HP Stream 7 Review: A $119 Windows Tablet
by Brandon Chester on December 19, 2014 8:00 AM ESTCPU Performance
Inside the Stream 7 we have Intel's Atom Z3735G, which is a quad core Bay Trail part that has a base frequency of 1.33GHz and a burst frequency of 1.83GHz. It's paired with 1GB of DDR3L-RS-1333 memory, where the RS stands for "Reduced Standby". As the name implies, it has a focus on improving standby battery life on devices like tablets. Z3735G unfortunately has one of the slower memory interfaces of the Bay Trail lineup, with only single channel support and a max memory bandwidth of 5.3Gbps. Nonetheless, the CPU itself is fairly powerful, especially for a $119 device.
Although the Stream 7 does run a full copy of Windows, I've decided to run it through our mobile workflows rather than our desktop/laptop ones because I believe most users are going to use it similarly to how they use other tablets. I will elaborate on this point later in the software section, but the main point is that the normal Windows desktop experience is just not very good on touchscreens, especially 7" 1280x800 displays. Because of this, it's better to run it through benchmarks where it can be compared to other tablets. The fact that PCMark requires more space than the Stream 7 physically has is also an issue.
As you can see, Intel's latest Atom platform performs very well in our tests. It should be noted that these tests were performed using Chrome rather than IE, to maintain consistency with the results from previous Windows tablet reviews. This means that the Sunspider score leaves much to be desired, as Google has stopped focusing on it as an optimization target. Looking at our other tests, we see that the Stream 7 is not the fastest tablet, but it is still very fast. In fact, it's competitive with the silicon inside tablets that cost two or even three times as much, which is impressive.
GPU Performance
The Intel HD Graphics chip in Bay Trail is architecturally similar to Intel's HD 4000 graphics on Ivy Bridge. It's simply a cut down implementation with 4 EUs instead of the 16 in an Ivy Bridge chip. The implementation in Atom Z3735G scales from 311MHz to 646MHz as needed. Thankfully, the Windows Store has up-to-date versions of 3DMark and GFXBench available, so we can compare the Stream 7 to the other devices that we've benchmarked in the past.
As you can see, Bay Trail isn't exactly a graphics powerhouse. However, the Stream 7's resolution means that the onscreen results aren't that bad, so you'll be able to get away with running some of the lighter games that you can on other platforms, provided of course that they're available on the Windows Store.
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ClockworkPirate - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
The Stream 8 also has an LTE radio. For that reason alone I'm considering returning the 7 I got for my brother... Free 200MB/mo from T-Mobile is just so tempting.Spectrophobic - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Oh yeah, forgot about that. That could be a good point for several people. But for myself, who only uses a tablet at school or at home, it isn't a big deal.damianrobertjones - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
"microSDHC (Up to 32GB)"It's odd that they state that... It WILL work with the 64GB cards and, probably, 128GB.
Brandon Chester - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Yeah I would expect it would go higher, but I don't have a 64GB card to test and I don't want to ruin someone's day by having them buy this and a MicroSD that ends up not working.cruzinforit - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Brandon- is that a copy of Kisses, sighs and cherryblossom pink I spy sitting next to your Mami figurine?Brandon Chester - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
No.azazel1024 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
For the eMMC performance, I don't know why you'd be super surprised. I've run a couple of different benchmarks on my Asus T100 with a Sandisk SEM64 in it (64GB eMMC) and I get around 20MB/sec read and write 4k numbers. About 40MB/sec sequential write and 105MB/sec sequential read. This is both when I got it new and I ran the test a few weeks ago to see how TRIM had been keeping up over the last year that I've owned it. I got roughly the same numbers I did before (using ATTO and Crystal disk both). I'd imagine that'll fall apart quickly, but it is pretty good with random/small file performance in both testing and real usage. Its just that the sequential numbers are kind of sucky on the eMMC in the Asus T100.Of course that says nothing about the HP Slate 7, I am just saying I don't think the numbers are necessarily suspicious.
On a different note, anyone here when Airmont/Cherry Trail might finally be dropping?
azazel1024 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Also, Brandon, on the storage utilization, you mention that there is missing space you have a hard time tracking down. What is shown under the settings for usage doesn't take in to account things like the hiberfile.sys (hibernation file, which is generally equal to the installed RAM base), page file or any recovery/restore partitions.Brandon Chester - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I tried to take that into account based on what the tablet originally had free before I did anything with it. There's just stuff that accumulates like files left in Program Files after you uninstall a desktop app, and files stored in Appdata that don't get deleted.Death666Angel - Sunday, December 21, 2014 - link
I take my windows file system over any android or iOS stuff any day of the week. I know more about the things on my 7 drives in my windows desktop than I do about what is on my 16GB smartphone/tablet.