HP Stream 14 College Review 2017
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| Portability | Battery | Display | Connectvity | Performance |
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| 3.9 pounds | 6 hours | 14” full HD | 802.11 AC, VGA HDMI, Ethernet | AMD QC 1.8 Ghz 4GB , 32GB eMMC |
| We Like | We Don’t Like |
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Full HD Display |
Low Storage Capacity
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Summary: The HP STREAM 14 is the cheapest laptop we recommend college students should you really be a on budget. You can’t expect to do some heavy multitasking on it , nor running intensive applications or expecting to run most of the software encountered in your curriculum. For most college students it’s a pretty good choice for a laptop that can perform general tasks such as web browsing, reading, writing reports, watching lectures and the like. If you’re budget still allows, you can choose to upgrade it to 8GB separately. Luckily, it has a SD Card Reader and plenty of ports for presentations, direct internet connection and external hard drives, mouses and keyboards . We recommend buying at least an external storage device be it an external hard drive or a regular USB as you’ll be running out of storage pretty quickly after installing your most basic applications. |
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Engineering Architecture Science Computer Science |
Medical
Nursing Business & Accounting Graphics Design |
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| Specs | HP 14-an013nr 14-Inch Notebook |
| Screen | 14.0-inch diagonal Full HD IPS UWVA Brightview WLED-backlit (1920×1080) |
| Processor | AMD E2-7110 QC, 1.8GHz, Quad-Core Processor |
| Video | AMD Radeon R2 Graphics |
| Memory | 4 GB DDR3L-SDRAM |
| Storage | 32GB eMMC |
| Connectivity | 802.11 A/C , Bluetooth 4.2 |
| Ports | 1 VGA; 1 HDMI; 1 headphone/microphone combo; 2 USB 2.0; 1 USB 3.0; 1 RJ-45 |
| Baterry | 6 hours |
| OS | Windows 10 |
| Size | 34.54 x 24.15 x 2.39 cm |
| Weight | 3.9 lbs |
| Extras |
Contents
College Review
Engineering
The reason why it’s recommended by us for all engineers despite having a very low performance for an engineering laptop is the fact that the only issues this machine will give you are with heavy and intensive engineering applications: ANSYS (Numerical Analysis), SolidWorks(CAE), Revit(CAD), etc. Luckily such applications are encountered much more frequently in the workforce rather than undergrad curriculums(most of the time). If you can put up with having a few trips to the computer Labs whenever you encounter software that needs a GPU or a high processor, this is a fine choice for those on a budget still wishing portability as their top priorities. Don’t expect to do some heavy multitasking on it for sure but this is the trade off of being on a budget. MatLab and Circuit Simulation software doesn’t require extreme features and provided you can buy an external hard drive you will be able to run them with a few hiccups provided you buy an external device for extra storage as you’ll be running out of it pretty fast.
Architecture
This laptop can be used for regular web-browsing, writing reports and doing research as an additional device to your primary device (one that can run CAD/CAE Software). Other than that it’s not recommended at all for architecture students even if you are on a budget.
Science
As far as science students go, the software you’re likely to encounter is limited to microsoft office, basic programming and worst case scenario MatLab. However if you ever encounter programming and MatLab, they’ll be usually be used for Lab courses where they must be completed during class and if not you can come back to the lab and finish them. Such classes might be 3 or 4 during your entire curriculum. This laptop can handle them but witih a few hiccups however for general research, multitasking, web browsing and watching lectures this laptop is a pretty good choice. Alternatively you could get a chromebook if you don’t mind having no Windows on it, which will be much ligther and still about the same price.
Computer Science
For the majority of computer science students, this laptop will be enough for your undergraduate degree. The reason being that during your undergraduate years you’re more likely to encounter nothing more than programming languages which do not require many special features at all. Virtual Machines, iOS and android applications programming and such are not encountered regularly on CS curriculums unless you choose to specialize on those. Go try to get the upgrade if you can afford it, it always helps to get more RAM.
Medical & Nursing
Although this laptop is more than enough for simple applications such as those encountered in nursing and medical programs, it is a bit heavy for medical and nursing students who are constantly moving all over campus from practice, to clinicals and back to lectures. If you are really on a budget though, you’ll have to put up with it if you want a real laptop instead of a tablet or handheld device.
Business & Accounting
If your internship hasn’t provided you witih a laptop and if you are really on a budget, then this is a good choice for business students as well. Try to upgrade to 8GB, it’s not that complicated. That way you can smoothly run complex data sheets with macros that you regularly encoutner in financing courses. Other than that , performance wise it won’t be failing you : word , power point and other risk analysis software don’t require that much power.
Graphics Design
We don’t recommend buying this laptop for graphic design students at all. Sure it has a HD Display but that’s about it, you can’t really run any editing program on it efficiently and you’ll be running out of storage pretty fast after installing the basic stuff and we all know how heavy those editing programs are.