When I worked at Best Buy this was the most returned item in the store. It got so bad managers told us to turn customers away from the device to avoid then returns.
One surprising thing to me is the Celeron N4120 is better than the Atom processor. So, it's not the absolute cheapest and most worthless CPU they could put in the HP Stream. Still, I think a person would be better off using a base model iPad. And a person might even find mobile Microsoft office apps in Apple's App store.@@jimmy3951
@@jimmy3951 Not really.The single core performance at that price point plus the fact that it is an x86 and not an ARM makes a massive difference. One: upggradability, 2: choice of OS. Put Kubuntu or any Linux on it and it run a lot lot better.
@@domoncar6782 I'm a huge Linux guy, and yes a system like this will run better with a lighter Linux distro on it like Solus Budgie that's still using X11, and not Wayland for the compositor, but it won't be much better simply because of the EMMC storage which performs worse than most class 10 Micro SD cards, the weak Intel Celeron CPU, & 4GB of slow ram. In fact sitting in my guest room as a backup laptop, I have a old 15.6in(1366X768 720p screen) ASUS laptop I got from e-waste with an Intel Core i3 2310M hyperthreaded dual core that I upgraded to 16GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM(24 bucks), new battery(18 bucks), and 256GB Netac SATA SSD(26 bucks) that performs better than these HP streams when running Manjaro Solus, the only thing I'm missing vs. something like an HP Stream here, is USB 3.0, and USB C, which is not a huge deal breaker in my book for something that cost me 68 bucks to fix up, that again performs better, and can handle multiple Chrome tabs even playing back TH-cam, and other content at 720p.
I bought an basic Asus for £280 and slap SSD in making it quite capable machine for basic needs like text editing watching Netflix video calls and some old games (intel celeron n4020 1,1 GHz 8GB RAM DDR4 and intel UHD 600 integrated GPU)
I have an ASUS E410 which basically the same specs I got for $100 at MicroCenter, I tossed in a 1TB NVME SSD that cost just as much as the laptop and honestly Linux Mint was this devices savior. I can actually boot Skyrim at 60fps on this thing and open several tabs in Firefox. Windows 10 or 11 should have NEVER touched these devices with how under-powered with RAM they are.
My grandmother uses one of these. These type of laptops are pretty much for 70+ year olds who wants the cheapest laptop they can find and it is the only deciding factor instead of taking performance/specs into consideration, so they can go on FB and don’t care about how many Chrome tabs they can have open or how fast/slow the computer is
Thing to consider, I work at a school, we bought these cheaper as we bought in bulk and put chrome flex on them - they work great and actually cost less than the cheapest chromebook.
The thing is that Microsoft could make a stripped back version of windows free of the bloat they include just for low end devices. But they know everyone would install that on higher end PCs too, because no-one wants that bloat. They kinda of already make a stripped back version with the LTSC build but they make it difficult for the average user to legally acquire it.
I got a machine with a similar CPU to this very cheap used and one of the first things I did was dig around the options to disable a lot of the windows spy features and it's unreal just how many they sneak into the OS. turned on by default. I mean, honestly, I have little over 1Ghz to play with. Do I really want to send information about every key press I make off to Microsoft?
I have one of these that has been collecting dust on my shelf for the past 7 years. Ran out of space after a few windows updates. This thing was terrible.
I remember having one a decade ago in high school. It wasn okay for school reports, and making the occasional power point. I consider it like a first car, it will get you to there eventually without ac.
Is it worth it after the updates stop? We get the left over stock from the US and local vendors are advertising it to students. Since everyone has bank accounts these days and they need peace of mind online, I've been asked if they're safe and I don't feel like buying one just to answer the question.
My brother in law had one of these.. the 64gb eflash storage or whatever was called was so bad it was slower than some hdds. I tried to install windows 10 and linux on it and there were no functional drivers for the crappy wlan card it had.
A month ago, picked a Lenovo 500w Gen 3 (11" Intel) 2 in 1 Laptop for $180. It was 12" IPS touch display, Pentium N6000 processor, 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM.
I've been using mine for years, and these types of computers have SO MANY issues that i don't recommend getting one, but you have to work with what you buy if its the only thing you can afford. Also, this thing is clearly not made for heavy games but it could probably run most games that was released in the 2000s or 2010s.
You should have bought a 2015-2017 Macbook Air. You can run Windows. You can upgrade the SSD. You can easily swap the battery because it's not glued in.
@@mattstone8878 Those are great devices indeed. Though I think the M1 MacBook Airs are better. And I highly don't recommend the 2018-2020 MacBook Air. Or the 2015-2017 MacBook. Or the 2016-2019 MacBook Pro. Or the 2011-2012 Macbook Pro.
At least you did better than an HP Stream POS, but next time I would just get a refurbished Lenovo Laptop off their outlet store that still has slots for upgradable RAM, and Storage, then you can stick whatever Linux distro you want on it if you don't like Windows as Lenovo certifies many of their models in the spec sheets to be fully Linux comptable.
@@mattstone8878 No thanks, I don't want to be stuck in the Apple ecosystem(yes there Ashi Linux for the Apple M series chips, but It can be a pain to get running, and it's not ready for prime time yet), I like freedom of choice in my OS, and to be able to upgrade my RAM, and Storage, or to be able to replace them if something does fail.
if all you use it for is checking email, word processing, and filling out applications, it gets the job done. If you need to do quite literally anything else. you should get something else. And they do go on sale for close to $100 around black friday. That's when most of them sold when I worked at target, and I did try and convince people to get ANYTHING else.
hmm that resolution is HD. HD is only 720p, everyone thinks 1080p is HD but thats actually FHD. So yes that laptop does have a HD screen. Granted a bit of a cheap crappy one but its HD. Its meant for a cheap, breakable not losing much idea of a laptop. Like just kids, streaming, etc. If you dont pay the costs, lots of things only stream in HD (720p) not FHD or better. That's why it exists in 2024. But really never meant for anything past word processing at best, which is why it comes with 365. But for the cost, even 200 dollar chromebooks suck. To get good ones, youll be paying probably double that price and that's not a price that everyone can afford, especially for something given to a kid. And used market sucks for laptops, especially for cheap ones, they are usually beat to hell or used so hard things are just shit(damaged, broken, etc). I'd never give a kid a laptop that is 400-500+ for every day use, they destroy everything way too easily and not gonna toss hard earned cash at something for them to break. Rather run risk of losing say 200-250 bucks than say 350-450 for them breaking a fancier cheap laptop/used laptop just because it was "a bit faster." Cheap laptops have a use, even this one, just not a use for everyone. Even 100-150 bucks more is hard for many to afford. That's why lots are using 100-200 dollar or less smartphones that exist because they just can't afford better versions. Is it shit, yep, is it slow, yep, but it will load websites(granted slower), will word process, which is all a school kid needs or anyone who just doesn't do much on a pc.
