Equipped with an Intel Celeron processor and a cramped 11.6-inch display, the venerable HP Stream 11, refreshed several times in the course of its life, is one of the most bare-bones Windows laptops you’ll find. We tested the latest $199.99 model for sale in 2021; with just 32GB of local storage and 4GB of RAM, it technically can’t run some modern apps. If all you need is a portal to the internet, and you must stick to a $200 budget and the Windows 10 operating system, the Stream 11 is actually a decent option. Otherwise, you’d do better to increase your budget to around $400 to get a more capable budget Windows machine, or expand your considerations to include Chromebooks.
A Netbook Throwback
The HP Stream 11 is something of a remnant of the netbook era of the early 2000s, when there was a strong demand for smaller Windows XP-powered laptops with 11.6-inch screens and lightweight chassis. Tablets, smartphones, and Chromebooks conspired to send most netbook designs packing, but a few models have kept the faith through the rise of Windows 10 and are still available.
The HP Stream 11 is one of them. It’s been updated with a more modern aesthetic and contemporary niceties like HDMI and USB Type-C ports, but it’s otherwise a rollback to the way budget laptop computing was in 2005.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you’re on the strictest of budgets and you’d rather check your email, sports scores, and the weather on a small laptop with a physical keyboard instead of a tablet or a phone, the Stream 11 happily obliges.
The model we’re reviewing here is HP’s configuration dubbed “Stream 11-ak0010nr,” with a royal blue color scheme, an Intel Celeron N4020 CPU, 4GB of memory, and 32GB of eMMC storage. With the Stream 11, you might find slightly different configuration options and color schemes from each retailer. Our model comes from Amazon, but Best Buy sells a white model with 64GB of eMMC storage for $250, which is model ak0012dx.
It’s worth shopping around, because the 32GB storage drive of our review unit is simply too cramped to hold a whole lot more than the Windows 10 operating system. Microsoft’s minimum requirement for installing Windows is 20GB of space, and once you add in a few extra gigabytes for a buffer and to store some of your day-to-day files, you’ll quickly be out of space. If you do want to install additional programs and find some that will fit on the remainder of the drive, you may need to disable the Stream 11’s default Windows 10 S Mode, which limits app installs to those downloaded from the Microsoft Store. Doing so is easy and free.
This cramped storage situation is tempered somewhat by the inclusion of an unusual perk even on many premium ultraportable laptops that cost far more: The Stream 11 comes with a microSD card slot. This means you can quickly and cheaply add many extra gigabytes of storage using a removable memory card—a 128GB card is easy to find online for around $20. You can’t reliably use it to install apps, but you can access, say, your large multimedia collection from it.
The Display: Only the Very Basics
Besides the too-tight storage drive, the Stream 11’s screen quality is our other chief complaint, and that’s not one that’s easily rectified. The display measures 11.6 inches diagonally and sports a 1,366-by-768-pixel native resolution. Commonly found on the sub-$400 laptop set, this resolution is lower than full HD (1,920 by 1,080 pixels) and, even on a screen this small, results in grainy text and vaguely fuzzy images.
To make matters worse, the Stream 11’s LED panel lacks touch support or the modern IPS technology that broadens viewing angles and helps increase color faithfulness. Add in a matte finish (rather than a glossy one) and the viewing experience on this laptop can best be described as dull. How much that matters to you depends on how you need to use the Stream 11. If it’s just an email platform and you can abide slightly fuzzy text, you might get on just fine. If you’re watching any type of video, however, you’ll likely be disappointed.
The only way to rectify the Stream 11’s dull screen is to use it plugged into an external monitor. That’s not possible if you’re out and about, but if you’re using this laptop at home, the full-size HDMI port makes it a cinch to connect a larger display. As with the SD card slot, the HDMI port is a welcome addition that’s rare even on more expensive laptops.
A Few Good Port Options
The HP Stream 11’s better-than-expected port situation is made possible in part thanks to its relatively bulky chassis. It measures 0.7 by 11 by 7.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.4 pounds, which puts its thickness on par with many pricier laptops that have larger 13-inch or 14-inch screens but sleeker designs. The curved polycarbonate display lid and chassis base are visual cues of the Stream 11’s netbook heritage.
The Stream 11 nevertheless manages to avoid coming across as stodgy or ugly, though, and the deep-blue color scheme of our review unit helps a lot in this regard. The keyboard deck is a lighter shade of blue, and it features a subtle, faux-brushed-metal finish that you might even consider chic. And the additional height of the chassis (many more expensive laptops are just half an inch thick) affords the necessary vertical height for the HDMI port, which otherwise wouldn’t fit or would have to be reduced to a mini variant.
Overall, the Stream 11 is eminently portable, and it also feels unexpectedly sturdy for a $200 laptop. There isn’t a hint of flex anywhere in the chassis when you strike the keys forcefully, and the sturdy hinge keeps the screen open with minimal bouncing. The keyboard lacks backlighting under the keys, which isn’t something we’d expect on a laptop at this price, but it does have a function row and well-spaced keys.
