HP Stream x360: Flippable and stylish Chromebook killer

Sloppy seconds

The x360 doesn't boot up quite as fast as a Chromebook but you need to be pretty bloody impatient to think that 25 seconds is too long. Still, since we are comparing this Stream machine to a Chromebook, it makes sense to see how the x360 lines up against Lenovo’s N20p touchscreen convertible Chromebook, powered by an Intel Celeron N2830 in a browser performance test.

Keyboard deck can also act as a stand for presentation mode

Running SunSpider and Peacekeeper in Chrome on the x360 returned scores of 1175 and 579 respectively. That’s slightly worse than the Lenovo managed – 1267 & 535 – but not by enough to make any real world difference.

Rounding up the hardware the DTS-enhanced stereo speakers produce a loud if rather raucous noise while the 720p webcam does a decent job even in poor lighting.

Powering the x360 is a 3-cell, 43.5Wh Li-ion battery. It’s built-in, so forget any ideas you may have of swapping in out down the line. I found that a full charge kept me going for the best part of 8 hours with all the wireless comms on, the screen brightness turned up to 11 and a 2 hour movie watched. Not bad.

There's obviously a knack to getting the back off the Stream x360 which doesn't involve breaking it

Sadly HP has bundled a traditional, black rat-and-tail power supply which is a bit bulky and does rather let the aside down when you whip it out in Starbucks and plug it into something as funky-looking as the x360.

Incidentally, I tried taking the back off the x360 to have a rummage but even after I’d removed the nine Philips screws the rear panel showed absolutely no signs of wanting to come adrift.

Right about now some of you will be asking, can you run Linux on this thing? In a word, yes. I booted Ubuntu 14.04 off a USB stick and everything worked perfectly apart from the Wi-Fi radio. Even the touchscreen worked faultlessly. I’m guessing a full install and a quick furtle with the Broadcom BCM43142 Wi-Fi card’s drivers would fix the wireless problem.

Full depth SD slot with two USB 2.0 and a 3.0 port, Ethernet and HDMI

The Reg Verdict

Are HP’s new Stream machines really Chromebook killers? As a fan of the Chromebook it pains me to say it, but yes. The x360 is as well made and stylish as most Chromebooks but offers the full Windows experience which, at version 8.1, ain't at all bad.

Once you install Chrome and the Google apps launcher you pretty much have a Chromebook anyway. The build quality, design and basic hardware of the x360 are all better than I expected for the price making it a hard machine to criticise. ®