I think that an older ThinkPad would be a better than an HP stream... I got my X280 with 8GB RAM and 256GB Storage for like 160€ - it has an i5 from the seventh gen which may be old but I bet it is certainly faster than that celeron from the HP.
Honestly, it coming with a year of Office would be sick for college students, if it weren't for the fact that many colleges allow you to get office for free for as long as you are enrolled...
I loved my HP Stream when I got it in 2014. Was perfect for just a tiny laptop I could throw in a bag. It ran linux with xfce perfectly and 2G was *just* enough to do even HD youtube back then and light multitasking. I'm still a big fan of the netbook 11-13 inch form factor, hopefully ARM will make them more viable in the future.
I work at a computer repair shop and i have to BEG people not to get em. plenty do, THEN come to and ask if the laptop was a good purchase, ask me BEFORE please
Those specs are essentially the same as the Gateway GWTC116 series and the Evolve III Maestro laptops that came out in 2019/2020. The laptop is basically a school/college laptop meant to handle very basic functions in a class environment.
Honestly, I absolutely agree this time. Put in even the worst branded 120GB M.2 SSD, any real i3 even if it's 11th Gen and an FHD screen (bonus points for a light version of Linux like Lubuntu, I mean you are only gonna use a browser on that thing anyway) and the experience will be around 5x as good for 50% more cash.
Austin really said 13:30 "It's Time We Demand More" when tech geeks cannot be happy even with the latest chipsets and graphic cards. Tech nerds CANNOT be more demanding LOL They will found anything to complain about.
One thing he didn't mention is that these cheap computers are actually very useful to people who use Linux. By putting a Linux distro on this laptop, you can get better performance and nearly triple the battery life over using it as a Windows device.
There is a market for laptops like this: light productivity, office work, and light web. Maybe it can be used for light media consumption. If you already have a Windows device at home, I would say to get a cheap Android tablet, like the Lenovo M11 and a keyboard/trackpad case instead of this HP laptop. If you don't have a Windows device at home, and $200 is your budget with tax, then this laptop may be all you have to get and you'll just have to take the sacrifices. As long as you know this laptop's limitations, you'll be fine. The problem is that stores are selling it to do more than it can and that's the problem.
I honestly forgot about HP streams. I bought one back in 2015 for college. It was relatively terrible, yes, but totally serviceable for the light workload I used it for in freshman classes at a community college.
The specs on this thing are basically the same as the school laptops we had in high school and middle school. It should honestly be illegal for Celeron laptops to even be sold to anyone else but schools, they're legitimately the worst CPUs ever made lol.
i feel like at this point laptops need to be seen as just as essential as phones. it ain't even that hard to find a decent laptop for ~$500, i have a dell Inspiron that works fine for games and school, yet a lot of parents refuse to do research before handing their kids a laptop.
I bought an Acer Cloudbook in 2016 because my laptop died unexpectedly. Lower specs than the Stream, but came with Windows 10. It worked well for a year or two. I could even play Stardew Valley on it. But the more Windows 10 became bloated, the worse the Cloudbook became. Now, I just use it to see what Linux distros I can get to run on it.
I recently found an admittedly used Dell Latitude 3440 for $280. $100 more than this laptop in the video. *The Dell Latitude has a 13th gen i5 in it, came with 8gb ram, and a 256gb SSD.* I say this to say that even though I spent $100 more, the used market is the best option for laptops under $300 IMHO.
Honestly in my opinion to be serving the budget end of the market at this point computer manufacturers need to start doing what car companies do and promote their Certified Refurbished models more heavily. A midrange or flagship laptop from 3-4 years ago with a new battery would probably run circles around these ultra budget models and honestly it would probably save manufacturers and retailers money to not have to maintain as many SKUs or deal with excess returns.
I had a version of this a few years ago that came with a Ryzen 3 3300U (or something like that), and a 256gb SSD, I slapped an extra ram stick in there for 8gb and it was a surprisingly decent experience. It still couldn't really game much, but it was fine with multitasking to a point, I could have a half dozen browser tabs, a spotify window, and discord running and it was pretty alright.
There are some Linux phones out that can do this like the PinePhone, but the specs are not that great. Also I think because tablets exist, and can be had for so cheap, that a lot of phone makes don't see the need to put forth the effort to make something like a Samsung DEX mode.
i had this thing as my 1st laptop but it had windows 10, i got it for christmas, at first i thought it was good but issues started appearing everywhere, "Not enough storage" when taking a simple photo was CRAZY, and after being stored for like 2 months its boot time went from approx 30 seconds to OVER 4 MINUTES. Why HP thought it would be a good idea to put an outdated processor in a modern laptop is beyond me. Not even roblox could run at a smooth framerate, even my old ipad 8 at the time outperformed it.
I loved my Asus EEE PC netbook after upgrading memory and storage. A perfect vacation companion to store my photos on and book hotels. At that time. It always: cheap, small, powerful. But you can only pickup 2.
It always amazes me how quick youtubers in the US and UK shit on any tech that isnt cutting edge lmao This isnt a critic directed at Austin and I love his content, but me as a third world country viewer would kill for one of those notebooks as i've been wanting one for ages lmao
My only usable computer is an old ASUS Laptop with literally 3 GB of ram while even my phone has 12 GB and I can't even browse the web with such a slow machine
For lightweigth and cheaper there is nothing better than an old Macbook Air 11. Up to this day it is unbeatable in those requirements, without given up on anything.
