HP Stream 7 Review: A $119 Windows Tablet
by Brandon Chester on December 19, 2014 8:00 AM ESTBattery Life
The battery life is one of the areas that I was concerned about when I purchased the Stream 7. It sports an 11.1Wh battery, which is smaller than the battery in some smartphones like the Galaxy Note 4 and the Nexus 6. However, the battery life of a device does not depend entirely on the battery capacity. The power draw of the display, CPU, RAM, and other components will be what determines how fast the battery is drained. To evaluate the battery life of the HP Stream 7, I've run it through our web battery life test and our video playback battery test. I've also run our video test on the iPad Air 2 as it was unable to be tested in time for its original review. This provides a point of comparison to another modern tablet, albeit a much more expensive one.
Unfortunately, there's just no getting around the fact that the Stream 7 has a really small battery for a 7" tablet. It gets the lowest score in both our web browsing and video playback tests. Both results are significantly less than the "up to 8 hours" that HP rates the battery for. It's likely that enabling Intel's DPST will improve these results, but all that really means is that dimming the display below our 200nits standard will improve battery life.
Charge Time
With a smaller battery, one can at least hope that the time to charge it will be shorter than other devices. However, this will be influenced by the charger that the company supplies with the device. In this case, HP has included a 10W charging block with the Stream 7. What's funny is that it's not an HP branded charger; it's a Chicony Electronics charger with an HP sticker on the front.
Thankfully, the Stream 7 doesn't take very long to charge after its short battery life has been used up. It's not quite as fast as the Galaxy Note 4 or Nexus 6, both of which ship with higher wattage chargers, but it's still much quicker than the other tablets on our list as a result of its smaller battery. One thing to note about charging the Stream 7 is that I was unable to get it to charge off of any computer USB ports. This was surprising, because my computer has 1.5A USB 2 ports that are able to charge even the iPad 3 and its massive battery.
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sonny73n - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
Sony would never send their junks to this reputable site.hpglow - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
How many times can you bitch about the lack of Sony reviews in these comments sections?sonny73n - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
What about it? Sony Z3 phones are garbage. I just bought a Z3C from BH Photo last week. I thought 10+ positive reviews from popular tech sites couldn't be wrong. Turned out I've made the biggest mistake. You want one of the Z3 phones review? Here it is:Pros: Good looking, great battery life, micro SD slot.
Cons: Display is the worst I've seen on a smart phone beside other Sony junks of course. Touch panel patterns are clearly visible whether the screen is on or off. Color shift when tilt. Sony stock firmware contains spyware Baidu and bloatwares. Unlock bootloader will delete the TA partition which contains DRM keys.
Other thoughts: I wish its display has the same quality as my old iPhone 4 which was from 5 years ago. I bought 3 Sony phone in the past 2 year. First the ZR, it got very hot even at browsing the internet - returned. Second the ZL, it got uncomfortably warm at normal use. Both phones displays made with TFT panels which are just terrible. Now the Z3C after very careful consideration because of those 2 ZR and ZL but this time it just pisses me off so much. Let me repeat - the Z3C display is worse than the iPhone 4's aftermarket ones on eBay which just costs about $14 each. Sony is nothing but a scam. They didn't post the display types for those 2 ZR and ZL on the spec sheets. Now I wonder the Z3C IPS display is some new kind of low cost IPS tech they just invented. I'd rather have a TN display with no visible touch patterns than this junk they claim ips.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link
Are you serious? They've got malware on their stock phones?!? Yowzers, I almost bought one for the waterproof-ness, but ended up going with a Nokia 635 'cause figured it's cheap so if it gets damaged....well, it's cheap. (And actually I like my 635 quite a lot too as a phone...I think 90% of people would probably do just fine with it and don't need a $650 phone lol)victorson - Saturday, December 20, 2014 - link
If you are thinking that this subsidizied pos tablet is any different than what the Chinese are doing, good for you, but you have little touch with reality. I've had the chance to use and review the latest top smartphones from Xiaomi and Meizu, and those are nothing short of amazing smartphones, and yes, they are getting regularly updatedGich - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
No one? I do.zero2dash - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Obvious troll is obvious.Why are you reading articles on "boring devices" and then bothering to leave a troll comment on top of it.
The device isn't something you're interested in - congratulations. Read another article then. If you're looking for phone only reviews, there's plenty of sites out there for those.
III-V - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
What a sad world we live in, where we casually dismiss what others have to say as "trolling." And what makes you think he read the article?I don't necessarily agree with him, but you're just being incredibly stupid.
Cinnabuns - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
So the OP's casually dismissive comment about a whole device category and the people who may be interested in it brought on a response in kind. This is sad how?schizoide - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
It's a full, usable, x86 windows 8.1 tablet that regularly sells for $99 (and hit $79 on black friday!). It's not boring at all, it's downright astonishing that this thing even exists.