HP Stream Premium 14" Stream HD Blue 2024

The HP Stream 14 combines a painfully slow Celeron N4120 and a tiny 64GB eMMC drive with a surprisingly large 16GB of RAM, which doesn't fix the core performance issues. At $509, there are far better laptops for students or light users. Unless Office and a compact Windows machine are your only non-negotiables, skip this one.

If you've been browsing budget laptops under $500 and stumbled on the HP Stream 14 with 16GB of RAM, you might think you've found a hidden gem. After all, $509 for a compact Windows 11 machine that includes a year of Office 365 sounds tempting. But the full spec sheet tells a very different story, and it's not a happy one.

Inside this little blue laptop is an Intel Celeron N4120, a four-core chip that ranks in the bottom 12% of laptop CPUs in our database. That means opening a few browser tabs or installing an app is an exercise in patience. The 64GB eMMC drive compounds the problem — at the 5th percentile, it's one of the slowest and smallest storage options we've ever tracked. You'll quickly run out of space, and load times will remind you of the spinning hard drive era.

For someone searching for a "cheap Windows laptop for school" or a secondary machine for writing, the HP Stream 14 seems to check a few boxes on paper, but the real-world experience is painful. The only spec that feels out of place is that 16GB of RAM, which is oddly generous. But pairing it with a Celeron and eMMC storage is like putting a racing stripe on a bicycle — it doesn't make the thing go faster.

We didn't get raw benchmark numbers for this exact unit, but our percentile database paints a clear picture. The Celeron N4120's CPU performance lands at the 12th percentile, which puts it behind the overwhelming majority of laptops sold today. You'll notice lag when launching apps, switching windows, or trying to handle more than a handful of browser tabs. The integrated Intel HD Graphics 600 is middle-of-the-pack, but it's still incapable of anything beyond 1080p video playback. Our gaming score for this machine is 10.5 out of 100, so forget about even light indie titles.

The 64GB eMMC storage is the real bottleneck. At the 5th percentile, it's not just tiny — it's achingly slow. Windows 11 S itself will eat up a chunk of that space, leaving you with maybe 20GB for documents and apps. The 1366x768 display sits at the 4th percentile, meaning it's dim, washed out, and has terrible viewing angles. It's a chore to use for any extended period.

The $509 price tag makes the HP Stream 14 a hard sell. For the same money, you could grab a refurbished business laptop like a Lenovo ThinkPad T480 with a proper Core i5 and a fast SSD, or a brand new Chromebook like the Lenovo Flex 5i that runs circles around this Celeron in everyday tasks. Even a used M1 MacBook Air hovers near this price if you're patient. Unless you absolutely need Windows and a 14-inch screen for under $500 and don't plan to do anything beyond typing in Word, the value just isn't there.

The competitors listed in our database — Apple MacBook Pro, ASUS ProArt PX13, Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro, MSI Prestige, Lenovo Yoga Book 9i — are premium laptops that cost over a thousand dollars. They're in a completely different league, so comparing them directly to the Stream 14 doesn't make sense. If you're looking at the Stream, you're on a tight budget and should really be comparing it to other sub-$500 machines.

For a fair fight, look at the ASUS Vivobook Go 15 with a Ryzen 3 and 128GB SSD, which actually runs Windows 11 comfortably, or a refurbished Dell Latitude 5490 with a Core i5. These will let you multitask without wanting to throw the laptop out the window. A Chromebook like the HP Dragonfly Pro, when on sale, offers a vastly better screen and keyboard for a similar price, though you'll be in the Google ecosystem instead of Windows.

Anyone who needs to run more than one app at a time, install classic Windows programs outside the Microsoft Store, or do even the lightest gaming should look elsewhere. The locked-down Windows 11 S mode means a lot of software simply won't install unless you switch out of S mode, and the CPU is too weak to handle much beyond a browser and a word processor. A refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad T480 or a Chromebook with a Core i3 will give you a far smoother experience for the same money.

The HP Stream 14 is a textbook example of why you should read the fine print. 16GB of RAM might look like a great spec, but it's completely undermined by a bottom-of-the-barrel CPU and storage that would have been disappointing five years ago. For $509, you're paying a premium for a frustrating experience.

We'd only recommend this laptop if you have an extremely narrow use case — maybe as a dedicated machine for filling out spreadsheets offline and nothing else — and even then, we'd tell you to hunt for a refurbished ThinkPad first. If you need a simple laptop for a student or casual browsing, spend the same money on a Chromebook or a used Windows ultrabook and you'll be significantly happier.