- Today, I am buying the
cheapest laptops I can to answer one simple
question: should you go out and buy something that's super-cheap, or does it make sense to
spend just a little bit more money and get a
much better experience? Spoiler alert: yes.
(air whooshing) So this is the HP Stream.
(bubble popping) This laptop cost me $220,
but I've done videos on previous versions of the Stream that cost as little as 180 bucks. My biggest question, taking
a look at this laptop, is a really simple one: why
does such a terrible laptop that is so old still sell so well? This is one of the most
popular laptops in the world, and yet, is it really that different than that laptop I took a
look at seven years ago? I don't think so. I forgot how long it takes to
set these things up. (laughs) It's okay. Look, when you're
spending $200 on a laptop, patience is something that
you definitely require. Do you see this? Like, can you get really close here? There's a group of dead pixels right here. You see that?
- Yeah. - Well, that's a great first sign. (relaxed music) (adhesive hissing) You know, one of the interesting things is the battery is actually fairly large, but it's super, super-narrow. I mean, like, that's a pancake battery, and then underneath here would be our CPU, which does have a little
copper heatsink on it. That's it. There's nothing going on here. There's literally no reason
I can think of whatsoever to ever take apart your HP Stream, but science.
(tool clattering) To better understand where
devices like the HP Stream come from, I think it's
important to take a look back at where these all got their start, the dark days of netbooks.
(person screaming) This is an ASUS Eee PC,
and if you were around in the late 2000s, you
knew that these netbooks were absolutely everywhere. They offered a couple of things that no one else could
really touch at the time. First of all, they were
incredibly affordable. This was one of the later
models back from 2012, but even the earlier models
were only around $300, which was far and away cheaper than any other full Windows
laptop you could buy. The other benefit they really had going for them was the size. With a 10-inch display,
they were absolutely tiny and really quite portable. Now, there were other
ultra-portable laptops back in the day, but the problem was was that if you wanted something that
was around the same size as an Eee PC, you're spending a lot more. Instead of a few hundred dollars, you're spending $1,000, $2,000. Think about like that early
MacBook Air, some of the VAIOs. They were very expensive
systems, so there was certainly a contingent of people who
really just wanted something that was ultra-portable
that could fit in a bag, but I would say, the
vast majority of people who were buying netbooks
were doing it purely because of the price. They weren't really good at anything besides being a very cheap computer, and when you look at
this beside the HP Stream of today, there are a lot of parallels. So what exactly can you
do with the cheapest new laptop you can buy? Well, you have to put it
to the test, of course. The thing with HP Stream,
well, we're looking at a 1,366 by 768 display, which means it's essentially just barely above 720p. Let's see if the HP Stream can stream 4K. (key clicking)
Hello, and welcome to Wishtery Tech. Let's buy some dumb stuff on Wish. The item I see are both- I'm actually pretty impressed! We're playing back 4K YouTube no problem! (bell dinging)
(hands swishing) Let's get some Minecraft action. Just trying to, like, look around slowly. Minecraft for phones runs
much better than this. Oh, God, no, we, no, no.