People with incredibly tight budgets tend to make bad decisions because the only thing they value is the price tag and not the product itself. That's how you get a market that'll buy literal garbage if it's cheap enough. Couple that with a "free" 1 year trial of Office 365 and you've got the perfect laptop for unassuming parents to buy for their children and scold them afterwards for complaining that the laptop is trash. It's still sold because people buy it. It's unfortunate that there might never be a steep enough decline in the people buying this to justify better marketing strategies from HP.
In 2009: Microsoft Office 2007 90-day trial In 2010: Microsoft Office Starter 2010 included (no expiry) In 2024: Microsoft 365 1-year trial Come on. The starter editions were light on features but they did work well for that target demographic. I'd say bring it back, but now they're about to kill WordPad as well.
This was my first ever laptop/pc and i remember playing minecraft at 20fps for about 3 or 4 years on it, now i'm running a system i built myself and seeing it again has brought me back to some dark times
I had bought a Lenovo with similar specs years ago, open box deal at a store so even cheaper. It ran Windows poorly, so I installed Ubuntu on it and it ran just fine for a couple of years until certain keys on the keyboard stopped working.
I had a £300 version of this with an AMD A6-9225 in 2019. Because of the extra £100 than the cheapest W10, it actually ran decent for the price for a year. It should be illegal to sell e-waste laptops, as they just go into landfill in like a year or two, and when you spend more, you get like 5-10 years out of the device
Friends that are not tech savvy would buy this. I needed a second smaller 11.6" laptop for travel, so in 2018 i got an HP ProBook x360 256GB storage, 8GB of ram, touch screen, HDMI port, even has an ethernet port, looks close to an HP Stream but has way better performance. lol wow i just found the HP stream under its new name.... simply HP Laptop, yes thats the name, how do I know its an HP stream in disguise? its specs Windows 11 Home in S mode, Celeron CPU, 4GB ram, 64 GB eMMC storage, 14" screen, and its the cheapest laptop on the HP website $200
Just a note, this computer is as expensive as a used Lenovo Thinkpad with older i5, 512GB M.2 SSD and 1080p screen. It is just a manufactured E-Waste, that was created just as a comparison to the more expensive models.
People keep buying this E-Waste because there's no longer an affordable option on the market that isn't trash. People who only have $300-$400 for a computer can't find anything that's not junk. I spent $500 on my laptop 5 years ago and it's still decent now. Today you'd be spending closer to $800 to get you anything that's going to be useable a few years down the road. Tech should be getting cheaper, but it just keeps going up.
I purchased a steam in 2015 as my first laptop and it actually kickstarted a lot for me. Although I remember it came with 32gb or storage and came with windows 10. I’m forever grateful to it even though if it broke down two years later
In 2014 this made sense kind-of for those looking for the absolutely cheap laptops to use only for Word or something. 10 years later, wherein the latest Chromebooks can run offline apps too thanks to Android or Linux, and with Chromebooks having sales for only $250 for laptops with at least 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, with FHD displays, this makes zero sense. And yes, you can find Chromebooks with 4GB RAM and 64GB of Storage like the Lenovo Duet 3, but Chrome OS is far, far lighter than a fat Windows 11. Then there's the cheapest iPad that for a hundred dollars more, you're getting a hell lot more (again, to quote you, what's the use of a full fat OS if you can't run it all).
Another argument to demand better laptops from these manufacturers: these cheap laptops are basically e-waste within 1, if not at most 2 years. Too slow, almost no upgrades possible and cannot be repaired if something breaks. By getting a slightly better laptop, like the $320 ones mentioned in this video, you'll likely do 3-4 years with it, thus wasting a lot less of the earth's valuable resources.
As a former bestbuy employee i tried to avoid selling that laptop at all cost even though we were told to push it. I always almost begged customers to spend an extra $100 for a laptop that is 4x better. The only time that laptop to me was a good deal was when they would go on sale for $110. The only thing that made it worth the money was a 1 year membership. Within 3 months it will run slower than a turtle.
I think "just spend more" is a poor argument since it might be "worth it" in wealthy western countries but in much of the world an extra $100 might be a quarter of your monthly pay if not more. Used market is a much more reasonable alternative, these days a laptop with an i5 from 5 years ago and 16gb of ram will easily cost just as much while providing immensely better performance
Maybe they have sooooo many parts unique to that system that they just have to keep producing them until they can scrap the rest of them. I got a decent chromebook during Prime Days one year and it's perfect for the way my husband uses it, and he's actually that target market for this computer - really only needs an internet appliance. His iPad was fine for what he used it for, but got too old for updates and the battery wouldnt' hold a charge, but he did need something. Something told me to shy away from that HP Cheapo.
Just to share a fun fact, you can get a 15 inch or 13 inch MacBook Pro from 2013/2014 and use a patcher to get a newer version of MacOS for around $200. It won’t be comparable to the newer MacBooks of the recent years, but it would definitely be better than the HP laptop 14.
I bought a desktop in 1994 with 4 megabytes of RAM for $1800 and 170 megabytes hard drive. No speakers no cd drive no sound card. So that is a much better deal now than then😊
I bought a Lenovo Chromebook for about $160 a couple of years ago, and it is still my main laptop. It has a foldable display with an IPS touchscreen, 8GB or RAM, and i3 processor and I upgraded to the storage myself. There is literally no reason to buy something like this when you can get a Chromebook, I even do light gaming on Steam (Mainly Sims 4 and older games like Bioshock) and via emulation; it has been a very good machine and eye opening for how solid Chromebooks are nowadays.
I bought, about 6 months ago, a Lenovo with a 5500U processor, 8gb of ram, which is upgradable to 16, an NVME drive and an upgradeable wifi chip. For the same price.
I have an HP Stream myself, I got it from the thrift store for a few dollars. Only 32GB Storage. Windows was pretty much unusable, but Linux Mint runs great on it. I use it for watching movies and TV Shows stored on my file server.
