picked up an HP Chromebook 14 (16GB/4GB) - my first thoughts

[chenks]

disclaimer - i'm coming from a 2011 macbook pro, so my comparisons are based on that.

essentially when i wiped and re-installed my MBP i realised that all i really needed to install was Chrome, that was a tell-tale sign that the MBP was overkill for was i was doing.

picked up a 16GB/4GB HP Chromebook 14.
not seeing any real performance issues at all, everything seems to be a quick as it should be.
keyboard is fine, as is the trackpad.

sound is just "ok" - a tad muffled due to the placement of the speakers underneath the keyboard.

the display, however, is really poor.
it seems you need to find the angle sweet spot to get any decent output from it.
colours get washed out with the bat of an eyelid.
watching a video side-by-side on the MBP and you can clearly see how poor the colour reproduction is on the chromebook.
with no settings other than brightness it seems that it's something you need to live with.

i noticed a setting that lets you increase the resolution from the standard 1366x768 to 1536x846, however when using that the text isn't as crips (almost fuzzy) which negates the bonus of having a little more screen real estate.

the only issue downside i can see so far, and isn't related to the HP but probably Chome OS in general, is that i have some small videos stored in drive, but to play them it seems it has to download them completely first before playing - it doesn't "stream" them.
also, codec support seems a but sporadic, mp4/mov files play fine, but a few AVI's don't (audio but no video).

 

[B. Diddy]

I agree, the screen isn't terrific, but it's an improvement over my Acer C720 (which is still fine for me). And it's about as good if not better than the $330 Win 8.1 Toshiba Satellite laptop that I have. I didn't expect any kind of dazzling screen for the price--I just like the overall package!

 

[chenks]

unfortunately the screen may be a show stopper for me.
to say it "isn't terrific" is a major understatement.
the screen is very poor.

considering returning it.

 

[kalo88]

Its all relative to price, you cannot compare it to a laptop costing 4-5x more and expect the same I'm afraid. There's only so much you can get for such a small amount of money.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Algus]

Yeah, the screen is real garbage. It is my one complaint about the HP 14. I've an eye on Toshiba's recent chromebook refresh which is going to sport a 1080p IPS screen. The internals will not be quite as good as the HP 14 but I expect the moderate decrease in performance will be made up for by better audio and sound.

There isn't a vendor that's put out a chromebook with build quality comparable to a Macbook yet though. Unless you count the Pixel, which even if you consider worth the money is rather old now. The only real option for an improved screen vs. the HP 14 is the Samsung Chromebook 2 which has a 1080p model. It's a TN screen though and only a moderate improvement over the HP 14 (and saddled with parts that don't perform as well)

Chrome OS does have great support for external monitors though, so if you don't mind giving up mobility you can get a great image by using your own display.