HP Chromebook 14 (Intel) review

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Our verdict

The HP Chromebook 14 is a solid choice thanks to its sharp 14-inch display, nimble keyboard, and attractive chassis.

To the

Long battery life

1080p display

Attractive chassis

Comfortable keyboard

Against

Below average performance

Display could be livelier

TODAY'S BEST DEALS

$159

at BestBuy

$219

at Amazon

$219.99

at Walmart

Do you want a cheap one

Chrome book

with a large display?The HP Chromebook 14 (rated 248) is a solid choice. A significant upgrade over the

AMD model

, the Intel version of the Chromebook 14 lasts all day on a single charge and has a comfortable keyboard. The notebook also has a sleek white design and the 1080p display is a luxury at this price point. While other similarly priced Chromebooks perform better offer, the Chromebook 14 is a good all-rounder for basic tasks. In fact, it's one of the

best laptops under $300

.

HP Chromebook 14 pricing and configuration options

Our Chromebook 14 review unit costs $248 and comes with an Intel Celeron N3350 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of flash storage.

You can buy the Chromebook 14 at

Amazon

and

Walmart

.

HP Chromebook 14 at Best Buy for $159

draft

Now this

is how to budget.

The Chromebook 14 has an attractive design highlighted by a crisp white colorway that will stand out from the crowd. The Chromebook 14's lid features a rough texture with a glossy HP logo embossed in the center. Upon opening the A brushed white deck, white keys and white display frame appear on top of the lid.

Yes, part of me worries that this machine will look dirty over time, especially given its target audience: kids and the K-12 market. But the crisp white finishes are a refreshing departure from the silver chassis typically found on Premium machines can be found.

The Chromebook 14 is made out of plastic, as you'd expect, but the varied textures give it a sturdy yet welcome feel. I'm pretty confident that the Chromebook 14 could survive a drop or two, which I can't say about most sub-$500 laptops can.

At 0.7 inches thick and weighing 3.3 pounds, the Chromebook 14 is predictably lighter than the 15-inch

Acer Chromebook 15

(0.8 inches, 3.7 pounds) and

Asus Chromebook C523NA

(3.8 pounds), but heavier than the 11.6-inch, as expected

Dell Chromebook 5190

(2.9 pounds).

harbor

Choice is good. On the left side of the Chromebook 14 is a

USB Type-C connector

, a

USB 3.0 port

and a

lock slot

.On the right side is a microSD card slot, a headphone jack and another pair of USB 3.0 and USB Type-C ports.

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HP deserves a hearty round of applause for offering one

1080p display

on such a cheap laptop. Sure, the 14-inch panel isn't particularly bright or vibrant, but almost everything is better than this

outdated 1366x768 panels

.

When I saw a trailer for the live action

Aladdin

On film I could see the ornate detailing in Princess Jasmine's dress. The pink and turquoise tones in the gorgeous dress looked accurate, although they didn't pop out of the display as much as I would have liked. There was also detail in some of the darker desert scenes hard to see as the panel is so dark. But overall I was pretty happy with the picture quality.

According to our colorimeter, the Chromebook 14 covers 71 percent of the

sRGB color space

, which is worse than the Chromebook C523NA (76 percent) and Chromebook 5190 (73 percent) but better than the Chromebook 15 (69 percent).

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The Chromebook 14's display is also on the weak side compared to other budget competitors. At 220 nits, the panel doesn't get that

bright

like the Chromebook 5190 (258 nits) and Chromebook C523NA (231 nits), but outperforms the Chromebook 15 (215 nits).

keyboard and touchpad

I have no complaints about the Chromebook 14's keyboard, aside from the lack of a backlight. The chiclet-style white keys are well-spaced and large, apart from a few undersized arrow keys. And while they're only 1.2 millimeters (less than our 1, 5mm preference), the keys actually feel quite springy, perhaps due to their above-average 71 grams of actuation force.

I typed at 111 words per minute with 93 percent accuracy on the 10FastFingers.com typing test. These are both below my average of 119 wpm with 95 percent accuracy, but not by much.

The Chromebook 14's 4.5 x 2.3-inch touchpad responded quickly when I swiped across several

Google Chrome

Tabs, and I've had no trouble performing Chrome OS gestures such as B. Switching between tabs with a three-finger swipe.

perfomance

Equipped with an Intel Celeron N3350 CPU and 4 GB

R.A.M.

, the Chromebook 14 has enough power for simple everyday tasks, but don't try to run demanding apps on this budget device.

My practice test consisted of loading 13 websites in Google Chrome, two of which were playing 1080p

youtube

videos while another couple streamed video games

Pull out

.The first couple of pages loaded fine, but then some tabs got stuck on the spinning wheel for a few minutes and my cursor started lagging. Photos and ads took a particularly long time to render, while videos buffered a few seconds before I could she could show.

The Chromebook 14 scored a paltry 2,733 on Geekbench 4

overall performance

test, falling well behind the Chromebook C523NA (4,698), the Chromebook 5190 (4,193), and the Chromebook average (4,747). The AMD version of the Chromebook 14 does even worse (1,283).

MORE:

Laptops with the longest battery life

With a score of 57.8 on the JetStream JavaScript benchmark, the Chromebook 14 narrowly beat the Chromebook 5190 (54.5), but lost out to the Chromebook C523NA (65.6), Chromebook 15 (66.6), and the average Chromebook (77.5).

battery life

The Chromebook 14 stays on for a full work day. The laptop lasted a very good 9 hours and 18 minutes on ours

battery test

(continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness). That eclipses the Chromebook average (9:10) and Acer Chromebook 15 (9:07), and beats out the Chromebook C523NA (6:30) and AMD Version of the Chromebook 14 (6:23).

cam

The Chromebook 14's 720p webcam captures a decent amount of detail, but a

external webcam

offers more vivid colors. In a selfie I took in our dimly lit office, I could see stray strands of hair in my beard.

However, my face looked so pale I could have cast as a zombie actor in The Walking Dead. Also, my black shirt was so dark and lacking in detail that it looked like it had been filled with paint using the paint bucket tool.

heat

Only the bottom of the Chromebook 14 reached moderate temperatures after a 15-minute full-screen trailer on YouTube. The bottom surpassed our 95-degree comfort threshold with a maximum temperature of 108 degrees Fahrenheit.

The rest of the laptop, including the touchpad (77 degrees) and the keyboard center (83 degrees), stayed well below that mark.

bottom line

The Chromebook 14 is a solid choice if you're looking for a cheap Chromebook for basic tasks like browsing the web, sending email, or watching YouTube videos. Although this Intel version offers more power than the disappointing AMD model, its performance still doesn't measure up well to similarly priced laptops. However, with long battery life, an attractive design, and a 1080p display, you can't get much better for less than $300.

Photo credit: Laptop Mag

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TODAY'S BEST DEALS

$159

at BestBuy

$219

at Amazon

$219.99

at Walmart

HP Chromebook 14 Specifications

brand

hp

CPU

1.83GHz Intel Celeron N2940 processor

card slots

microSD

corporate website

www.hp.com

screen size

14.1

graphic card

Intel HD graphics

disk size

16 GIGABYTES

disk type

eMMC

native resolution

1920x1080

operating system

Google Chrome

Connections (except USB)

USB 3.0, USB 2.0, HDMI, headphone/microphone combo

R.A.M.

4GB

size

13.54 x 9.45 x 0.7 inches

touchpad size

4.3 x 2.7 inches

USB ports

3

Warranty/Support

1 year limited warranty

Weight

3.48 pounds

Wireless Internet access

802.11 b/g/n/ac

Fewer