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HP Chromebook 11 Review
- rayiner 13y agoThe dreadful battery life is interesting: "Despite using relatively power efficient hardware and being paired with a 30Wh internal battery, the Chromebook 11 barely lasted 5.4 hours in our web browsing battery life test. Local video playback was even worse at 4.8 hours." The "web browsing battery life test" in this article is the same one as in here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7117/haswell-ult-investigation http://www.anandtech.com/show/7117/haswell-ult-investigation. Note how the iPad 4 gets 9.48 hours on both tests. On that test, the 11" MBA gets over 11 hours, despite having less than a 25% larger battery and using Core i5 processors. The 13" MBA gets over 14 hours, though it has an 80% larger battery (but has to drive a 30% larger screen). This suggests that Samsung's Exynos 5 is extremely power-hungry or Chrome OS's power optimization is extremely bad. As an aside, Apple/Intel's phenomenal battery life performance with the latest MBA signals to me the beginning of the end for ARM. If we're getting to the point where a current-generation Haswell laptop CPU is putting up light workload power draw comparable to a flagship A15 tablet chip, that's not a positive thing for ARM. Heck, even if you just compare the iPad 4 with the MBA 11", the writing seems to be on the wall. The iPad has a substantially bigger battery than the MBA, while driving a smaller (albeit more pixel-dense and power hungry) screen. And yet the MBA totally holds its own on the battery life test.
- devx 13y agoSamsung's Chromebook had about the same battery life, if not a bit bigger, and achieved that with I think half the battery size. So whatever is going on now, is probably HP or Google's fault. Also, I think you're confusing things. Are you referring to this? http://anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-review-13inch/6 http://anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-review-1... That shows 11 hours in "light workload". Unfortunately, starting with this year, Apple stopped giving "real" numbers for its Macbook battery life, and started giving battery life for "minimum workloads" like the whole laptop industry has done for more than a decade. The "real" battery life is closer to that "medium workload" (Haswell gave about a 50 percent boost compared to last year's Macbooks). With medium workload, it's 9 hours, with a 50Whr battery (according to you, I didn't check), so at 30Whr, that would normalize it at around 6.7 hours. Still good, but nowhere as impressive as you made it sound at first. I'll grant you this. The decision to use a last-gen chip in this Chromebook wasn't a very smart one, and that's probably HP's fault. Mediocre companies like HP with mediocre employees and mediocre middle management tend to be very slow about adopting new technologies in their products, which is why you never see them come out with some cutting edge tech first.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- fromanator 13y agoThe power drain could also be from poorly optimized supporting chips/shipsets like microcontrolers, WiFi Cards, and other periphery devices.
- blinkingled 13y agoThe 13" Air has a 54Wh battery compared to the almost half capacity 30Wh battery of the ChromeBook. So that's almost half the battery life on almost half the battery capacity. Not exactly dreadful but could get better. With Haswell Intel got the power draw at idle down to a very good level. So the major power sucker is still the screen. But given the Chromebook has a smaller screen and less powerful SoC the ChromeBook should in theory get little better battery life than it does. That one we can chalk up to the 3.4 Linux kernel that the ChromeBook is using and OS X / Safari generally always being ahead in power use department. I think we'll see the battery life get better with the newer Haswell Chrome books when Google switches to a more recent Linux kernel.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- TylerE 13y agoInteresting way to twist the numbers. To be accurate: The Chromebook gets 38.5% of the battery life with 55.5% of the battery capacity. That's quite a bit different than the 1:1 ratio you imply, more like 0.7:1. Put yet another way, with the MBA13's battery, the Chromebook would last 9.7 hours. With the Chromebook's batter, the MBA would last 7.8 hours.
- blinkingled 13y agoTwist? If I had implied 1:1 - why do you think I spent the next paragraph explaining the difference? Also 0.7:1 isn't exactly dreadful - so that point stands.
- TylerE 13y ago"So that's almost half the battery life on almost half the battery capacity." If that's not implying a 1:1 ratio I don't know what is.
