HP Stream 14-ax010nr 14-inch

The HP Stream 14-ax010nr is a bestselling budget friendly 14-inch laptop that has been praised for its attractive price, fast solid state drive, light and thin design and for its two USB 3.1 ports. But the storage drive is tiny for modern standards and the HP Stream 14-ax010nr has been designed to be connected to the net 90% of the time. We recommend purchasing an external hard drive to make sure that you can access your files offline.

The HP Stream is the latest entry-level ultraportable dubbed as the “Chromebook Killer” by some reviewers for its aggressive price and features matching many Chromebooks within its price range. It feels solid, lightweight and looks classy with its brushed aluminum metal case and top cover. Users will have a pleasant typing experience on its comfortable keyboard with full sized keys, but the trackpad feels cheap and flimsy.

It comes with 2GB of RAM and only 32GB of SSD storage, half of which is already occupied by the operating system. Thus, it makes sense to invest in an external hard drive for storage if you plan on watching a lot of movies or listening to a lot of music, though HP also provides a free two year subscription to Microsoft’s cloud service with 100 gigs of cloud storage.

The performance of the AMD Quad Core A4 6400t coupled with AMD Radeon R3 graphics is respectable for general tasks such as document editing and spreadsheet navigation and it is even possible to play games such as Portal 2 smoothly is possible at native resolution.

The Stream offers an attractive alternative to users who are interested in the design, portability and battery life of Chromebooks, but would prefer a full Windows 8 experience over the Chrome OS environment which is slightly restrictive for offline use.

HP has been releasing its Stream series for a number of years and the HP Stream 14-ax010nr is one of their latest offerings. Its compact size and light weight make it a great laptop as an everyday carrier, but the tiny hard drive will mean that you will need a connection to the internet or an external hard drive. The fast 32GB solid state drive allows Windows 10 to boot up in seconds and will allow you to launch your apps much faster than a traditional 5400rpm mechanical hard drive.

But with just under 20GB free with Windows 10 installed, you are not left with much space to store your work or personal files. But you do get a year’s subscription to Office 365 and 1TB of OneDrive storage. However if want a good offline solution then we recommend a 1TB Seagate external hard drive. Powering the HP Stream 14-ax010nr is an Intel Celeron N3060 Dual Core processor and 4GB of RAM. While its entry level hardware is underpowered for the power user, it is sufficient for basic home and office use. The same goes with the display, like most budget laptops you get an entry level 1366 x 768 display panel. However the BrightView panel does offer brilliant image quality and a bright visual experience for indoor use.

Also available from Walmart.com

• Weight: 3.17 lbs
• Processor: Intel Celeron N3060 1.60GHz
• Display Size: 14 inch
• RAM: 4GB DDR3L
• Operating System: Windows 10 Home
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 400 (Braswell)