HP Stream 7 Review: A $119 Windows Tablet
by Brandon Chester on December 19, 2014 8:00 AM ESTBattery Life
The battery life is one of the areas that I was concerned about when I purchased the Stream 7. It sports an 11.1Wh battery, which is smaller than the battery in some smartphones like the Galaxy Note 4 and the Nexus 6. However, the battery life of a device does not depend entirely on the battery capacity. The power draw of the display, CPU, RAM, and other components will be what determines how fast the battery is drained. To evaluate the battery life of the HP Stream 7, I've run it through our web battery life test and our video playback battery test. I've also run our video test on the iPad Air 2 as it was unable to be tested in time for its original review. This provides a point of comparison to another modern tablet, albeit a much more expensive one.
Unfortunately, there's just no getting around the fact that the Stream 7 has a really small battery for a 7" tablet. It gets the lowest score in both our web browsing and video playback tests. Both results are significantly less than the "up to 8 hours" that HP rates the battery for. It's likely that enabling Intel's DPST will improve these results, but all that really means is that dimming the display below our 200nits standard will improve battery life.
Charge Time
With a smaller battery, one can at least hope that the time to charge it will be shorter than other devices. However, this will be influenced by the charger that the company supplies with the device. In this case, HP has included a 10W charging block with the Stream 7. What's funny is that it's not an HP branded charger; it's a Chicony Electronics charger with an HP sticker on the front.
Thankfully, the Stream 7 doesn't take very long to charge after its short battery life has been used up. It's not quite as fast as the Galaxy Note 4 or Nexus 6, both of which ship with higher wattage chargers, but it's still much quicker than the other tablets on our list as a result of its smaller battery. One thing to note about charging the Stream 7 is that I was unable to get it to charge off of any computer USB ports. This was surprising, because my computer has 1.5A USB 2 ports that are able to charge even the iPad 3 and its massive battery.
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eriri-el - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
No problem there, wouldn't want you guys to get into trouble. Strange, UFOTest shows my display refreshing at 53Hz. Time to ask HP directly. I apologize for assuming that you missed it out, might be a problem/defect on my end. Thanks for the reply.Brandon Chester - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Does yours say 53Hz in the Intel control panel?eriri-el - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Yes it does. The Intel control panel shows 53p Hz only. Strange, I've posted in the HP forums, and so far one person says that his Stream 7 runs at 53Hz too.Brandon Chester - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
That's super odd. I can confirm mine says 60p. I would love to contact HP about that, but they haven't even gotten back to me about the headphone jack and WiFi so you'll have as much luck getting answers as I will.Brandon Chester - Sunday, December 21, 2014 - link
Updating to the latest bios brought it to 53Hz.eriri-el - Sunday, December 21, 2014 - link
So I guess my device comes with a newer bios out of the box compared to your device. Thanks for updating me. Guess I'll let it slide since it's not really a defect, nor does it affect the user experience on such a budget device.Yuriman - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Highly interested in this device. I'm very happy with the HP Chromebook I got recently, and it looks like this tablet should be able to run Hearthstone well enough.jameskatt - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Great review. The most important thing I learned: I would rather have a great laptop like a MacBook Air running Windows 10, than any Windows Tablet. Windows is simply better interfaced for computers with keyboards and mice not fingers.jb14 - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
I picked up similar tablet, a cheap Chinese import to the UK (Voyo WinPad A1 mini) at just under £100. 2GB and 8" being the main differences. Great as a couch surfer and using on planes/trains, using the OTG cable & accessories when x86 is required. I wouldn't spend more than £150 on such a device personally though.Teknobug - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Wow why are there so many cheap Windows tablets lately. The low price always tells me "junk", but it makes me wonder. I'd love an x86 based tablet to handle some stuff I do on my desktop while on the go (without needing VNC or remote desktop).