HP is giving its Stream line of low-cost laptops an upgrade and a minor makeover. The new HP Stream 11 and Stream 13 are a little thinner and a little lighter than the models HP released in 2014.

The bigger news is under the hood, where HP has upgraded the laptops from Bay Trail to Braswell processors. That should bring modest performance improvements, and HP says the new laptops should also get longer battery life than their predecessors.

One thing that hasn’t changed? These laptops are affordable: the HP Stream 11 is priced at $200, and the HP Stream 13 is $230. They should both be available starting October 18th.

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The HP Stream 11 measures about 0.7 inches thick, weighs about 2.6 pounds, and features an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display. HP says this model should get up to 10 hours, 45 minutes of battery life.

The Stream 13 has a 13 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, up to 8.5 hours of battery life, and a case that measures about 0.8 inches thick and which weighs about 3.4 pounds. HP will also offer an optional touchscreen for the Stream 13. There’s no touch panel option for the smaller Stream 11 laptop.

Both models are fanless laptops that are available in blue or purple, and there’s also a silver option for the 11.6 inch model.

The laptops feature Intel Celeron N3050 dual-core Braswell processors, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. They have one USB 3.0 port and one SB 2.0 port, HDMI ports, and microSD card readers.

HP is also introducing a new Stream 11 Pro G2 notebook aimed at the education market. That model is available with up to 4GB of RAM and up to 64GB of storage and prices start at $249. It should be available starting October 12th.

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16 replies on “HP’s $200 Stream notebooks get Braswell chips, slimmer design”

  1. Sounded interesting until I saw the photos of the crippled keyboard and the useless touchpad with no button. It’s only made to emulace a mac. no way for me.

    1. Budget laptops shouldn’t have clickpads. End of story. No exceptions. The touchpad on the Acer C720 is virtually useless and doesn’t work at all. My ThinkPad X120e has a buttoned touchpad and it’s usable and smooth.

  2. I might consider the Stream 13, as long as it doesn’t come with Windows 8.

    1. None of the new models from any manufacturer will come with Windows 8 any more.

  3. Good little laptop for the kids, and now with Braswell, it should be able to play MINECRAFT – the Java version reasonable well.

  4. Needs 4gb, 64gb/128gb, 1080p (13″), adult colors, to even be considered by many.

      1. I think we’re saying is nobody should be in the market for an HP Stream. Believe it or not, excepting the SSD size, there’s a Toshiba that meets those specs I bought for $249 at Best Buy. I’ve seen it factory refurbished (good as new IMHO) for $200. There’s no wanna be Chromebook killer that come anywhere near those specs. The cheapest MacBook is only 900p and costs almost a thou! The Toshiba’s a quarter the price and has a better, full HDTV compatible display.

  5. I’m sure these will work just fine for most people. But I’m not sure about a performance improvement oveall as Braswell seems to mainly achieve its energy savings over previous chipsets through de-clocking.

      1. Look at the Braswell clocks compared to older Bay Trails. And this is the n3050, which is the bottom of the pile too. It will have slightly better graphics (though I think all the higher N series Braswells have even better graphics) than the previous model but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had zero gain or even lost ground on some other performance benchmarks compared to the previous model.
        Like I said, it’s not the end of the world. People aren’t going to get them and find them unusable or anything. I’m just saying I doubt it’s going to be any kind of performance increase at all.

  6. Not buying any more 768 resolution machines. Spoiled by my Toshiba Chromebook 2. I only use my 768 resolution Asus X205TA when an employer requires Internet Explorer or MS Office (rare, but it happens).

    1. Amen. I would even go further and not buy anything without haswell/skylake.

  7. I wonder if they improved the trackpad. Its a device I use a mouse with given the trackpad is below average. Otherwise a nice incremental improvement (2+ hours more battery life, little bit more oomph) on a device that already offered very nice value.

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