The HP Chromebook 14 is a 14-inch laptop that runs on Google’s browser-based Chrome operating system. This is HP’s second stab at making one and having extensively used the HP Pavilion Chromebook for the past year, there’s definitely plenty of room for improvement.
It’s far more pleasing on the eye and with a Haswell-based Intel processor runs faster than first generation Chromebooks with all the added battery boosting benefits. HP also includes its new Data Pass pay as you go mobile broadband service, which gives users free 3G access for two years. Is it enough to make this the one Chromebook to own? Maybe, but we're not totally convinced.
It’s different but in a good way and a much-needed departure from the original. The soft matte white lid and dimpled base is not something we’ve seen on other Chromebooks. It’s nice to grip and gives the sub-£300 laptop a far more luxurious feel than its plastic build suggests.
When you open it up, the chassis is clearly MacBook inspired from the button-less chrome trackpad to the square chiclet keys, albeit it doesn’t use the same expensive materials as found on Apple’s laptops. There’s more space around the keyboard and a larger palm rest, but it definitely looks nicer from the outside than it does from the inside.
It’s 1mm thinner than the Pavilion (21mm) and also marginally heavier than the HP’s first Chromebook (1.8kg) weighing in at 1.85kg. That doesn’t sound like a lot but the extra heft is definitely more noticeable carrying it in a bag. We swapped between the two and the added weight is noticeable. For portability, there’s definitely better Chromebook options.
One thing you can’t knock this Chromebook for is onboard connectivity. Over on the right edge is the proprietary charging port so sadly it doesn’t support USB charging like the HP Chromebook 11. It’s joined by a SD card slot, a USB 2.0 port and further down is a 3G MicroSIM slot that comes with the more expensive model. Over on the left edge you’ll find headphone/mic jack, two USB 3.0 ports and a full-sized HDMI port that's something of a tight fit when plugging in a HDMI cable.
Elsewhere, there’s two thin stereo speakers on the base and above the screen you’ll find a pretty average 720p HD webcam with a flash to help out for those night-time chats.
All the changes HP has made are good ones. It feels solidly built and has been knocking around our bag for the past week with little issue apart from the odd pen smudge on that soft matte lid. The extra weight could be a slight issue for some but overall we are much happier with how the second generation HP Chromebook looks.
It’s also a TN display, which is renowned for poor viewing angles and glare both of which the Chromebook 14 suffers from. You’ll find yourself tilting the angle of the screen at times to reduce reflection.
The display looks a little washed out and lacks the vibrancy and punchy colours to make this a particularly great place to watch video. Putting it side-by-side with the HP Pavilion, there’s some noticeable improvements for colour accuracy and sharpness. The 200 nits of brightness doesn’t do a great deal of good when you hovering around the 50% mark and you’ll need have near to maximum brightness to have the most suitable working environment.
Chromebook displays on the whole continue to be the most disappointing aspect especially when tablet screens are getting so much better.
We didn’t really have high expectations for the Chromebook 14's speakers but surprisingly, like the Toshiba Chromebook, the HP doesn’t do a bad job. There’s no Beats Audio as some other of the brand's laptops. but there’s just the subtle hint of bass to help give the loud and reasonably well-defined sound a little bump. The forward-facing speakers ensure you feel the full brunt of your audio as well. If you are planning to put that 60-day free trial to Google Play Music to good use, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what the speakers have to offer.
It’s far more pleasing on the eye and with a Haswell-based Intel processor runs faster than first generation Chromebooks with all the added battery boosting benefits. HP also includes its new Data Pass pay as you go mobile broadband service, which gives users free 3G access for two years. Is it enough to make this the one Chromebook to own? Maybe, but we're not totally convinced.
HP Chromebook 14: Design
It’s a fair assessment to say that HP’s first Chromebook was not the prettiest. Black, cheap and largely uninspiring. So for the Chromebook 14, HP has dropped the serious look in favour of something more brash and loud. You can get the Chromebook 14 in Peach Coral, Ocean Turquoise or Snow White like the one we had the pleasure of playing with.It’s different but in a good way and a much-needed departure from the original. The soft matte white lid and dimpled base is not something we’ve seen on other Chromebooks. It’s nice to grip and gives the sub-£300 laptop a far more luxurious feel than its plastic build suggests.
When you open it up, the chassis is clearly MacBook inspired from the button-less chrome trackpad to the square chiclet keys, albeit it doesn’t use the same expensive materials as found on Apple’s laptops. There’s more space around the keyboard and a larger palm rest, but it definitely looks nicer from the outside than it does from the inside.
It’s 1mm thinner than the Pavilion (21mm) and also marginally heavier than the HP’s first Chromebook (1.8kg) weighing in at 1.85kg. That doesn’t sound like a lot but the extra heft is definitely more noticeable carrying it in a bag. We swapped between the two and the added weight is noticeable. For portability, there’s definitely better Chromebook options.
One thing you can’t knock this Chromebook for is onboard connectivity. Over on the right edge is the proprietary charging port so sadly it doesn’t support USB charging like the HP Chromebook 11. It’s joined by a SD card slot, a USB 2.0 port and further down is a 3G MicroSIM slot that comes with the more expensive model. Over on the left edge you’ll find headphone/mic jack, two USB 3.0 ports and a full-sized HDMI port that's something of a tight fit when plugging in a HDMI cable.
Elsewhere, there’s two thin stereo speakers on the base and above the screen you’ll find a pretty average 720p HD webcam with a flash to help out for those night-time chats.
