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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darryl hall - Monday, June 15, 2015 - link
as an example of the skewed review, the desktop version of internet explorer scores 490 on the sunspider test and 5872 on kraken 1.1.oolzie - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
While I have no issues or complaints with the Stream 7, I feel compelled to mention that Microcenter stores (or Microcenter.com) sell the Winbook TW700 7" Windows tablet for $59 and that also includes the one year of O365 Personal. The Winbook name may not be as popular as HP, but I've tested nearly ever Windows tablet on the market over the last year and this thing is no slouch at all. We've been loyal users of the Dell Venue 8 Pro and this thing has had comparable reliability and performance. The build quality is very solid and the specs are pretty much identical to all these other ultra low cost Win 8 tablets. The kicker, and this is a big one for me, is that the Winbook has a full sized USB 2.0 port, a microUSB for charging AND a micro HDMI out. That's something that none of these other low cost tablets have offered yet. I've tested this thing connected to an external monitor and it can very easily be a general home use desktop. They also offer an 8" version with similar specs and a USB 3.0 port for $89. Don't sleep on the brand. If you're in the market for a small Windows tablet, this thing is practically throw away prices. Hell, the year of O365 makes it practically free.http://www.microcenter.com/product/439773/TW700_Ta...
nathanddrews - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I have the TW100 10.1" IPS version that I got for $160. It's basically identical to this HP, except it has 2GB RAM, a full USB 3.0 port, micro USB 2.0, micro HDMI.My only complaint is a pretty big one - 2GB RAM for Windows just isn't enough. 4GB + 64-bit Bingdows is the key. I would gladly have paid another $20-50, knowing what I know now. There are so many applications that I COULD be running (games, mostly) that I can NOT run due to the 2GB limitation. I don't know how something like this can get by with only 1GB.
Old games designed with the low-RAM, 32-bit environment in mind run excellent, well over 60fps, but yeah my advice for Windows tablets is 4GB minimum.
Anonymous Blowhard - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Editorial: There's a random inclusion of the "Nexus 6 Daytime Test" on page 4 when talking about the camera.Brandon Chester - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Thank you very much, I had linked the wrong gallery. Fixed.tolgerias - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Glad to see more attention on Windows tablets. I am a happy owner of a Dell Venue 8 Pro, and I think full Windows on tablets has a lot going for it. Being able to download files into a folder I can access is a real plus. Networking with my Home Group is also super useful. Although I wouldn't buy a Stream 7 for myself, I would definitely purchase one for my 6-year old son instead of a $499 iPad.I just wish the Windows Store had a better selection (both in quantity and quality) of apps and games. Like the author said, most of the third party apps are either really bad or inferior versions of what you can get on iOS and Android. I hope this changes as more users adopt Windows.
TheWrongChristian - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
So presumably, this is a regular PC compatible in tablet form? Could it be booted into Linux via OTG USB?lioncat55 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I think you can. You may need to boot in to the BIOS from Windows. I will check once I am home. If not, the Micro SD card might also work.tipoo - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Yes, the UEFI is accessible and people have gotten Linux on it.yannigr2 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Windows with 1GB of RAM. Great. As for Android devices at $99, if we are talking about branded tablets, yes, but there are a few Chinese companies out there that offer good quality products with hardware that usually you see at over $200 from known manufacturers.