HP Stream 200-010 Mini Desktop via Amazon
Blue HP Stream 200-010 (K5G59AA#ABA) is a very competent mini desktop that is only two inches tall with amount of power and functionality you would not expect from such an affordable and compact machine. It comes with a keyboard and a mouse, 200GB of Cloud storage- OneDrive for two years, Solid State Drive for speed, support for up to two displays, very low power usage, only 2GB memory but very easy to upgrade- both the RAM and storage and is ideal for usual daily tasks like surfing the internet, office apps and smooth video streaming but not for advanced gaming or HD video editing.
HP Stream 200-010 is offered with the dual core Intel Celeron 2957U processor (2 MB cache) at 1.4 GHz speed without turbo boost or hyper threading, 2GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (1 x 2GB) at 1600MHz that is upgradeable to 16 GB max, 32 GB M.2 SATA SSD for quicker start-ups and overall speed + 200GB OneDrive Cloud storage for 2 years and Windows 8.1 operating system with Bing Search. As per the manufacturer website, CPU on this model is the quarter 2 of 2014 release Celeron 2957U with a Passmark benchmark score of 1508 as of today- 18 Feb 2015 and not the older and less capable T3000 as specified on the product page. It weighs only 1.4 pounds and measures 5.73 x 5.70 x 2.06 inches so it is very compact and lightweight- small footprint and super portable and a keyboard with volume control and a mouse are included in the package.
At such low price and being a mini desktop it doesn’t come with a screen but is multi-display capable which means it supports dual displays and you can work on two screens at once. Graphics card is the Intel HD graphics (Haswell) with up to 983MB of shared memory, is similar to AMD Radeon HD 8250 in overall performance and you won’t have any problems watching HD videos and playing older games fluently but only a few of the latest games can be played and at lower resolutions and the games will load up quicker thanks to the Solid State Drive. You will experience immersive surround sound with the DTS Sound+ with great details, clear dialogues and deep bass and the sound performance will depend on the screen and/or external speakers you choose to connect. Connectivity options include 802.11bgn wireless LAN featuring 2.4GHz 1×1 technology, Bluetooth 4.0 to sync with other Bluetooth enabled devices wirelessly, 4 x USB 3.0 ports- front and rear, an Audio-Out port- a Headphone/Microphone combo, 3-in-1 digital media reader- SD, SDHC and SDXC, HDMI out, a DisplayPort, 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet with RJ-45 connector and you will need to connect an external webcam for live Skype chats.
Conclusion: Blue HP Stream 200-010 offers you the power and performance of a full-size desktop in such a tiny package that is very easy to set-up right out of the box as you can simply connect it to your HDTV or a HDMI-capable monitor via the HDMI port. It is EPEAT Silver registered, Energy Star certified and comes with a 1 year limited hardware warranty, 90-day toll-free limited software technical support and HP Support Assistant that offers instant self-help support as it is right in your computer. A 30-day trial version of McAfee LiveSafe anti-virus software comes pre-installed and you’ll be better off replacing it with free Avast or AVG from the internet. Cons include the limited amount of storage space due to having a faster SSD instead of a regular HDD and the small amount of memory but both can be easily upgraded- 2GB RAM to 16GB and you’re getting 2 years of free 200GB Cloud storage anyway. It works very quietly due to its fan-less design and boots up only in seconds because of SSD and everything seems to run smoothly and quickly. This is a great little computer as long as you are not expecting a lot from such a low cost mini desktop- it is hard to beat for the price.
Click here for a closer look on Amazon