Likewise, the Stream 11's CPU muscle is virtually non-existent as measured by the Cinebench test. Cinebench uses all available CPU cores and threads to render a complex 3D image. It’s the sort of task you’d probably never want to perform on the Stream 11 anyway. Wireless connections include Bluetooth and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The laptop doesn’t support Wi-Fi 6, but at this price we don’t expect it to. Over several days of testing, the Stream 11 easily stayed connected to my home wireless router without any dropped connections. (Photo: Molly Flores)

One more bit of maintenance is recommended, beyond upgrading to full Windows 10: bloatware cleaning. Plenty of preinstalled apps take up too much of the computer’s precious 57GB of available space, including Netflix, Dropbox, LastPass, and McAfee Antivirus. HP’s preinstalled configuration utility, myHP, also constantly sends notifications reminding you to install updates.Thankfully, all of it can and should be uninstalled. On the upside, the HP Stream 14 also comes with a one-year subscription to Microsoft 365, giving users access to Microsoft's suite of programs. PROCESSOR: Intel Celeron N4020. SCREEN SIZE: 11in. MEMORY: 4GB. STORAGE: 64GB. OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 11 Home. SCREEN TYPE & RESOLUTION: HD (1366 x 768), anti-glare. BLUETOOTH: 5.0. PORTS: USB Type C, 2 USB Type A, HDMI,1 microSD media card reader. GRAPHICS CARD: Intel UHD Graphics 600. BATTERY LIFE: Up to 13.5 hours. HP Inc UK Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA FRN 973346) and acts as a credit intermediary and not a lender, offering credit products provided by a limited number of finance providers. Such credit products may not be suitable for everyone. Borrowing more than you can afford or paying late may negatively impact your financial status and ability to obtain credit. What about video encoding? At this point, you might be able to guess, but the HP Stream 14 is not meant for this kind of work. To see how ill-equipped the machine is, we ran HandBrake 1.4, an open-source video transcoder for converting multimedia files to different resolutions and formats. The HP Stream 14 was fighting for its life in this test, taking almost two hours to complete the benchmark. High-end laptops tend to do it in well under 10 minutes. Graphics Tests The one test that didn't end in defeat for the HP Stream 14 was the display test. Using Datacolor's SpyderX Elite calibrator tools, we test every laptop's screen-brightness output levels at 50% and 100% brightness. We also measure gamut settings for the three most relevant color spaces for laptop users: the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 standards.The only way to rectify the Stream 11’s dull screen is to use it plugged into an external monitor. That’s not possible if you’re out and about, but if you’re using this laptop at home, the full-size HDMI port makes it a cinch to connect a larger display. As with the SD card slot, the HDMI port is a welcome addition that's rare even on more expensive laptops. Other tests that we usually run, including our Handbrake video render, our Photoshop filter test, and 3DMark's graphics trials, were beyond the Stream 11. The Stream 11 has a front-facing camera that offers startlingly low-quality video, even by the relatively low standards of modern laptop webcams. The entire field of view is filled with noise and distracting artifacts, even in a brightly lit room. Audio quality from the stereo speakers isn’t much better. You shouldn’t expect an enjoyable gaming experience, either. The Stream 11 recorded an average of just 6 frames per second on our Unigine Superposition benchmark, and that’s at the most forgiving 720p Low preset.

I've appeared on CBS News, in USA Today, and at many other outlets to offer analysis on breaking technology news. The HP Stream 14 posted on-par numbers (for a budget laptop, that is) in the brightness tests, besting both Lenovo laptops at the 50% brightness setting, while at the 100% setting actually overtaking the HP Laptop 14-dq2020nr and keeping pace with both the Inspiron and the IdeaPad 3. That said, the screen output was underwhelming even at top brightness, put next to a mainstream or business laptop. As for color-coverage testing, the results were quite similar across the whole test group, suggesting these are all screens cut from the same (display) cloth.We aren't able to get our 3DMark test to run on some extreme-budget laptops, but we were able to get our GFXBench 5.0 benchmark up and running on the HP Stream 14. The same couldn't be said for the other laptops in our comparison (thus we haven't charted those results here), but rest assured that the numbers were as ho-hum as you'd expect. Budget laptops equipped with integrated graphics chips have come a long way, but still can't really play games well, and definitely can't handle anything too graphics intensive.