laptop HP Stream 11 review,notebook

Even were there nothing else to recommend the HP Stream 11, its eye-catching design would win it plenty of fans. HP’s 11.6in, Windows 8.1 with Bing budget laptop comes in a choice of vibrant blue or magenta finishes, with a slimline chassis that measures just under 20mm thick and weighs only 1.29kg.Even were there nothing else to recommend the HP Stream 11, its eye-catching design would win it plenty of fans. HP’s 11.6in, Windows 8.1 with Bing budget laptop comes in a choice of vibrant blue or magenta finishes, with a slimline chassis that measures just under 20mm thick and weighs only 1.29kg.The design is stable and well balanced, both on the desk and on the lap. While we’re not completely sure about the graduated colours on the keyboard surround, there’s an irresistible sense of fun about the styling.

The good news continues when you power it up. The 11.6in screen has the usual 1,366 x 768 resolution, but it’s one of the best displays on test, with decent viewing angles, a maximum brightness of 261cd/m2 and reasonably accurate colours. It’s bested by the Toshiba Chromebook 2’s budget-baffling Full HD screen, but it's as good as it gets at this lower price. On a £400 laptop, we might complain about crushed blacks, and the contrast is nothing to write home about, but we’re prepared to cut this sub-£180 laptop some slack.

There’s Dolby DTS branding on the HP’s speakers, but we were a little disappointed with audio quality. While there’s a bit more low-range power and depth of tone than with many small laptops, it’s still tinny and heavy on the mid-range, with a tendency to distort if you push up the volume.

HP Stream 11 review: core hardware

In terms of specifications, the Stream 11 is standard Bing laptop fare, with an Intel Celeron N2840 processor and 2GB of RAM. The dual-core Bay Trail-M CPU is fine for mainstream applications and will even make a good fist of more demanding apps, although video-editing, high-end graphics apps and the latest games are still firmly off the menu.

The HP scored 0.4 in our Real World Benchmarks, which is slightly faster than the Toshiba Satellite CL10-B, however, and came closest to the Toshiba Chromebook 2 in the Peacekeeper browser-based test. It feels very snappy in everyday use.

Battery life sees the HP edge ahead of the CL10-B, with nearly ten hours in our light-use test and nearly six hours in our heavy-use benchmark - enough juice to get most people through a working day. Basically, what we have here is a good-looking, well-built laptop with a decent screen and reasonable battery life at a price that shouldn’t be feasible.