HP 14" HD Review

This HP 14" laptop is a $165 trap. It's the kind of cheap laptop that looks okay on a store shelf but will make you miserable within a week. The one thing you need to know is that its 64GB SSD is basically unusable for Windows 11. After the OS and a few updates, you'll be left with maybe 20GB for your actual files and apps. That's a hard pass.

Honestly, the performance was worse than I expected, and my expectations were low. The Intel Celeron CPU lands in the 4th percentile, which means it's slower than 96% of other laptops. Opening more than three browser tabs feels like a chore. The 8GB of RAM is just enough for the basics, but that tiny 64GB SSD is the real killer. It's so small that Windows itself will constantly warn you about low storage.

It's not worth it. At all. You are paying for a brand name attached to components that are unfit for purpose in 2024. Spending even $50 more on a used or refurbished business laptop from a few years ago would get you a dramatically better machine.

Forget the high-end competitors listed; they're in a different universe. The real comparison is against other ultra-budget laptops and used gear. A used Lenovo ThinkPad from 2018 with an 8th-gen Core i5, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD often sells for under $200 and would run circles around this HP. Even a new Chromebook at this price offers a smoother, more coherent experience if you can live in a browser.

Do not buy this laptop. It's a textbook example of a bad deal where the low upfront cost hides massive frustration. The crippling lack of storage alone makes it a paperweight. Save up a little more cash and buy literally anything else with at least 256GB of storage and a processor from this decade. You'll thank me later.