- blinkingled 13y ago
- Touche 13y agoI bet ChromeOS is just not optimized for ARM. The original CR48 got incredible battery life (more than 10 hours), as did the Series 5 (the first for-sale Chromebook). Both of those used Atom processors. Since the majority of Chrome use is on the desktop with x86 computers, my guess is that this is the reason.
- kllrnohj 13y ago> This suggests that Samsung's Exynos 5 is extremely power-hungry or Chrome OS's power optimization is extremely bad. I'm betting it's Chrome OS. The Nexus 10 also runs the Exynos 5, same exact chip, yet it gets 9+ hours of web browsing battery life and does it with a 2560x1600 screen.
- Recoil42 13y agoHow big is the battery on the Nexus 10?
- taopao 13y agoNexus 10: 9000 mAh HP Chromebook 11: 2300 mAh ^^ I'm betting it's this.
- rayiner 13y agoYou can't compare battery ratings in milliamp hours unless you know that the load voltage is the same for both.
- bronson 13y agoOf course you can. If you read some datasheets you'll see that's how batteries are rated.
- rayiner 13y agoBatteries are rated in milliamp hours at a given voltage. You can't directly compare ratings in milliamp hours without accounting for the voltage. Watt-hour ratings, in contrast, bake assumptions about the average battery voltage into the rating, and thus can be compared directly even between batteries having different voltages. In this case, it's common sense. There is no way a Nexus 10 has a battery four times as large as an 11.6" notebook.
- kllrnohj 13y agoNexus 10 has a 22.75Wh battery, the HP Chromebook's is 30Wh. Chromebook has a bigger battery than the N10, not a smaller one. Probably also a factor in why the Chromebook tips the scales at 2.3lbs vs. the N10's 1.3lbs.
- ihsw 13y agoThe article touches on open-source OS alternatives and touts ChromeOS as one of them, however its open nature is only skin deep -- the vast majority of your activities occur within the confines of Google's ecosystem (or some other closed-source ecosystem). This is a mostly philosophical issue due to the nature of ChromeOS (everything is supposed to be run from the browser), however it shouldn't be forgotten that this device isn't nearly indicative of any consumer Linux revolution.
- samspenc 13y ago100% agreed. As a developer though, I'm increasingly tempted to get one of these Chromebooks and put crouton+Ubuntu on it for my dev tasks. :)
- Touche 13y ago> The article touches on open-source OS alternatives and touts ChromeOS as one of them, however its open nature is only skin deep -- the vast majority of your activities occur within the confines of Google's ecosystem (or some other closed-source ecosystem). That's up to the individual. You can exclusively use web services running on your own servers if you so choose.
- abrowne 13y agoLike run your own Google server so you can create an account and log in? (I'll give you that after logging in you could probably exclusively use your own services. But that's a big exception.)
- Touche 13y agoThe parent was talking about open source alternatives to Chrome OS, which is Chromium OS, which doesn't require a Google account.
- abrowne 13y agoCan you log in to Chromium OS without a Google account? I tried it (Hexxeh build) before I got my Cr-48, and I don't remember being able to then, but that was a while ago now.
- hmart 13y agoSo it's worth to buy this computer as a ssh webdev machine?
- jbigelow76 13y agoDoesn't sound like it given the battery life. Except for short coding sessions it sounds like you would be tethered to a nearby power source, and if that's the case why not use a more full featured machine?
- modarts 13y agoSeriously, i'm trying pretty hard to imagine which use cases this device makes any sense. It seems to have a lot of the same limitations that turned consumers away from the original "netbook" devices (underpowered, poor battery performance, awkward form factor, etc)
- tomkarlo 13y agoHaving handled one, it's a lot nicer than the netbooks are. The performance is pretty good, the form factor is much more comfortable in terms of screen size and keyboard size, and the build quality is pretty high. While I wouldn't use one myself (because I want Photoshop / Lightroom), it seems like a great device as school / homework laptop for a grade schooler, for example, or the grandparents use case. Just want to check your email and browse some web pages with zero hassle? This is perfect for that.
- peregrine 13y agoProbably not, the previous Samsung 250 Chromebook had serious troubles with having multiple tabs open and having a smooth typing speed over ssh.
- darklajid 13y agoI considered the same and will pass. - battery life - the like-usb-but-not-really charger is the biggest disappointment for me - performance sounds horrible (What, cannot even watch a YT video?)
