HP Chromebook 11 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 15, 2013 2:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- HP
- Chrome OS
- Chromebook
WiFi & Performance
WiFi on the Chromebook 11 is similarly well executed. There’s a 2-stream dual-band 802.11n controller inside, capable of negotiating at up to 300Mbps link rates. Given how uncommon finding 5GHz WiFi support was in cheap PCs from not too long ago, it’s good to see HP/Google choose properly here.
About my only complaint hardware wise on the Chromebook 11 is its SoC. HP settled on the same Exynos 5250 SoC that Samsung used in last year’s 11.6-inch Chromebook. Unfortunately, the design hasn’t aged well. Truth be told, there are far better options today than a dual-core 32nm 1.7GHz Cortex A15 design. I would’ve loved to have seen Bay Trail in the Chromebook 11, or at least a Snapdragon 800. I’ll get to the power consumption discussion in a moment, but performance of the Chromebook 11 really needs work. For single tasking, the 5250 is ok. Hitting heavier websites or scrolling while having a graph search overlay in Facebook will cause serious drops in UI frame rate.
Playing back HD videos in YouTube is borderline too much for the machine. If you try to play videos in the background while you browse the web, expect serious lag on the input front. I ran Kraken both with and without a background YouTube video playing just to show the impact of multitasking on performance:
| Multitasking Performance on Chromebook 11 | |||||||||||
| Kraken | Kraken + YouTube Video Playback | % Increase in Kraken Completion Time | |||||||||
| HP Chromebook 11 | 5262.4 ms | 10997.3 ms | 109% | ||||||||
Kraken took over twice as long to complete with YouTube actively playing in the background. The Chromebook 11 either needs more cores or better cores (or both) if you're going to be doing any sort of real multitasking/heavy web browsing.
Basic word processing using Google Docs is fine on the Chromebook 11, but again you need to make sure that you don’t have anything too CPU intensive in the background. Multitasking with Pandora is ok thankfully.
Our traditional js benchmark suite shows the relatively decent performance of Chrome + ARM's Cortex A15 at lightly threaded workloads. Single tasking shouldn't be a problem for this platform, it's the heavier workloads that will be problematic.
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lmcd - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
"a reminder of just how much power a pair of ARM Cortex A15 cores can draw under load"I originally thought that line had to be wrong because there's no way they'd release a Chromebook with the same processor.
Whoops.
Quite frankly I'm disappointed and even a little mad this isn't an Exynos 5420. Perfect application for that little bugger.
dude_ur_getting_a_dell - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Why does the author keep crediting Google for every feature and design decision of this chromebook? Sure it uses Google Chrome, but I'm pretty sure HP deserves at least some of the credit for the final product.Davidjan - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Really cool!!! Meenova MicroSD reader works on it!!! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyfei/mini-m...kakaoriginal - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - link
Is it possible to install something else? Like Windows or Linux?ECIT - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - link
Give Google and their hardware partners credit for sticking with the Chromebook, despite a lot of resistance. The more improvements they make, the more the Chromebook becomes attractive to more users.But what about Chromebook users that need to access Windows applications like Microsoft Office, or that want to connect to work applications like CRM and ERP from home? They can try products like Ericom AccessNow, an HTML5 RDP solution that enables Chromebook users to connect to Terminal Servers and/or VDI virtual desktops, and run Windows applications or desktops in a browser tab.
There's nothing to install on the Chromebook, so AccessNow is easy to deploy and manage.
For an online, interactive demo, open your Chrome browser and visit:
http://www.ericom.com/demo_AccessNow.asp?URL_ID=70...
Please note that I work for Ericom
OBLAMA2009 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
the cpu ruins this thing, it wont compete with bay trail stuff, i dont know why they even came out with shit like thisheartinpiece - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I was also expecting a quad core Exynos rather than the Dual core.I would have been very eager to get myself this chromebook if it featured the Exynos 5420... But I guess that's not the case, so I better just wait...
spejr - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
They should exchange that frame for battery, cpu, and less bulk. Now its like a high quality laptop with a tablet battery and a telephone processor. Like a Model S with Volt internals -- like the cadillac EV: no range or power, but looks and feel good, exempt for the driving.Give us a fanless, thin, light, all plastic, 1080p, 11", snapdragon 800, Chromebook! It is cheep, it could just as well feel cheap, as long as its snappy and thin/light.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I'd like more info on whether this has an offline office suite. Obviously Google Docs (and Microsoft/Apple's equivalents) should work online, but that doesn't cut it for many (most) uses.The article says many "apps" can be used offline and outside a traditional looking browser, but I'm wondering if that includes Google Docs, and whether you can use it in a true offline mode that doesn't require syncing.
If you can, Chrome OS might actually be perfect for my mom, as she couldn't screw it up and it's cheap. I plan on getting a Surface 2 for her though probably...
carlwu - Sunday, October 20, 2013 - link
Love my Chromebook11. What I do not like though is the stuttering audio while browsing. Surely audio isn't taxing the processor that even casual browsing affects it? I hope they have a patch for this.Most pleased with the excellent display, solid keyboard, and audio that is plenty loud.