I think I can give some context to how slow a system with 4GB of RAM and a celeron is in 24'. I have a Windows 11 laptop with an i3, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and still Windows crawls into a halt sometimes. And when I used a Chromebook back in highschool, we prob spend 25%-50%(class time) just logging in. Either case, ChromeOS is demanding but Windows is very demanding.
I got a "cheap" hp laptop from walmart for $400 and i ran that thing into the dirt tbh.(love my baby though) Like im now traveling to look for a new ssd for it. And i lowkey wanna convince my dad to get me some extra ram....but idk
หลายเดือนก่อน
Educational institutes eat up these cheap branded laptops for schools and some colleges. I think the consumer that it's targeted at is, as you said, parents looking for the cheapest option with a reputable logo.
Okay, now it's my turn to rant... I have a HP stream that my sister bought about 6 years ago. The screen started flickering and would not display anything. I actually went through the trouble of replacing the display cable for her. And then a couple of months later... it started flickering again (crap design)! I bought her a used laptop off ebay for $95. I now have installed Linux Mint XFCE on it, and it's fairly useful for browsing the web. A side note: I find it hilarious that Windows 11 supports this junk laptop, and yet they won't support older CPU's.
You can install windows 11 on unsupported laptops. There are tutorials online. By the way buy her some old MacBook Pro from 2008 or 2013. They are way better and have great sound and display quality. The whole laptop is aluminium
@@Techlevel1534. I appreciate the advice, and I'll keep that in mind for next time. But for now, she is happy with her current laptop. But one thing I have to say is, I am not nearly as familiar with fixing MacBooks as I am Windows laptops. Aren't MacBooks a little bit more a pain to fix?
I’m sure some parents pick this as baby’s first laptop, but I think old people are the real reason these devices are still on the market. As a former Best Buy employee, I can tell you they get a lot of elderly customers looking for the cheapest laptop available, usually declaring to the salesperson that they’re not a gamer. Anyway GamePass would probably work fine if you stick to cloud gaming.
Got my significant other through undergrad back in 2013-2016. Needed Google docs and notepad basically. Back then you could get it on sale at like 100-150 during black Friday. This replaced her dying 17" MacBook. She was happy with it as it was way lighter, battery life was ridiculous and she commuted to and from school. I'm going to have to dig it out and run Linux on it maybe
I used to work at OD around the time these came about and they were what made me want to ro stop being a salesperson. I had no qualms about telling people it was a bad purchase, especially as long-term product, even on a tight budget. I would always push Chromebooks or even mid-level tablets for school work. The fact they're still making these in today's day and age speaks volumes about how HP and other "reputable" brands push crappy products above everything.
Man I wanted a netbook SO bad when they came out. A full featured OS in something that small. Now it’s super laughable. Side note I just sold a laptop for $15 on Facebook marketplace. Bout it for $20 so I could run some update software on a laser cutting machine that’s software wouldn’t run on MacOS and I didn’t want to haul my desktop PC to the laser. I had forgotten how bad of a build quality so many budget laptops have. It was so plasticy and awful from trying to open it, to the keyboard and clicking the trackpad. I’ve been pampered by Apple products and higher end PC stuff for years. I didn’t realize that companies still made stuff that low quality.
I got an ASUS - Vivobook 14" Laptop with a Core i3, 8GB ram and 128GB SSD. For $200. I got it because it weighs about 3 lb. So I can take it with me. Emails and text messages are fine being written on a phone or tablet but for longer documents a cheap laptop is where it's at.
I believe over at Microcenter they have a 14" Gateway Windows 11 laptop with a Ryzen 7 3700U, 16gb of memory and a 1TB SSD for like $300 which is an alright and could play some games well enough.
yeah second i saw it was an HP Stream i already knew how it was gonna go. That being said if you install Linux on them they actually do perform noticeably better (Had an Asus Flip with the N4020 mounted to the wall for accessing inventory)
When I worked at Best Buy this was the most returned item in the store. It got so bad managers told us to turn customers away from the device to avoid then returns.
Thomas Crooks is back.
This thing is legit weaker than a $200 smartphone wtf
It’s probably weaker than an iPhone 5s from 2013 which is WILD
One surprising thing to me is the Celeron N4120 is better than the Atom processor. So, it's not the absolute cheapest and most worthless CPU they could put in the HP Stream. Still, I think a person would be better off using a base model iPad. And a person might even find mobile Microsoft office apps in Apple's App store.@@jimmy3951
@@jimmy3951 Not really.The single core performance at that price point plus the fact that it is an x86 and not an ARM makes a massive difference. One: upggradability, 2: choice of OS. Put Kubuntu or any Linux on it and it run a lot lot better.
@@domoncar6782 3 bigger screen which we knows wins over majority non tech savvy people lol.
@@domoncar6782 I'm a huge Linux guy, and yes a system like this will run better with a lighter Linux distro on it like Solus Budgie that's still using X11, and not Wayland for the compositor, but it won't be much better simply because of the EMMC storage which performs worse than most class 10 Micro SD cards, the weak Intel Celeron CPU, & 4GB of slow ram.
In fact sitting in my guest room as a backup laptop, I have a old 15.6in(1366X768 720p screen) ASUS laptop I got from e-waste with an Intel Core i3 2310M hyperthreaded dual core that I upgraded to 16GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM(24 bucks), new battery(18 bucks), and 256GB Netac SATA SSD(26 bucks) that performs better than these HP streams when running Manjaro Solus, the only thing I'm missing vs. something like an HP Stream here, is USB 3.0, and USB C, which is not a huge deal breaker in my book for something that cost me 68 bucks to fix up, that again performs better, and can handle multiple Chrome tabs even playing back TH-cam, and other content at 720p.
I'm kinda in the mood to go out and buy an HP Stream...
Buy an HP 14 Laptop and upgrade the ram to 16gb.
I have one totally would recommend
I bought an basic Asus for £280 and slap SSD in making it quite capable machine for basic needs like text editing watching Netflix video calls and some old games (intel celeron n4020 1,1 GHz 8GB RAM DDR4 and intel UHD 600 integrated GPU)
same
I have an ASUS E410 which basically the same specs I got for $100 at MicroCenter, I tossed in a 1TB NVME SSD that cost just as much as the laptop and honestly Linux Mint was this devices savior. I can actually boot Skyrim at 60fps on this thing and open several tabs in Firefox. Windows 10 or 11 should have NEVER touched these devices with how under-powered with RAM they are.