- GoofballJones 13y agoI'm intrigued by using Chrome OS, but the choices of Chromebooks is pretty sparse. You either have the ultra-high-end of the Chromebook Pixel that costs as much as a Macbook Air 13", or you have the ultra cheap and cheap-feeling low end. Why can't we get a mid-range one, with a decent keyboard, decent IPS screen (doesn't have to be touch-screen), long battery life with Haswell chip and USB 3. Yes yes...we can just buy a laptop and run Chrome on it, but it's not the same. No ultra-fast boot-ups, no security inherent in Chrome OS itself etc.
- r00fus 13y agoI imagine if Google weren't effectively subsidizing ChromeOS machines (by not charging for ChromeOS, and instead hoping you'll spend more time on their web properties and ads), most of these machines would cost a bit more. All the things you mentioned cost money. There are psychological barriers (marketing speak: price points) where people make different decisions. For example, $500 is a magic point where something stops being either affordable/inexpensive/casual expense (depending on your financial situation) and becomes unaffordable/expensive/notable.
- tomkarlo 13y agoThe average price for a Windows 8 laptop last Q4 was ~$430... so at $280 they're about $150 under that. I suspect that if you start getting close to that $430 mark you lose some of the willingness of consumers to try something other than Windows.
- Touche 13y agoHP is also releasing a slightly higher class 14" with Haswell. I think you probably want something in the $500-$800 range though, and yes that's currently underserved. Chromebooks were originally designed to be cheap and disposable but there now seems to be more of a demand for better quality machines and no one's yet stepped up to fill that void.
- davidgerard 13y agoI used to live on my Dell Mini 9, until it died of crappy netbook hardware (now I use a work Toshiba I've also beaten the crap out of). How easy are these things to Xubuntu?
- kunai 13y agoYou don't need to install Xubuntu; you just run XFCE on top of Ubuntu in a chroot environment with crouton and you have a full Linux desktop at your fingertips.
- davidgerard 13y agoThat definitely counts!
- pearjuice 13y agoSo no _real_ Linux? As in on a direct HD partition without chroot?
- kunai 13y agoYou can baremetal a full Ubuntu install, but chroot is easier and lets you preserve some niceties of Chrome OS (fastboot, easy interface when you don't need full Linux, etc...). It's preference. If you want to run Linux straight, you can install Chrubuntu in a pinch, but crouton is much easier.
- pearjuice 13y agoI find the limitation of Ubuntu very uncomfortable. With most computers you can boot an ISO of any OS without major hassle but those Chromebooks really limit your movement span.
- kunai 13y agoHP really killed it with this notebook, but I can't help think that it would be even better with Bay Trail. Running crouton w/ Gnome 3 on native x86 when I need it and Chrome OS when I don't is extremely appealing to me as a Linux user and developer.
- tmzt 13y agoI'm really confused by the battery life. My Samsung ARM Chromebook last a really long time with only intermittent charging at home. It's also perfectly usable for SSH access to my dedicated server and works well on wifi with my phone and hotspot. I would hope that Google is improving battery life on their flagship devices, not reducing it, perception is everything. I also hope that they keep an ARM model and don't let Intel's marketing dollars overwhelm their partners, while not delivering a comparable battery life experience. I look forward to replacing this with a quad-core processor with AArch64 support, and hopefully KVM.
- technosmurf 13y agoI'm surprised that Anand didn't mention anything about the trackpad. The Verge's impression is that it's pretty terrible: "The trackpad, on the other hand, is pretty bad. It’s sticky and plastic, and doesn’t allow your finger to glide smoothly at all; my fingers jittered around as I tried to move the cursor, and the screen jittered even worse as I tried to scroll with two fingers or pinch to zoom on the screen. It’s a frustrating change from the smooth, responsive Chromebook Pixel, which got all this right — and had a touchscreen too, just in case. Of course, the Pixel is also six times the price." http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/10/4822576/hp-chromebook-11-review http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/10/4822576/hp-chromebook-11-...
- jimsilverman 13y agoyeah, i was looking for his take on this. if it's anything like The Verge's account, it's a dealbreaker.
