Resolution: 1200x800 IPS Glossy Panel/Reflective (NO ACTIVE DIGITIZER, so no styluses except capacitive ones)
OS: Windows 8.1 32-Bit with BING (This is basically Windows with ALL primary search engines built in and have been set to use bing)
RAM: 1GiB DDR3L
Storage: 32 GiB (19 GiB left)
Expansion: Up to 32 GiB (From my understanding and what I've read around, this is not true. this tablet can take 128GiB Micro SD cards, but the Storage must be formatted to FAT32 i believe) also you have to rip open the back of the tablet which is a pain in the ass to do to expand storage.
Camera: 2MP back shooter & 0.3 Megapixel front camera for video chats
3000mAH battery (this is pretty bad and from my experience the battery life isn't great unless you are just doing slight minor tasks like reading and web browsing)
Processor: 1.3GHz Atom Quad-Core Processor that BOOST to 1.8GHz
a Sheet to redeem $25 dollars to purchase apps on the Windows Store.
Quick comment: don't bother taking photos with this thing, they look terrible. video quality is pretty good but every thing else just fart on it, this tablet has support for Virtualization and all that goodness but i doubt you would want to do that on a 1GiB RAM machine.
So what are my thoughts? at least compared to my Dell Venue 8 Pro?
Dell Venue 8 Pro (8.3 Inch Tablet) weights in at 408 Grams ---- HP Stream 7 (7.0 Inch Tablet (Weights in at 350ish Grams BUT the HP Stream 7 FEELS heavier but it's actually not.
Here you can see you can actually hold it in the hand. the Dell Venue 8 Pro, not so much.
there is a widely known issue with the headphone jack, for some reason, when plugging in headphones there is a minor static that is audible through the headphones when audio is played. from my understanding this is because something isn't grounded properly, i don't know but I've been very lucky i tried a few different headphones and I DON'T have this issue. BUT if you do. to combat this you need to use Bluetooth headphones sadly.
I'm going to be honest the speakers are terrible, they aren't loud, and they don't beat the Dell Venue 8 Pro in terms of quality.
Scaling isn't great. but this is a known issue with Windows and not on HP's part. and this is going to be fixed with Windows 10.
You can't properly take a screenshot on the device cause of HP. you have to do it through the terrible charms bar. this is because the Windows button is capacitive and and not an actual button. normally on Windows tablets you would have to hold the Windows button and press the volume down button and it would work. in this case it doesn't.
Reading is AWESOME on this. everything fits on the screen perfectly. you don't have to really zoom in at all, but you can if you wish..
6. Standby time is surprisingly good, considering Intel doesn't care about giving us drivers. 7. There is a bit of noticeable Light-Bleed on the screen. you can only see it clearly on when the display is dark.. but then again what do you expect from a cheap tablet?
CAN YOU RUN LINUX? Nope, The EFI is 32-Bit. all Linux Distros require a 64-Bit EFI/UEFI BiOS which sucks..
For a Tablet that is $80 bucks is it a steal? absolutely. Is this tablet Amazing? ehh not so much. it's in the good enough territory. Can this tablet do everything? fuck no, the screen is too small this may change however with Continuum in Windows 10. How does it feel to be crippled by 1GiB of RAM lol jk? surprisingly the tablet is pretty fast. if you open 3 or more Win32 apps that's when the Tablet starts to suffer but if you stick to "Modern Apps" the tablet is pretty quick. but if you want to do some media consumption and or reading this is in my opinion the best you are going to get. Plus it feels good to know you can get updates much more often than any android device that isn't a Nexus Device. Can it Game? it runs the Windows Store Games fairly well, don't expect to run Steam In-Home-Streaming on this, especially with it's poor battery life. does it suck? Nope. but damn it, it's close to it.
So do I recommend this?
If you just want to get the feel of Windows on a Tablet, and you just want to read (Cause there are some awesome reading apps on the Windows Store) and you just want to get some media consumption done, this is a really cheap device that can get all that done. and for all that it's amazing. everything else, if you need a Windows Productivity companion, you're better off with a Dell Venue 8 Pro cause that is amazing for all that.
Its a great little device and definitely for that price it is a steal! My buddy purchased one and he loved it. He just reads his manga/comics on it. For the Dell venue 8 pro, I was able to squeeze it into my pocket but required some extra maneuvering to get it out. The HP Stream 7 easily falls into my pocket.
If I recall I was able to take a screen shot by pressing the Volume Down + Sleep button much like in android. Or it might be the other way around because one of the combinations opens up the ease of access menu and force the narrator on.
Nice review, in a weird way I prefer a lower resolution screen for media consumption. Lower resolution content looks alot better at lower resolutions than stretched out to like 4k. I can't help but to think that this tablet would be better suited running android over windows, no? Windows can be quite resource intensive, but I'm sure you have your reasons for sticking to it.
You should pick up a battery bank to help with the poor charge, maybe do some sort of velcro mod to stick it on and off for portability.
then don't buy it if you aren't going to use it. simple as that. i needed a tablet so i bought it and i plan on using it. i gave my thoughts and the issues i've seen so far after having it for a few hours.
honestly i stuck with it for the updates. and the "App Convenience".what i mean by "App Convenience" is
For example Lets say my Manga app for example that i currently use. everything that i keep in my "favorites" column of the app, I can click those books directly from the app and stick them on the start screen. so i'd click the Book from the start screen and it opens to where i left off. to me that is such a convenience. i don't really have to open the app anymore.
Looks good in terms of specs. HP quality standards is at it's pinnacle. They even thought about people who were going to listen to audio by including Bluetooth. What a nice necessity.
like i said, you can't really expect much from an $80 dollar tablet. if that tablet was worth more than $120 or even $200 bucks then i would of shitted all over it, but for 80 bucks, it comes with a $25 dollar gift card, a Free Year Subscription to Office 365 which is $70 bucks, and full blown Windows which is roughly $80 ish so dollars alone. the price for the tablet is next to insane.
This is an older thread, but i'll throw in my 2 cents.
I bought this for I think $100 in Canada from the Microsoft store. Came with a year of Office 365, $25 in store credit (only ended up using around $10 before it expired, lame), a case / stand thingy, and a screen protector. Overall not bad value.
Overall I think it is pretty good for the price hardware wise. Mine has the headphone issue, but its not something that overly bothers me. My biggest issue with it is actually Windows itself. I wanted to use it for looking at my subscription box and watching videos on YouTube. This isn't an easy thing to do because of the lack of Google apps in the Windows Store. Which is pathetic. Even now that Windows 10 is out, there hasn't been an improvement to the store and the app variety. Windows 8.1 was very difficult to use due to the lack of touch screen support on the smaller screen. Windows 10 improves on this, but not well enough.
I ended up using the tablet for a little bit occasionally watching video over my network with VLC, but then it ended up just sitting on a table gathering dust. Now i'm at a point where I want to find a purpose for it. Maybe someone here could suggest something.
Use it to read and or Watch stuff on netflix/hulu. And or browse the internet. That's what i'm currently doing with it. You can't expect much from an $80 tablet. But it's good enough for the job and that's what matters.
I find it hilarious they would list a boost clock spec on a mobile x86 processor in a low power device. Why not just run it at 1.8GHz all the time except when in idle state?
Because that's not how things work.. if you are doing heavy workloads, which this tablet don't bother. It will boost the clockspeed accordingly. If something is constantly running at its boost speed you will destroy your battery life.. Android devices don't run at their advertised clockspeeds unless your doing heavy intensive tasks.. so it's no different.