My grandmother uses one of these. These type of laptops are pretty much for 70+ year olds who wants the cheapest laptop they can find and it is the only deciding factor instead of taking performance/specs into consideration, so they can go on FB and don’t care about how many Chrome tabs they can have open or how fast/slow the computer is
I wouldn't buy this for even my worst enemy, no one in the world deserve a Celeron in 2024
U could get a used laptop that is 5x better
@@arpro89 exactly. or even an used optiplex or something. i doubt ur granny cares about the fact that you can carry it around
@@-aku2805Some people like to take their PCs with them when they travel, but at that point I'd just say get them an iPad and be done with it
Thing to consider, I work at a school, we bought these cheaper as we bought in bulk and put chrome flex on them - they work great and actually cost less than the cheapest chromebook.
That doesn't mean they should be sold at Best Buy
@@mkkohls they should make it to school only, not to be sold by retailers.
@@Kenzie_Delvey they can't anymore. Chrome books made a monopoly with many American states
Yeah but think about performance. Time is important for kids
@@JeskidoYT they should at least bump the specs from a emmc 5.1 to an ssd and 128 min and the ram should be 8 gigs
6:23 Austin the laptop chiropractor
You know it’s good when there’s celery inside... from 2019. Even if you refrigerated it, yikes.
hah
and the celery is discontinued lmao
Austin Evans finally stopped using an entire can of hairspray🙏
lol
Austin without hair products looks like he's been going though some things 😂
@@Mr_Mcfeely yeah covid, its on his threads
The ozone layer likes this comment
@@C_C-who uses threads? 💀
Nothing against the rest of the crew, but this style of solo Austin content has been incredibly refreshing to see!
The thing is that Microsoft could make a stripped back version of windows free of the bloat they include just for low end devices. But they know everyone would install that on higher end PCs too, because no-one wants that bloat. They kinda of already make a stripped back version with the LTSC build but they make it difficult for the average user to legally acquire it.
I got a machine with a similar CPU to this very cheap used and one of the first things I did was dig around the options to disable a lot of the windows spy features and it's unreal just how many they sneak into the OS. turned on by default. I mean, honestly, I have little over 1Ghz to play with. Do I really want to send information about every key press I make off to Microsoft?
I have one of these that has been collecting dust on my shelf for the past 7 years. Ran out of space after a few windows updates. This thing was terrible.
I remember watching your video on that blue HP Stream back in the day and here we are today😅
In Geoff Peterson's voice:
"Windows 11 aśśmöde"
180 new is indeed very little but you can get a thinkpad for that price. And not even an insanely old one, you can get a t470s for that
Exactly. And thinkpad laptops are insanelly upgradeable.
I remember having one a decade ago in high school. It wasn okay for school reports, and making the occasional power point. I consider it like a first car, it will get you to there eventually without ac.
E-waste straight from the new box.
Yep a 2006 or 2008 MacBook Pro is way better
This thing supports windows 11 but my $1k custom built pc from 5 years ago doesn’t? Huh?
Solo Austin is back!!
HD = 720p full HD / FHD = 1080p
I have a windows chromebook from 2016💀
Same 😂
I have 3 and they are great
Is it worth it after the updates stop? We get the left over stock from the US and local vendors are advertising it to students. Since everyone has bank accounts these days and they need peace of mind online, I've been asked if they're safe and I don't feel like buying one just to answer the question.
@@hamzasultan96 Yes it’s worth it. My windows chromebook can run a windows 11 vm
I really enjoy this kind of video style. It's changes up things compared to your regular "table content" :)
My brother in law had one of these.. the 64gb eflash storage or whatever was called was so bad it was slower than some hdds. I tried to install windows 10 and linux on it and there were no functional drivers for the crappy wlan card it had.
What makes Chromebooks better in my opinion is that ChromeOS is designed to run on a low end machine, and as a result, it runs smoother
A month ago, picked a Lenovo 500w Gen 3 (11" Intel) 2 in 1 Laptop for $180. It was 12" IPS touch display, Pentium N6000 processor, 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM.
That wallpaper brought back a lot of memories 😅
Didn't know you could buy a laptop at a 24 hour fitness :O
I want a video on that
6:23 the laptop wasn't even clipped in properly 💀💀💀💀💀
I've been using mine for years, and these types of computers have SO MANY issues that i don't recommend getting one, but you have to work with what you buy if its the only thing you can afford.
Also, this thing is clearly not made for heavy games but it could probably run most games that was released in the 2000s or 2010s.
I almost bought this thing because I was in the market for a light work device. I went with an android tablet with a keyboard attachment instead.
You should have bought a 2015-2017 Macbook Air. You can run Windows. You can upgrade the SSD. You can easily swap the battery because it's not glued in.
@@mattstone8878 Those are great devices indeed. Though I think the M1 MacBook Airs are better. And I highly don't recommend the 2018-2020 MacBook Air. Or the 2015-2017 MacBook. Or the 2016-2019 MacBook Pro. Or the 2011-2012 Macbook Pro.
At least you did better than an HP Stream POS, but next time I would just get a refurbished Lenovo Laptop off their outlet store that still has slots for upgradable RAM, and Storage, then you can stick whatever Linux distro you want on it if you don't like Windows as Lenovo certifies many of their models in the spec sheets to be fully Linux comptable.
@@CommodoreFan64 Or buy a something with an M1 if you can stretch
@@mattstone8878 No thanks, I don't want to be stuck in the Apple ecosystem(yes there Ashi Linux for the Apple M series chips, but It can be a pain to get running, and it's not ready for prime time yet), I like freedom of choice in my OS, and to be able to upgrade my RAM, and Storage, or to be able to replace them if something does fail.
When your phone outperforms this thing:
if all you use it for is checking email, word processing, and filling out applications, it gets the job done. If you need to do quite literally anything else. you should get something else. And they do go on sale for close to $100 around black friday. That's when most of them sold when I worked at target, and I did try and convince people to get ANYTHING else.
hmm that resolution is HD. HD is only 720p, everyone thinks 1080p is HD but thats actually FHD. So yes that laptop does have a HD screen. Granted a bit of a cheap crappy one but its HD.