The buttonless, clickable touchpad is more cramped than the keyboard is, but it’s still usable for basic cursor movements. I did, however, notice significant give in the hinge, which makes it much harder to click as accurately in the top half as in the bottom half.
The Stream 11 has a front-facing camera that offers startlingly low-quality video, even by the relatively low standards of modern laptop webcams. The entire field of view is filled with noise and distracting artifacts, even in a brightly lit room. Audio quality from the stereo speakers isn’t much better.
Beware the Bloatware
In addition to the HDMI and SD card slots, you’ll also find a USB-C port, which isn’t always a given on a laptop at this price. The Stream 11 has two USB Type-A ports with rectangular connectors, as well. Both of them support USB 3 speeds, which makes them suitable for connecting external storage drives, not just receivers for wireless mice and keyboards. There’s also a 3.5mm audio combo jack on the left edge, and a connector for the barrel-style AC adapter on the right.
Wireless connections include Bluetooth and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The laptop doesn’t support Wi-Fi 6, but at this price we don’t expect it to. Over several days of testing, the Stream 11 easily stayed connected to my home wireless router without any dropped connections.
However, the rest of the user experience that the Stream 11 offers could best be described as uninspired. Nearly every basic action results in a bit of sluggishness, from opening the Microsoft Edge browser to resizing windows to navigating through menu items. Browsing the web with even a single tab open resulted in frequent brief hangs when I clicked on a link to open a new page or used the browser’s back and forward buttons. Streaming video does work, but it frequently stutters.
There’s also significant unwanted preinstalled software, known as bloatware, including icons to the Amazon shopping app and Dropbox on the taskbar. The Start menu is peppered with advertisements, such as links to Booking.com and McAfee. The revenue from bloatware undoubtedly helps keep the Stream 11’s price as low as it is. You may want to engage in a cleaning session, though.
Testing the Stream 11: No Performance Surprises
With just 32GB of storage space and 4GB of memory, the Stream 11 can’t run many of the benchmarking apps we use to quantify performance. In the chart below, see how its specs stack up against those of a few budget Windows competitors, including the Asus Laptop L410, HP Laptop 14, Lenovo IdeaPad 3, and MSI Modern 14. Several of these were being tested by PC Labs at this writing.
None of these systems has less than 64GB of storage (double the Stream 11’s capacity), but neither do any of them dip quite as low as the Stream 11’s eminently reasonable $199.99 list price. The closest alternative is the Asus Laptop L410, which uses the same processor, costs only a bit more ($265), and has a larger 14-inch screen. (See more about how we test laptops.)
None of the laptops kicked up proficient performance on the PCMark 10 test, which we use to measure general tasks like web browsing, word processing, and video conferencing…
Laptops typically need a score of at least 4,000 on this test to be considered excellent, so the Stream 11 is a long way off. Part of the deficiency here may be ascribed to the eMMC storage, whose performance is limited versus the more capable SSDs on more expensive laptops.
Likewise, the Stream 11’s CPU muscle is virtually non-existent as measured by the Cinebench test. Cinebench uses all available CPU cores and threads to render a complex 3D image. It’s the sort of task you’d probably never want to perform on the Stream 11 anyway.
You shouldn’t expect an enjoyable gaming experience, either. The Stream 11 recorded an average of just 6 frames per second on our Unigine Superposition benchmark, and that’s at the most forgiving 720p Low preset.
Other tests that we usually run, including our Handbrake video render, our Photoshop filter test, and 3DMark’s graphics trials, were beyond the Stream 11.
Battery life, on the other hand, is a high point…
The Stream 11 lasted for more than 11 hours on our video rundown test, which involves playing a 720p video at 50% screen brightness with Wi-Fi turned off. (Note: Since our video file is too big to fit on the Stream 11’s internal storage drive, we played it from an external SSD.)
A Chromebook Is a Better Bet
If all you need is a portal to the internet and you’re limited to a budget of $200, a Chromebook will almost certainly be a better choice than the Stream 11. One excellent alternative that’s an especially good option for kids is the Dell Chromebook 11 (3100). The Chromebook 11 is also an 11-inch laptop that vaguely resembles a netbook, and it is equipped with similar specs. But because Chrome OS requires fewer computing resources than Windows 10 does, it feels snappier for basic tasks.
If you simply must have a new Windows 10-based laptop for $200, the Stream 11 is one of your few choices, and it’s not a bad one at that. You can get around the extremely limited 32GB of storage by adding an SD card or shopping around for a model that has 64GB of internal space. The styling isn’t bad, the chassis is sturdy, and you might even make good use of the HDMI port by plugging it into an external monitor to escape the drab 11.6-inch screen. Just know that for the same money you might also consider a refurbished, used business machine with much more pep in its step, and a better, bigger screen.
