HP HP - 14" Laptop - Intel Celeron N4500 2021 - 4GB Memory - 64GB eMMC - Snowflake White Review

This is a bare-bones laptop for the absolute lowest budget. The 4GB RAM and 64GB storage are major bottlenecks, making multitasking nearly impossible. At around $180, it's cheap, but you get what you pay for. Only consider this if $180 is your absolute max and you refuse to buy used; otherwise, look at refurbished business laptops or Chromebooks.

Let's be real upfront. The HP 14-inch with the Celeron N4500 isn't trying to win any speed races. It's the laptop you buy when your main goal is to spend as little as possible to get a Windows machine that turns on and connects to the internet. It's for the absolute basics: checking email, browsing a few tabs, maybe watching a YouTube video. The interesting part is that it's still being sold new in 2024, and it comes with Windows 11 and a dedicated Copilot key for AI assistance, which feels a bit like putting a spoiler on a moped. It's a fascinating look at the very bottom of the new laptop market.

Performance is exactly what you'd expect from a Celeron N4500 and 4GB of RAM. Our database puts its CPU performance in the 38th percentile, which means it's slower than over 60% of laptops we track. In real-world terms, that translates to noticeable lag when you have more than three browser tabs open. The Intel UHD Graphics land in the 43rd percentile, so it can technically play a game from 2010 at 720p, but calling it a 'gaming' experience is generous. The 64GB eMMC storage is the real bottleneck, sitting in the 6th percentile. It's slow, and after Windows 11 and a few essential apps, you'll be managing free space like a hawk.

The value proposition is simple: it's the cheapest new Windows ticket in town. For $180, you get a functional computer with a warranty. That's it. The price-to-performance ratio is terrible if you measure performance, but if your budget is rigidly under $200, there aren't many other new options. You're paying for the bare minimum hardware wrapped in a plastic chassis. Just know that every component is a compromise, and that 'long battery life' claim in the description is highly suspect given the unknown battery specs.

Compared to other new laptops, it's in a league of its own, and not in a good way. The listed competitors like the MacBook Pro or ASUS ProArt are in a different universe performance-wise and price-wise; they're not real alternatives. A more realistic comparison is against used or refurbished business laptops from a few years ago. For the same $180, you could likely find a used Dell Latitude or Lenovo ThinkPad with an 8th Gen Intel Core i5, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. That older machine would run circles around this HP in every single task. The trade-off is you lose the 'new' factor and the warranty might be shorter. The other alternative is a Chromebook, which would offer a much smoother experience for web-based tasks on similarly cheap hardware.

Almost everyone should skip this laptop. Students should skip it because the 4GB RAM and tiny storage will choke on basic research and multitasking. Anyone who needs to do more than one thing at a time on their computer should skip it. Gamers, content creators, and even casual users who value a snappy experience should look elsewhere. If you can possibly stretch your budget, even by $50, you'll find massively better performance in the used/refurbished market. If you're only doing web browsing and email, a Chromebook at this price point will feel much faster and more responsive.

We can only recommend this HP 14 to one person: someone who needs a brand new Windows laptop immediately and cannot spend a single dollar over $180. That's it. For students, the 4GB RAM and tiny storage make it a poor choice for any schoolwork beyond the most basic document editing. For anyone else, the experience will be frustratingly slow. If your budget has even a little flexibility, pushing it to $250-$300 opens up a world of better used, refurbished, or entry-level Chromebook options that won't have you waiting for web pages to load. This laptop exists for the strictest of strict budgets.