Its meant for a cheap, breakable not losing much idea of a laptop. Like just kids, streaming, etc. If you dont pay the costs, lots of things only stream in HD (720p) not FHD or better. That's why it exists in 2024. But really never meant for anything past word processing at best, which is why it comes with 365.
But for the cost, even 200 dollar chromebooks suck. To get good ones, youll be paying probably double that price and that's not a price that everyone can afford, especially for something given to a kid. And used market sucks for laptops, especially for cheap ones, they are usually beat to hell or used so hard things are just shit(damaged, broken, etc). I'd never give a kid a laptop that is 400-500+ for every day use, they destroy everything way too easily and not gonna toss hard earned cash at something for them to break. Rather run risk of losing say 200-250 bucks than say 350-450 for them breaking a fancier cheap laptop/used laptop just because it was "a bit faster."
Cheap laptops have a use, even this one, just not a use for everyone. Even 100-150 bucks more is hard for many to afford. That's why lots are using 100-200 dollar or less smartphones that exist because they just can't afford better versions. Is it shit, yep, is it slow, yep, but it will load websites(granted slower), will word process, which is all a school kid needs or anyone who just doesn't do much on a pc.
at this Budget buy used. you can find good options (atleast better than the hp stream) for that price.
Buy used then. Why would you lower your standard to "budget" options when you can have better experiences with yesterday's fine offers?
10:10 I disagree. In my experience an average consumer who finds the laptop horrible will buy a different brand next time
I think that an older ThinkPad would be a better than an HP stream... I got my X280 with 8GB RAM and 256GB Storage for like 160€ - it has an i5 from the seventh gen which may be old but I bet it is certainly faster than that celeron from the HP.
Slap Debian with XFCE onto it and it'll run like a dream.
Honestly, it coming with a year of Office would be sick for college students, if it weren't for the fact that many colleges allow you to get office for free for as long as you are enrolled...
I loved my HP Stream when I got it in 2014. Was perfect for just a tiny laptop I could throw in a bag. It ran linux with xfce perfectly and 2G was *just* enough to do even HD youtube back then and light multitasking.
I'm still a big fan of the netbook 11-13 inch form factor, hopefully ARM will make them more viable in the future.
I work at a computer repair shop and i have to BEG people not to get em. plenty do, THEN come to and ask if the laptop was a good purchase, ask me BEFORE please
Those specs are essentially the same as the Gateway GWTC116 series and the Evolve III Maestro laptops that came out in 2019/2020. The laptop is basically a school/college laptop meant to handle very basic functions in a class environment.
Honestly, I absolutely agree this time. Put in even the worst branded 120GB M.2 SSD, any real i3 even if it's 11th Gen and an FHD screen (bonus points for a light version of Linux like Lubuntu, I mean you are only gonna use a browser on that thing anyway) and the experience will be around 5x as good for 50% more cash.
Hell, even Surface book 2's are $150-$180 on ebay and are so much better
Austin really said 13:30 "It's Time We Demand More" when tech geeks cannot be happy even with the latest chipsets and graphic cards.
Tech nerds CANNOT be more demanding LOL They will found anything to complain about.
One thing he didn't mention is that these cheap computers are actually very useful to people who use Linux. By putting a Linux distro on this laptop, you can get better performance and nearly triple the battery life over using it as a Windows device.
12:37 My 1GB HP netbook with an atom processor running Windows 10 is actually faster than that thing 💀
It really isn't
@@yes-mq5xdIt is since windows 10 sucks.
2:15 i love the crumpled up piece of trash next to It
There is a market for laptops like this: light productivity, office work, and light web. Maybe it can be used for light media consumption. If you already have a Windows device at home, I would say to get a cheap Android tablet, like the Lenovo M11 and a keyboard/trackpad case instead of this HP laptop. If you don't have a Windows device at home, and $200 is your budget with tax, then this laptop may be all you have to get and you'll just have to take the sacrifices. As long as you know this laptop's limitations, you'll be fine. The problem is that stores are selling it to do more than it can and that's the problem.
I honestly forgot about HP streams. I bought one back in 2015 for college. It was relatively terrible, yes, but totally serviceable for the light workload I used it for in freshman classes at a community college.
The specs on this thing are basically the same as the school laptops we had in high school and middle school. It should honestly be illegal for Celeron laptops to even be sold to anyone else but schools, they're legitimately the worst CPUs ever made lol.
i feel like at this point laptops need to be seen as just as essential as phones. it ain't even that hard to find a decent laptop for ~$500, i have a dell Inspiron that works fine for games and school, yet a lot of parents refuse to do research before handing their kids a laptop.
That's so strange I've never seen this laptop here in germany.
But it looks like we're not missing much.
i mean, i got an old hp probook with a 6th gen i5, i can guarantee you that it's more useable than that hp stream
I recognized that 24 hour fitness 👀
La Habra lmao
I bought an Acer Cloudbook in 2016 because my laptop died unexpectedly. Lower specs than the Stream, but came with Windows 10. It worked well for a year or two. I could even play Stardew Valley on it. But the more Windows 10 became bloated, the worse the Cloudbook became. Now, I just use it to see what Linux distros I can get to run on it.
I recently found an admittedly used Dell Latitude 3440 for $280. $100 more than this laptop in the video.
*The Dell Latitude has a 13th gen i5 in it, came with 8gb ram, and a 256gb SSD.*
I say this to say that even though I spent $100 more, the used market is the best option for laptops under $300 IMHO.
Honestly in my opinion to be serving the budget end of the market at this point computer manufacturers need to start doing what car companies do and promote their Certified Refurbished models more heavily. A midrange or flagship laptop from 3-4 years ago with a new battery would probably run circles around these ultra budget models and honestly it would probably save manufacturers and retailers money to not have to maintain as many SKUs or deal with excess returns.