(buzzer blaring) I actually don't even
know if this will run. We may have just installed
Valorant for zero reason. I'm getting a few seconds
per frame right now. (laughs) I think the game just crashed. (chuckles) (hand thudding)
(alarm buzzing) We are now recording using
OBS on the HP Stream. I'm gonna just take a guess
and say that the quality that you're looking at
right now is terrible because I look at the screen,
and it looks terrible, and we're also using the microphone built into the HP Stream, which I'm
gonna guess is also subpar. At this point, it is
pretty clear: the HP Stream can handle some very basic tasks, but ask it to do anything
remotely demanding, and it falls apart quickly. I think the real benefit
to buying something like an HP Stream is less so
from the consumer standpoint and more from the Intel, the Microsoft, the HP standpoint because when you look at some of the decisions
they've made with the HP Stream, I really think that this is a laptop which is designed to be
just barely good enough to fight off something like a Chromebook, but not too good to the
point where it eats into some of the higher-end laptops
where they actually make money, and this is not a laptop
that is designed for 2021. This is a laptop that is less powerful than a smartphone from 2015, right? I mean, that is not acceptable
for a full Windows laptop. I don't care what the price
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for sponsoring this video. To get a good sense for
what kind of systems you can buy at this budget,
my next task was simple: how does a similarly
priced Chromebook stack up? So when it comes to a Chromebook, we actually do have more options. They have actually some
fairly expensive Chromebooks. This one's 629 bucks,
but I think I found it. Look, it's a MacBook Pro 15-inch. - [Ken] Samsung's finest right here. - It's 249 bucks! And mind you, it has, like, no ports, and it also is very, very lightweight. Literally nothing inside, but
if you want a larger display. I mean, it's certainly not
fast, I can tell you that. So Celeron processor, which is fine. Four gigs of RAM, not great, fine, but you get an HD display. I really wanna open this up. I feel like it's gonna
be almost entirely empty on the inside. So what have we gotten
with our Chrome OS money, our Chromebucks, some might say? A certainly larger device than what we get with the HP Stream. I mean, a 15-inch display,
while I'm personally a fan of smaller laptops, that is an
advantage for a lotta people. (bell dinging)
Whoo! (laughs) This weighs nothing! (packaging rustling) This weighs actually nothing, wow! - [Ken] It's 'cause it's all in the cloud. - (laughs) So we have
a USB-A, a USB-C port, and a second USB-C port
as well as microSD. I actually really like the idea of being able to plug in on either side. It's like what you get on, like, some MacBooks and some higher-end laptops. No matter which side
of, like, the power plug you're on, you could just plug it in. It's super-easy. The screen goes actually pretty far back, not flat, but, like, pretty far back. All right, so with our
Chromebook up-to-date and charging, a few notes. The screen is fine. So it is 1080p; however, it is clearly a fairly low-quality TN panel, pretty much what you would expect
for this kinda price. It's usable, but it's only
usable if you're dead-on. - [Reporter] A tense French Grand Prix was ultimately decided by a penultimate- - Sounds a little crunchy. - [Reporter] But the defining moment of the race really happened
- Turn it down a little bit though. - many, many laps earlier.
- That's totally fine. - [Reporter] And a
moment that surprised us- - Looks good, sounds decent.
(key clicking) Okay, so so far so good.
(bell dinging) There's an OEM folder,
including Lightroom. Do you wanna try Lightroom? - [Ken] Sure. - All yours. - [Ken] So this is actually a photo that I took of my new Supra. - Flex!
- Flex. I took this with portrait
mode on my iPhone, and Creative Cloud actually
sunk this over the cloud into Lightroom over here,
which is kinda cool. My only hesitation here, though, is that this monitor, the TN panel, is not particularly
color accurate at all. So I can do my photo tweaks on this and get somewhat close to something that I would call decent, but I would want to check this on my phone to
see if it actually looks good 'cause the screen on
my phone is definitely way better calibrated than this one. Also, the graphics are definitely
glitching on me right now. - [Austin] Are they really? - The UI is, it's having problems, and you kinda see, like,
you see a little bit back there?
- It's really hard for me to see on camera what the screen- - [Ken] Well, I mean,
look at all that flicker. - [Austin] Oh, yeah! - [Ken] That's not hard to see at all. - So the pre-installed Lightroom app, not looking super-hot. One thing I will give Samsung:
this is very easy to open up. So if you'd have a little
just, like, knife or something just to pop these feet up, what you'll see that there are only four screws
holding the back panel on. I'll just say there's almost definitely zero reason to ever do this. There's no way there's anything upgradable inside a Chromebook. Inside, the grand reveal is- (laughs) So this is our logic board. This is just an extension
for the two ports here. We have two little speakers, and what is a 39-watt-hour battery,
so a very small battery. This is 100% meant to be a smaller device that's, like, that wide, and they just, (snickers) they just designed it to fit. Well, the more you know! Now, we weren't originally planning on talking about this in the video, however, if you can stretch your budget just a little bit by about $100 or so, you could potentially get this. So this is a little bit
of an unusual laptop. It is a Gateway laptop
that, as far as we're aware, is exclusive to Walmart online. However, at $350, take
a look at these specs. It is night and day difference compared to something like the
Chromebook or the HP Stream. We've got a full Ryzen 5 processor. (bell dinging) We've got 256 gigs of storage,
(bell dinging) eight gigs of RAM,
(bell dinging) 1080p, USB-C.
