HP Brings Quality To Budget Computing With The Stream Line

For the last few months, there’s been a rumor that HP was going to announce a laptop for under $200. People were let down when the initial 14″ Stream was announced at the still-pretty-good-if-you-ask-me price of $299. It turns out HP wasn’t done just yet. It turns out though that the Stream isn’t a product, but a product line. That first 14″ model was just a kickoff to a line that includes the HP Stream 7 ($99), HP Stream 8 ($150) Windows 8.1 tablets, a 13.3″ Stream laptop for $230, and to wrap things up, there is indeed a $199 Stream.

We had an opportunity to go hands on with the coveted 11.6″ model as well as the 8″ tablet and find them both to be satisfying devices. Despite the Stream notebook’s small size (be prepared to flash back to netbooks past), the keyboard is useful and more than powerful enough for everyday tasks. Both notebooks are available in an eye-catching metallic pink or blue chassis. All the models include 1 TB of cloud storage free via Microsoft OneDrive (to offset the small amount of onboard storage) as well as a free year of Office 365. The 13.3″ comes with optional free 4G from T-Mobile for the life of the tablet. It’s only 200 MB, but that’s more free data than anywhere else.

Sadly, the tablets don’t come in anything other than basic black (although the keyboard docks come in the previously mentioned colors). Even more intriguing, the 8  comes with the same free data deal as the above Stream 13. As to usability, we didn’t get a ton of time or to try many multimedia features, but it certainly seems easily usable and didn’t feel cheap like other budget tablets.

In the end, that’s what this line is all about, affordable laptops and tablets that don’t skimp on basic needs.