I had a version of this a few years ago that came with a Ryzen 3 3300U (or something like that), and a 256gb SSD, I slapped an extra ram stick in there for 8gb and it was a surprisingly decent experience. It still couldn't really game much, but it was fine with multitasking to a point, I could have a half dozen browser tabs, a spotify window, and discord running and it was pretty alright.
The phone comparison; WHY DON'T WE HAVE A DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT ON ALL PHONES YET!?
It makes SO much sense.
There are some Linux phones out that can do this like the PinePhone, but the specs are not that great. Also I think because tablets exist, and can be had for so cheap, that a lot of phone makes don't see the need to put forth the effort to make something like a Samsung DEX mode.
i had this thing as my 1st laptop but it had windows 10, i got it for christmas, at first i thought it was good but issues started appearing everywhere, "Not enough storage" when taking a simple photo was CRAZY, and after being stored for like 2 months its boot time went from approx 30 seconds to OVER 4 MINUTES. Why HP thought it would be a good idea to put an outdated processor in a modern laptop is beyond me. Not even roblox could run at a smooth framerate, even my old ipad 8 at the time outperformed it.
I loved my Asus EEE PC netbook after upgrading memory and storage. A perfect vacation companion to store my photos on and book hotels. At that time.
It always: cheap, small, powerful. But you can only pickup 2.
It always amazes me how quick youtubers in the US and UK shit on any tech that isnt cutting edge lmao
This isnt a critic directed at Austin and I love his content, but me as a third world country viewer would kill for one of those notebooks as i've been wanting one for ages lmao
My only usable computer is an old ASUS Laptop with literally 3 GB of ram while even my phone has 12 GB and I can't even browse the web with such a slow machine
For lightweigth and cheaper there is nothing better than an old Macbook Air 11. Up to this day it is unbeatable in those requirements, without given up on anything.
I bought the Ryzen version of this (3250U), upgraded to 16gb of RAM and I'm quite satisfied with it
People with incredibly tight budgets tend to make bad decisions because the only thing they value is the price tag and not the product itself. That's how you get a market that'll buy literal garbage if it's cheap enough. Couple that with a "free" 1 year trial of Office 365 and you've got the perfect laptop for unassuming parents to buy for their children and scold them afterwards for complaining that the laptop is trash. It's still sold because people buy it.
It's unfortunate that there might never be a steep enough decline in the people buying this to justify better marketing strategies from HP.
In 2009: Microsoft Office 2007 90-day trial
In 2010: Microsoft Office Starter 2010 included (no expiry)
In 2024: Microsoft 365 1-year trial
Come on. The starter editions were light on features but they did work well for that target demographic. I'd say bring it back, but now they're about to kill WordPad as well.
This was my first ever laptop/pc and i remember playing minecraft at 20fps for about 3 or 4 years on it, now i'm running a system i built myself and seeing it again has brought me back to some dark times
I had bought a Lenovo with similar specs years ago, open box deal at a store so even cheaper. It ran Windows poorly, so I installed Ubuntu on it and it ran just fine for a couple of years until certain keys on the keyboard stopped working.
Petition to have this be Austin's daily driver laptop for 3 months
Day 1 and a half of asking you to make a video of the Back Market trade in process 😂 WOULD BE A GREAT VIDEO🙏
I had a £300 version of this with an AMD A6-9225 in 2019. Because of the extra £100 than the cheapest W10, it actually ran decent for the price for a year. It should be illegal to sell e-waste laptops, as they just go into landfill in like a year or two, and when you spend more, you get like 5-10 years out of the device
It exists because Microsoft bought a lot of those Celeron CPUs. They're minimizing their net loss by still selling really low end, outdated CPUS.
Friends that are not tech savvy would buy this. I needed a second smaller 11.6" laptop for travel, so in 2018 i got an HP ProBook x360 256GB storage, 8GB of ram, touch screen, HDMI port, even has an ethernet port, looks close to an HP Stream but has way better performance.
lol wow i just found the HP stream under its new name.... simply HP Laptop, yes thats the name, how do I know its an HP stream in disguise? its specs Windows 11 Home in S mode, Celeron CPU, 4GB ram, 64 GB eMMC storage, 14" screen, and its the cheapest laptop on the HP website $200
Just a note, this computer is as expensive as a used Lenovo Thinkpad with older i5, 512GB M.2 SSD and 1080p screen. It is just a manufactured E-Waste, that was created just as a comparison to the more expensive models.
People keep buying this E-Waste because there's no longer an affordable option on the market that isn't trash. People who only have $300-$400 for a computer can't find anything that's not junk. I spent $500 on my laptop 5 years ago and it's still decent now. Today you'd be spending closer to $800 to get you anything that's going to be useable a few years down the road. Tech should be getting cheaper, but it just keeps going up.
I purchased a steam in 2015 as my first laptop and it actually kickstarted a lot for me. Although I remember it came with 32gb or storage and came with windows 10. I’m forever grateful to it even though if it broke down two years later
In 2014 this made sense kind-of for those looking for the absolutely cheap laptops to use only for Word or something. 10 years later, wherein the latest Chromebooks can run offline apps too thanks to Android or Linux, and with Chromebooks having sales for only $250 for laptops with at least 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, with FHD displays, this makes zero sense.
And yes, you can find Chromebooks with 4GB RAM and 64GB of Storage like the Lenovo Duet 3, but Chrome OS is far, far lighter than a fat Windows 11. Then there's the cheapest iPad that for a hundred dollars more, you're getting a hell lot more (again, to quote you, what's the use of a full fat OS if you can't run it all).
Another argument to demand better laptops from these manufacturers: these cheap laptops are basically e-waste within 1, if not at most 2 years. Too slow, almost no upgrades possible and cannot be repaired if something breaks.
By getting a slightly better laptop, like the $320 ones mentioned in this video, you'll likely do 3-4 years with it, thus wasting a lot less of the earth's valuable resources.
As a former bestbuy employee i tried to avoid selling that laptop at all cost even though we were told to push it. I always almost begged customers to spend an extra $100 for a laptop that is 4x better. The only time that laptop to me was a good deal was when they would go on sale for $110. The only thing that made it worth the money was a 1 year membership. Within 3 months it will run slower than a turtle.