All the changes HP has made are good ones. It feels solidly built and has been knocking around our bag for the past week with little issue apart from the odd pen smudge on that soft matte lid. The extra weight could be a slight issue for some but overall we are much happier with how the second generation HP Chromebook looks.
HP Chromebook 14: Screen & Sound Quality
The Chromebook 14 features a 14-inch LED backlit 1,366 x 768 HD display which matches the screen resolution on the 11-inch Acer Chromebook C720 and the 13-inch Toshiba Chromebook. Sadly, that means we have another Chromebook that serves up yet another below par display. It’s a little more acceptable on a 11-inch display but on a 14-inch screen it's really not great.It’s also a TN display, which is renowned for poor viewing angles and glare both of which the Chromebook 14 suffers from. You’ll find yourself tilting the angle of the screen at times to reduce reflection.
The display looks a little washed out and lacks the vibrancy and punchy colours to make this a particularly great place to watch video. Putting it side-by-side with the HP Pavilion, there’s some noticeable improvements for colour accuracy and sharpness. The 200 nits of brightness doesn’t do a great deal of good when you hovering around the 50% mark and you’ll need have near to maximum brightness to have the most suitable working environment.
Chromebook displays on the whole continue to be the most disappointing aspect especially when tablet screens are getting so much better.
We didn’t really have high expectations for the Chromebook 14's speakers but surprisingly, like the Toshiba Chromebook, the HP doesn’t do a bad job. There’s no Beats Audio as some other of the brand's laptops. but there’s just the subtle hint of bass to help give the loud and reasonably well-defined sound a little bump. The forward-facing speakers ensure you feel the full brunt of your audio as well. If you are planning to put that 60-day free trial to Google Play Music to good use, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what the speakers have to offer.
HP Chromebook 14: Performance
The HP Chromebook 14 falls in line with the other second generation Chromebooks using an Haswell based Intel Celeron 2955U CPU clocked at 1.4GHz to give the streamlined operating system the power to keep things running smoothly. There’s 2GB of RAM to cover multitasking and 16GB of SSD storage for files backed up by 100GB of free Google Drive cloud storage over two years.We can’t fault the boot-up times, something that Chromebooks excel at and it regularly checked in around 7-8 seconds. It's a largely slick experience when you jump into the desktop and it manages well under the pressure of multitasking or more appropriately, multitabbing.
Running two Google Chrome browser windows with four tabs open on each, it shows few ill effects of trying to stream Netflix, playing games, emailing, browsing and working on a Google doc all at the same time.
If we are being really picky, the faint humming of the fan can be heard when things get more demanding. It’s not something we’ve generally spotted with Chromebooks before. It’s not violently loud but enough that some will notice it.
Any issues with performance are balanced out with Google’s relatively clutter-free Chrome operating system. The browser-based OS is plain and simple to use with no desktop applications or shortcuts littering the screen. All applications are tucked away in the app launcher at the bottom left corner of the screen as usual. Staple Google apps like GMail and Google Docs are all present and HP bloatware is non-existent.
Unlike most Chromebooks that rely solely on Wi-Fi despite some improving offline app access, the Chromebook 14 has 3G support so you can take this one on the road. Users will get 250MB for free a month over two years and you can add extra data packages if you want. It costs £8.99 a month for an extra 750MB, £11.99 a month for 1.75GB, £13.99 for 3.75GB and £6.99 for 500MB.
250MB doesn’t sound like a lot and it’s not going to let you enjoy a Netflix binge session, but if you need to send an email or work on a document it’s actually very useful. When a Wi-Fi connection is not available it will begin to search for the 3G connection and takes less than a minute usually to connect. Getting the added 3G means you will have to buy the more expensive Chromebook 14 model, but when you consider that it’s still under £400 that’s still good value.
HP Chromebook 14: Battery Life
The previous HP Chromebook managed a mediocre 4.25 hours, so with the new Chromebook promising up to 9.5 hours thanks in part to its Haswell architecture we were hoping for much more. Applying the same test we’ve used with recent Chromebooks running Netflix continuously on loop with 50% brightness the Chromebook 14 manages an impressive nine hours.Not as impressive as the 9.5 hours it claims but more than enough for a day. 50% brightness as we mentioned is not the best conditions for watching video so we tried it with full brightness and it managed closer to 6 hours. This is where the bigger screen and the need to crank up the brightness clearly plays its part in diminishing its stamina levels.
The good news is that after a half an hour charge from 1% battery life it was back up to 40%. In just under two hours it was back to full capacity so you won’t be waiting long to get back to work or play.
HP Chromebook 14: Keyboard and Trackpad
HP has reduced the size of the keyboard layout compared to the Pavilion, so you’ll notice that some keys have been slimmed down like the arrow keys. Apart from that you can expect to find the customary function keys spread across the top and the search button replaced by a Caps Lock button.Keys now have a slightly textured finish to improve travel and make it a more comfortable place to type. The more spacious palm rest is less cramped to work with than it is on the netbook-like 11-inch Chromebooks although having tried out the 13-inch Toshiba Chromebook, that for us is the most comfortable typing domain.
As for the trackpad, the horrible dimple design and two click buttons are gone, replaced with a smooth chrome coloured flat surface that supports gestures for pinching and zooming. That’s not to say that things have improved greatly. At times, it still feels a struggle to scroll pages and the responsiveness for gestures is not great, either. It’s not the first shoddy trackpad we’ve seen, but it does do a better job than the Pavilion for getting around the Chrome UI.
Source : trustedreviews.com
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