- bryanlarsen 13y agoHe did make one comment in the summary: "and even the clickpad isn’t as bad as it is on far more expensive PCs." Not sure what to read into that.
- pearjuice 13y agoI find a lack of Ethernet port slightly if not very disturbing. For a device which requires an internet connection most if not all of the time, why is the only connectivity module wireless access?
- tomkarlo 13y agoBecause you can probably buy a USB ethernet adaptor, and hardly anyone uses wired ethernet with a laptop anymore - that's why lots of other laptops have dropped it. Ethernet is a relatively large connector and the port itself can be hard to integrate into current laptop form factors.
- MAGZine 13y agodo you plug your phone in?
- pearjuice 13y agoIf it had Ethernet-like connectivity, yes.
- jasonpeacock 13y agoBecause everyone uses WIFI. Do you have an ethernet port in every room of your house? And you actually plug in your laptop every time you sit down in each room of your house? Do you plug into ethernet at the coffee shop? Airport? Friend's house? Library? Doctor's office? No, neither do I. That's why it doesn't have an ethernet port, just like your smartphone doesn't have one.
- hengheng 13y agoSo it's an entry level computer, probably not targeted towards us but more an e-mail and google machine for our grandparents. Which is fine. Serious question though: Can it print?
- jimsilverman 13y agoyes. Google Cloud Print: http://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/ http://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/
- hengheng 13y agoThis looks way better than I had in mind. Thanks!
- reledi 13y agoFor me, something like Google Cloud Print is awesome. For my mom, it doesn't cut it. She bought the $250 Chromebook and is constantly complaining that she can't print her documents and wants to get a new laptop. She doesn't want to purchase a cloud-ready printer because she already owns a printer, and she doesn't have another computer to leave on and connected to her printer (which is the alternative).
- venomsnake 13y agoHmm ... seems like raspberry pi can make a lot of sense in that case. You put the printer behind it. Is it possible?
- reledi 13y agoGreat idea! Turns out it's possible: http://www.howtogeek.com/169566/how-to-turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-a-google-cloud-print-server/ http://www.howtogeek.com/169566/how-to-turn-a-raspberry-pi-i...
- cjbprime 13y agoThis is going to sound like one of those self-entitled tech employee tweets, but I wish there was a button I could push that would just remove mention of laptops with less than 1920x1080 resolution from my view of the internet.
- netcan 13y agoTo me, there are two interesting ends of the spectrum. The high end (eg new MBPr) and the low end. Those are where the future comes from.
- knodi 13y agowhy would anyone want to buy a chromebook? Price point?
- netcan 13y agoGoogle's done a good job here, obviously. This seems like a remarkably solid piece of hardware, especially at <$300 from a software company. These things are selling. but.. ..Right now, if you launch a revolutionizing gadget category its hard not to get compared and contrasted to Apple. There some hard to define (but I'll try) things that Apple is good at in a way that so few companies are. Apple are so much better at "concepts." Take "apps" as an example. An App is a very clearly defined thing in iOS land. It comes from the app store. It lives on your homescreen. You load data into it via itunes (this part is kinda sucky). When you click it, it's open. When you close it it's closed. There are no shortcuts and no invisible system apps that don't have an icon. The icon is the app. You remove it and the app is gone. If you see two icons, you have two apps. Solid concept (metaphor, whatever). Apple are absolutely anal about this. They will forgo functionality in order to protect the concept. Android/Google, are willing to break the app concept in order to add functionality. That means your new music app can play your music and it can have a nifty widget. It also mean that your Aunt can no longer tell you what apps she has. Pros and Cons. Chrome, is built from an assumption that a web browser in a box will be all you need by 2013. Turns out it's not. Some things are easier or nicer to do in an app. More importantly, allowing users to install apps doesn't necessarily mean toolbar-mallware-windows chaos on Aunt Jennie's computer. Now that iOS and Android solved that problem, not allowing apps seem silly and restrictive, even for Aunt Jennie. Problem. Luckily Google is not Apple and they can bend the chrome concept (it's a browser). "You can