(bell dinging) I mean, there's a lot going
for something which, yes, is certainly more expensive,
but considering the trade-offs you have with those cheaper systems, is it worth spending another $100 to get what could potentially be
a far, far better system? (lips smacking) I think we all know the answer to that. All right, I haven't seen this yet. It's green!
(plastic rustling) You know what, I'm a fan of the green, although the logo looks kinda weird because it's like, it's
like white on silver, so based on how you're looking at it. - [Ken] Oh, I like that, though. - It actually looks kinda
like Aston Martin Green, except it's just plastic.
(knuckles tapping) Oh, geez, that keyboard looks terrible! Wow, hang on, let me try this. (keys clicking) It's not quite as bad as it looks, but that is definitely bottom-tier of laptop keyboards I've ever used. So to put this in context there is a very popular Acer Aspire 5 that for a very long time has been one of if not the best-selling laptops on Amazon, and that has a worse processor and is typically 50 to $100
more expensive than this. So we can forgive some of the flaws, whoo! (screwdriver whirring) All right, first question:
what is under this? I am assuming it's a empty M2 drive. It's probably full,
actually, realistically. Oh, it's empty! Is it gonna be that easy to
upgrade this with a second SSD? 'Cause if so, I am super-impressed. All right, let's pop open
the rest of these screws. Oh-ho, boy, that's empty. (laughs) Oh, wow, wait a minute! Yo, yo, yo, some good stuff in here! So obviously, they coulda
fit a bigger battery, but not only do we have our empty M2 slot, we also have one extra SO-DIMM. You can easily bump this from eight gigs to 16 and probably even 24
gigs of RAM if you want, and you have the one SSD here,
which is already installed, but you've got the easy access
to the second slot here. As simple and as basic as this is, for 350 bucks, I'm very
impressed with the upgradability. Now, one concern I have is cooling. So a Ryzen 5 processor
is not super-demanding, but that is one very small heat pipe and very minimal-looking fan. I would not be surprised
if we run into some issues. Yeah, let me see if I get
really close, I can hear it. (relaxed rock music) Where is the speaker? This is max volume So this is what the webcam looks
like on the Gateway laptop, and I think the less said, the better. This is (oof) terrible. I'll say immediately, plug in a mouse, this feels so much better. This trackpad is just not good. Like, it's just not good. Let's see what we can do with some hardcore
Minecraft gaming. (laughs) Look, man, Minecraft is still fun. Well, if you've seen our
"Building the Perfect Minecraft" video, it can still be
pretty demanding, right? I mean, we were flexing
a 3080 Ti with Minecraft. Well, that's not a fast
generation of a world right there. Whoo-hoo! That's a- I mean, that's okay, it's going. Whoa, all right, well, we're
in, and that looks bad. That looks really bad. Okay, so we've got 10 FPS right now! Okay, yikes. All right, we're gonna
just turn some settings down here (laughing) real quick. Now, we're (groans) 27 FPS. (groans) It's not great. Though to be fair, we
are playing at 1080p, so if I just shrink
things down a little bit, it will be better, but I
guarantee you if we had more RAM, which is easy to install, right? If you install more RAM, you are gonna get a significant jump to performance. In the several months it's taken us to make this video, what have we learned? Well, first of all, the
HP Stream is not good. You should not buy this. This thing just doesn't make any sense (laughing) for basically anyone to get. Okay, sure, now, when it
comes to the Chromebook, thank you very much, this, I
think, does make more sense. It is not a perfect
system, but if you want a very cheap system, you should realize that there are limitations for it, and you should just live with that, right? I think the Chromebook
does make more sense, and it belongs on the table, which means that the Gateway really is my best choice. For a little bit more
money, you're getting a far better laptop with some compromises, but the compromises you make are actually really pretty reasonable,
so don't cheap out, get a laptop which is actually decent, and make sure to subscribe to the channel, and ring-a-ling the ding-a-ling bell, and you'll be notified
the next time Ken tries to fit a laptop in his pocket,
and it just doesn't fit, and then it's an awkward gag
for the end of the video.