I think "just spend more" is a poor argument since it might be "worth it" in wealthy western countries but in much of the world an extra $100 might be a quarter of your monthly pay if not more. Used market is a much more reasonable alternative, these days a laptop with an i5 from 5 years ago and 16gb of ram will easily cost just as much while providing immensely better performance
Still feeling under the weather? Hope you gwt well soon man. Thnx for the upload
While it might suck to run windows, it'd probably run Debian or Arch just fine.
Maybe they have sooooo many parts unique to that system that they just have to keep producing them until they can scrap the rest of them. I got a decent chromebook during Prime Days one year and it's perfect for the way my husband uses it, and he's actually that target market for this computer - really only needs an internet appliance. His iPad was fine for what he used it for, but got too old for updates and the battery wouldnt' hold a charge, but he did need something. Something told me to shy away from that HP Cheapo.
Just to share a fun fact, you can get a 15 inch or 13 inch MacBook Pro from 2013/2014 and use a patcher to get a newer version of MacOS for around $200. It won’t be comparable to the newer MacBooks of the recent years, but it would definitely be better than the HP laptop 14.
I bought a desktop in 1994 with 4 megabytes of RAM for $1800 and 170 megabytes hard drive. No speakers no cd drive no sound card. So that is a much better deal now than then😊
I bought a Lenovo Chromebook for about $160 a couple of years ago, and it is still my main laptop. It has a foldable display with an IPS touchscreen, 8GB or RAM, and i3 processor and I upgraded to the storage myself. There is literally no reason to buy something like this when you can get a Chromebook, I even do light gaming on Steam (Mainly Sims 4 and older games like Bioshock) and via emulation; it has been a very good machine and eye opening for how solid Chromebooks are nowadays.
I bought, about 6 months ago, a Lenovo with a 5500U processor, 8gb of ram, which is upgradable to 16, an NVME drive and an upgradeable wifi chip. For the same price.
I have an HP Stream myself, I got it from the thrift store for a few dollars. Only 32GB Storage. Windows was pretty much unusable, but Linux Mint runs great on it. I use it for watching movies and TV Shows stored on my file server.
I think I can give some context to how slow a system with 4GB of RAM and a celeron is in 24'. I have a Windows 11 laptop with an i3, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and still Windows crawls into a halt sometimes.
And when I used a Chromebook back in highschool, we prob spend 25%-50%(class time) just logging in.
Either case, ChromeOS is demanding but Windows is very demanding.
I got a "cheap" hp laptop from walmart for $400 and i ran that thing into the dirt tbh.(love my baby though) Like im now traveling to look for a new ssd for it. And i lowkey wanna convince my dad to get me some extra ram....but idk
Educational institutes eat up these cheap branded laptops for schools and some colleges. I think the consumer that it's targeted at is, as you said, parents looking for the cheapest option with a reputable logo.
I have the same one but higher end! I never knew how low end they could possibly get!
Ps mine has an 11th gen Intel core i5 and 8gb ram and 256gb ssd
Okay, now it's my turn to rant... I have a HP stream that my sister bought about 6 years ago. The screen started flickering and would not display anything. I actually went through the trouble of replacing the display cable for her. And then a couple of months later... it started flickering again (crap design)! I bought her a used laptop off ebay for $95. I now have installed Linux Mint XFCE on it, and it's fairly useful for browsing the web. A side note: I find it hilarious that Windows 11 supports this junk laptop, and yet they won't support older CPU's.
You can install windows 11 on unsupported laptops. There are tutorials online. By the way buy her some old MacBook Pro from 2008 or 2013. They are way better and have great sound and display quality. The whole laptop is aluminium
@@Techlevel1534. I appreciate the advice, and I'll keep that in mind for next time. But for now, she is happy with her current laptop. But one thing I have to say is, I am not nearly as familiar with fixing MacBooks as I am Windows laptops. Aren't MacBooks a little bit more a pain to fix?
I’m sure some parents pick this as baby’s first laptop, but I think old people are the real reason these devices are still on the market. As a former Best Buy employee, I can tell you they get a lot of elderly customers looking for the cheapest laptop available, usually declaring to the salesperson that they’re not a gamer. Anyway GamePass would probably work fine if you stick to cloud gaming.
Got my significant other through undergrad back in 2013-2016. Needed Google docs and notepad basically. Back then you could get it on sale at like 100-150 during black Friday. This replaced her dying 17" MacBook. She was happy with it as it was way lighter, battery life was ridiculous and she commuted to and from school. I'm going to have to dig it out and run Linux on it maybe
I used to work at OD around the time these came about and they were what made me want to ro stop being a salesperson. I had no qualms about telling people it was a bad purchase, especially as long-term product, even on a tight budget. I would always push Chromebooks or even mid-level tablets for school work. The fact they're still making these in today's day and age speaks volumes about how HP and other "reputable" brands push crappy products above everything.
Man I wanted a netbook SO bad when they came out. A full featured OS in something that small. Now it’s super laughable.
Side note I just sold a laptop for $15 on Facebook marketplace. Bout it for $20 so I could run some update software on a laser cutting machine that’s software wouldn’t run on MacOS and I didn’t want to haul my desktop PC to the laser. I had forgotten how bad of a build quality so many budget laptops have. It was so plasticy and awful from trying to open it, to the keyboard and clicking the trackpad. I’ve been pampered by Apple products and higher end PC stuff for years. I didn’t realize that companies still made stuff that low quality.
I got an ASUS - Vivobook 14" Laptop with a Core i3, 8GB ram and 128GB SSD. For $200. I got it because it weighs about 3 lb. So I can take it with me. Emails and text messages are fine being written on a phone or tablet but for longer documents a cheap laptop is where it's at.
I believe over at Microcenter they have a 14" Gateway Windows 11 laptop with a Ryzen 7 3700U, 16gb of memory and a 1TB SSD for like $300 which is an alright and could play some games well enough.
yeah second i saw it was an HP Stream i already knew how it was gonna go. That being said if you install Linux on them they actually do perform noticeably better (Had an Asus Flip with the N4020 mounted to the wall for accessing inventory)
my work still uses pagers which became popular in the 1980's. So yeah that beats the stream