finally run applications offline and outside of a browser window.. .. list of offline applications is woefully short at this point" So anyway, apps. What is a Chrome OS app? Is it a website that uses some chrome OS extra goodies? Is it just a shortcut to a websapp? I google Chrome OS app to see this woefully short list. I get here: https://www.google.ie/intl/en/chrome/webstore/apps-gtd.html https://www.google.ie/intl/en/chrome/webstore/apps-gtd.html. "Chrome Apps For Your Desktop" My OSX desktop?.. inside the chrome browser? is my Chromebook my desktop? click around - LAUNCH YOUR APPS : "Chrome Apps have a new Home" - picture of a chromebook. Looks promising. Most of the other links seem to be for Chrome-the-browser though. A few for chrome-the-thing-that-plugs-into-your-TV-I-think. "You will need Google Chrome to install most apps" WTF is "Chrome" anyway? Here's a confusing concept. It feels more like a department than a product line. How is a Chromecast app related to a Chromebook app or a Chrome OS app? What does it have to do with the play store? How do I find out if there is a Chrome OS viber app? What do I google? Another place where Apple is clean is use cases. If you look at magazine-brochures for computer stores the Dells, Acers & Lentos are inconveniently categorized into "recommended for" groups or somesuch. Recommended for email, students, games. The computers don't cooperate and I can imagine the conversation before printing these things. "Just Say it's like the Acer aspire V3-551 but AMD." Apple's line up categorizes itself. A chromebook is a good 'secondary' machine. It's also *almost" everything Aunt Genie needs (she needs Skype and the kobo bookstore) which is great. She can get an Acer for Skype and the kobo bookstore. It isn't a hub. So if you want to download stuff from my camera and put it on your iphone, it's a tricky situation. I suspect that if Apple are considering entering into this market with an iOS powered netbook or similar, they are wrestling with the question of where this fits. Is it a hub that can replace OSX for some people or is it a secondary device that expects you to have a hub someplace else. iOS devices are getting more independent of their hubs, so maybe time will moot that problem. I don't mean to single out Google. They built a great product. They are looking to solve the problems of the 50% of home users who can't handle windows and hate computers and will always buy the cheapest option. Apps came out of nowhere. Most companies are just as bad at this stuff. Marketing requires a surprising level of discipline.
- 6ren 13y agoThis HP Chromebook 11 seems very similar to the Samsung Chromebook in specs. Both use Exynos 5250, 11" screen etc. The Acer C7 Chromebook (Celeron) was much better performing. Running some javascript graphics, it seemed at least twice as fast to me. But it weighed 50% more (~1.5kg). However, the new Acer C720 Chromebook is down to ~1kg, and it's even faster, using a Haswell CPU (22nm). http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/acers-c720-chromebook-launched-thinner-longer-lasting-and-haswell/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/acers-c720-chromebook... And google claims 8.5 hours http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.html#ac-c720 http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.htm... (cf 6 hours claimed for the HP Chromebook 11.)
- jemeshsu 13y agoAcer C720 at $249: 11.6" matte 1366×768 screen, 16GB SSD, 4GB RAM, dual-band 802.11n, Haswell-based Celeron 2955U 1.4GHz dual-core CPU. HP Chromebook 11 at $279: 11.6" IPS 1366 x 768, Samsung Exynos 5250 dual-core Cortex A15 1.7GHz + ARM Mali-T604 GPU, dual-band 802.11n, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 16GB SSD. Acer chromebook is more attractive by spec.
- czhiddy 13y ago"Google is particularly proud of the lack of any visible vents, screws or speakers." "Google uses the bottom plate as a heat spreader with a bit of thermal interface material making direct contact to the Exynos 5250 SoC." "It used to be that you’d have to spend tons of money to get a notebook with a good keyboard, Google seems devoted to fixing that." Interesting how a search for "HP" results in almost no hits in the article text. The quotes above suggest that Google designed the device and HP was nothing more than a dumb OEM. While they've certainly stumbled big time in recent years, I'd still expect their hardware design / manufacturing knowledge to dwarf Google's.
- netcan 13y agoI agree on paper. That said, most google-ish hardware has been up to a pretty decent standard. Their brand on a piece of hardware means more to me than HP's.