From first gen HP Chromebook 14 to Acer Chromebook 14 (Full HD)

Not long ago, the screen cable on my 2 year old HP Chromebook 14 went flakey, so I decided to get a new Chromebook before attempting to repair the old one. My requirements were 4GB RAM, HD screen and 32GB SSD, and the Acer 14 (CB3-431-C5CQ) fitted the bill. I managed to get one recently when it was on offer. I was immediately impressed by the build quality of the metal body and beautiful Full HD screen. There's no obvious flexing of the body, it feels fairly durable for the price, only time and usage will tell.  And even though the Acer has a metal body it is actually a bit lighter at 1.54kg instead of 1.69kg on the HP 14. The lid actually folds back right flat, I noticed sometimes I accidentally flicked it into that position when picking it up with the lid open, but it does it no harm. One slight feature lacking is there's no SD card slot which is a shame as I used it a lot on my old HP. It has 2 USB 3.0 ports on the left-hand side and the power socket on the right-hand side.        

Setting up Chromebooks is pretty simple and painless. The Acer checked and installed an update as soon as put in my wireless details, though later on, after I had finished setup, it also downloaded yet another update in the background and is now running the latest Chrome OS version. Anyway, I put in my account details and it installed all my add-ons and synced bookmarks, passwords etc

The 14 inch 1080P semi-reflective display is amazing for such a cheap device, and big step up from the 1366x768 display on my old Chromebook. I was a little surprised that it was set to 1536x864 and not already set to 1080P but that was quickly rectified in settings. These days there are far too many 14/15 inch laptops with 1366x768 resolution screens, 1080P should be the minimum. I know some reviews have criticised  it for a lack of brightness but I found it's bright enough for me, and I've kept it at about 50% brightness most of the time.

I then claimed another 100GB free Google Drive storage (for 2 years) on the rewards page.

The Acer 14 feels noticeably quicker than my old HP, not surprisingly with a newer generation quad core 1.6 GHz (up to 2.24 GHz with Turbo Boost) N3160 Celeron CPU compared to the 1.4Ghz 2955U dual core CPU in the old HP 14. It really does feel very snappy, taking on much more than I could ever do with the HP. Battery life from the 3-cell Li-Po 3920 mAh battery is a claimed 12 hours compared to 8 hours on the old HP, despite being thinner. It is hard to measure battery life when I tend to just close the lid and put it down and pick it up all day, but I have been charging it less than the HP. 

And one last thing, the Acer CB3 will officially get Android apps at some point, (the HP is too old to get them) it is possible to get them with some dev mode noodling, but I would rather wait until they arrive for it in the Stable Chrome OS channel, I look forward to trying that out.

Overall this is a great spec Chromebook for the price and a decent upgrade from my old HP Chromebook 14. It's amazing how Chromebooks have improved in a short space of time. The only slight downside is this does not have user-replaceable SSD, and no SD slot, but at least this came with a 32GB in the first place. It is very quick and the screen is so much brighter and more vivid. It feels a bit more solid so hopefully will last me a good while. 

HP Stream 11 - A Windows notebook that's not a "Chromebook killer"

So this is Microsoft's answer to Chromebooks, low spec laptops and "Windows 8.1 with Bing" - as if the mere adding of default IE defaulted to Bing search is anything to boast about. I'm sure most sensible users will install either Chrome or Firefox browsers anyway. This is the HP Stream 11 and the build of it looks quite similar to my HP Chromebook 14 but actually feels cheaper in the flesh. It has an 11.6-inch 1366×768 display and 2GB RAM, much like many Chromebooks. It has 2.16 GHz dual-core Intel Celeron N2840 Bay Trail processor, which is somewhat slower than the Haswell CPUs of many Chromebooks.

Some articles have called it a "Chromebook killer" but I think that's far from the truth. Even with it's 32GB SSD, more than most Chromebooks, it only has 17.5GB of free space, which will soon fill up with the detritus from Windows updates and registry bloat, aswell as all those apps the user will install. Advanced users could remove the Windows Restore partition to recover 7.2GB of storage. The user could just install only a few apps or not install any extra apps at all, and just use web apps, but then that would defeat the purpose of getting a Windows laptop, might aswell have bought a Chromebook in the first place. And the hardware with just 2GB RAM is not going to be much fun with anything more than light office work either.

The advantage of a Chromebook is even with meagre hardware it is much quicker than Windows on the same or similar hardware.  And you won't have to worry about intrusive updates (and their many reboots), viruses/malware and there's no overhead of a bloated OS. Even if there is a problem, it takes minutes to wipe the entire OS and restore your Chrome extensions and data. Windows boots in around 30 seconds out the box on the Stream 11, but given time I'd wager that time will only get longer and longer, whereas my Chromebook 14 boots from cold to in use in just 7 seconds, and will stay that way. Not that I often boot mine from cold, I use it all the time, shut the lid and then open it again later and it's connected and working in a second. I actually find it more convenient than waiting for my Nexus 7 to wake up.  

Chromebooks have been a massive hit both in schools and in the consumer market, judging by their appearance in Amazon's best selling laptop list. It is going to take more than cheap hardware and Bing to kill Chromebooks. I would only really recommend buying a HP Stream 11 if you absolutely positively have to use a lightweight native Windows app for something that cannot be done on a Chromebook!

Sources: ZDNet, Arstechnica, Amazon, HP