HP Chromebook 11 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 15, 2013 2:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- HP
- Chrome OS
- Chromebook
The Display
Although the 11.6-inch display boasts a pedestrian 1366 x 768 resolution, it’s an IPS panel devoid of the sort of color/contrast shift at off-center angles you normally get with a cheap PC notebook. I remember being in a meeting with a bunch of traditional PC OEMs talking about battery life. I was advocating for displays to be tested at 200 nits when one OEM turned to me and said that there are some notebooks in their lineup that won't even get that bright. Thankfully, the Chromebook 11 helps to push the low end of the PC industry forward. The display doesn't get incredibly bright by high-end mobile display standards, but it has excellent black levels and thus delivers a compelling 1088:1 max contrast ratio.
Color accuracy isn’t anything to write home about compared to the new wave of factory calibrated panels, but for the price it’s awesome. Hilariously enough, the Chromebook 11’s display is about as accurate as the first generation Surface Pro from Microsoft, and in many cases offers better color reproduction than the panel used on the more expensive Chromebook Pixel. Compared to other notebooks in its price class (or even those twice its price), you’re talking about a very good display.
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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.