My only complaint about the Chromebook 11 really boils down to silicon selection. Samsung’s Exynos 5250 is just too slow. A pair of Cortex A15s running at up to 1.7GHz draws too much power and doesn’t deliver the sort of multitasking performance that we’ve come to expect in 2013. You can forget about having a good experience multitasking while playing YouTube videos. Streaming music in the background while you surf the web is about as far as you’re going to be able to push the Chromebook 11 without incurring significant lag. 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.
If you’re looking for the Chromebook 11 to last you for 5 years, I’d be very concerned about you running out of CPU power well before then. For lighter use you’ll be fine, but with things like the Haswell Celeron based Acer C720 selling for $250 it’s clear that HP went a little too slow on the CPU front. I haven’t seen the C720 in person but my guess is you’re sacrificing display for CPU performance. HP got the mix nearly perfect with the Chromebook 11, with a faster CPU this wouldn’t just be a great machine for light use but likely the perfect entry-level notebook.
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Krysto - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
Also:"If you’re looking for the Chromebook 11 to last you for 5 years..."
Why would you expect that from a $280 machine? I don't even keep my Core i7 machines for that long.
DanNeely - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
That's very user dependent; and the casual web user systems like this are marketed at are very much the use it until it breaks type, not chase the newest and shiniest people.Until the power jack died a few weeks ago my Mom was happily using a netbook I bought in 08. If an oven-reflow is able to resurrect it, I wouldn't be surprised if she keeps using it until something else breaks.
tat tvam asi - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
Totally off topic:Waiting to read AnandTech's take on Imagination Tech's new MIPs core:
Imagination reveals first MIPS ‘Warrior P-class’ CPU core:
http://www.imgtec.com/News/Release/index.asp?NewsI...
hechacker1 - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
Thanks for the review. I almost preordered this because overall it does appear to be a really nice machine.I can live with the 5 hour battery life; I rarely have to be away from an outlet that long.
But the poor multitasking, and poor web FPS means I won't be happy using this browsing the web and writing the occasional document/code.
Now if I could get a full blown copy of linux on this, then I wouldn't mind the performance considering how much you can tweak linux to run on low power machines.
Hung - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
I wish you had talked about the timing. I assume the primary market is students who don't need anything other than media playback, productivity, and web browsing. The release happened way too late. All those students who could have appreciated it already have devices. I guess HP could hope for some Black Friday sales. I doubt it will fare well against the new crop of netbooks come Christmas.But damn, I bought the Chromebook 3 literally a month ago and I'm pissed. It's a great device and all, but the display is terrible. Hopefully, the 11 uses the same connectors and I can just buy an LCD off eBay for <$80.
I can definitely see myself using the Chromebook for another year. With flashblock, browsing seems perfectly adequate. More often I find myself longing for better display uniformity and viewing angles, or contrast in well-lit indoor conditions. I rarely wish for more power, although I do observe occasional checkerboxing. And while I agree about the good keyboard (I hate chiclet and that fact that everyone has moved to it), the touchpad could use a higher sensitivity setting. It's a little too slow at the highest setting, although it's probably limited by the low resolution of the touchpad itself.
Hung - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
Forgot to mention, it's a great supplemental device. However, I would definitely not recommend it as a primary computer. I built a great desktop a few years back and have been incrementally upgrading it over time. But you can't lug any kind of tower around to meetings, interviews, conferences, classes or out to a cup of coffee.moejurray - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
I've been using the Samsung A5(?) for about a year now. It's fine. The price makes it easier to carry in a backpack, and let kids use it. What I mean is the shear value is low, so the care and worry about it are less than say, my old MBP.What bothers me most is the lack of horsepower that shows itself with stammering scrolling, slow page load times, and uneven video playback, even on Youtube - which I find surprising from Google.
Other stuff:
- The lack of stiffness makes it feel cheap. The mousepad is not smooth and taping, double clicking and other gestures are not always recognized.
- I'm a cloud user, so the little on-board storage is not an issue. And I've yet to get any warning on filling what there is.
So I'm looking forward to trying out a newer version. Hopefully it takes care of these concerns, and I can pass my old one down to a kid.
quagga - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
Thank you for this! I actually won one of these recently from Google so I expect it to show up eventually. Based on what I've read, this is basically the Samsung Chromebook in a new case with a better keyboard and screen. I find it odd the product literature keeps talking about how it has a 60% color gamut. I have no idea what that means - 60% of sRGB, 60% of Adobe RGB?CrushingBore - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
So does the battery test for ChromeBook include loading pages which load Flash? If so could that explain the poor results as Flash is a known CPU hog? How about repeating the Tablet Web Browsing Test (WiFi) for the ChromeBook or disabling Flash and repeating the existing test?OneOfTheseDays - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
Chrome OS is a joke of an OS, which is why they have roughly 0.02% marketshare.The only people pimping these obviously inferior solutions are tech reviewers with Google hardons that desperately want to see MSFT dethroned. Sadly, Anand is becoming more and more like them every day.
If a Windows laptop ever came out with this poor peformance, battery life, etc. it would get slammed 6 ways from Sunday. But because this is Google it gets reviewed favorably.
I'd ask yourself why hasn't this site even reviewed the Lumia 1020? Seriously, this POS is more important? Give me a break.