HP Stream 7 Review: A $119 Windows Tablet
by Brandon Chester on December 19, 2014 8:00 AM ESTCPU Performance
Inside the Stream 7 we have Intel's Atom Z3735G, which is a quad core Bay Trail part that has a base frequency of 1.33GHz and a burst frequency of 1.83GHz. It's paired with 1GB of DDR3L-RS-1333 memory, where the RS stands for "Reduced Standby". As the name implies, it has a focus on improving standby battery life on devices like tablets. Z3735G unfortunately has one of the slower memory interfaces of the Bay Trail lineup, with only single channel support and a max memory bandwidth of 5.3Gbps. Nonetheless, the CPU itself is fairly powerful, especially for a $119 device.
Although the Stream 7 does run a full copy of Windows, I've decided to run it through our mobile workflows rather than our desktop/laptop ones because I believe most users are going to use it similarly to how they use other tablets. I will elaborate on this point later in the software section, but the main point is that the normal Windows desktop experience is just not very good on touchscreens, especially 7" 1280x800 displays. Because of this, it's better to run it through benchmarks where it can be compared to other tablets. The fact that PCMark requires more space than the Stream 7 physically has is also an issue.
As you can see, Intel's latest Atom platform performs very well in our tests. It should be noted that these tests were performed using Chrome rather than IE, to maintain consistency with the results from previous Windows tablet reviews. This means that the Sunspider score leaves much to be desired, as Google has stopped focusing on it as an optimization target. Looking at our other tests, we see that the Stream 7 is not the fastest tablet, but it is still very fast. In fact, it's competitive with the silicon inside tablets that cost two or even three times as much, which is impressive.
GPU Performance
The Intel HD Graphics chip in Bay Trail is architecturally similar to Intel's HD 4000 graphics on Ivy Bridge. It's simply a cut down implementation with 4 EUs instead of the 16 in an Ivy Bridge chip. The implementation in Atom Z3735G scales from 311MHz to 646MHz as needed. Thankfully, the Windows Store has up-to-date versions of 3DMark and GFXBench available, so we can compare the Stream 7 to the other devices that we've benchmarked in the past.
As you can see, Bay Trail isn't exactly a graphics powerhouse. However, the Stream 7's resolution means that the onscreen results aren't that bad, so you'll be able to get away with running some of the lighter games that you can on other platforms, provided of course that they're available on the Windows Store.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
157 Comments
View All Comments
lioncat55 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I own the stream 7, the 1GB of ram can be pushed very far. Its shocking to me what I can do. Heroes of the Storms plays easy at the lowest settings.mrdude - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Petition to rename the bottom of all GPU related benchmarks as 'The Intel Zone'smilingcrow - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Using 4 decimal places for Maximum Brightness which is a value in the 100s is plain silly. Rounding to the nearest integer seems sensible to me.Hairs_ - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
"The other thing that motivated me was the general lack of coverage for devices at the low end of the market. News coverage and reviews always seem to focus on the newest iPad, the newest Galaxy Tab, or the newest Ultrabook. There's not as much attention paid to these inexpensive devices, and it's problematic because many people simply cannot afford more premium devices that cost many hundreds or thousands of dollars. If nobody takes a look at the low end, there's also no push for manufacturers to improve those devices."THANK YOU!
Finally someone gets it. Even if this product isn't fantastically amazing, or doesn't have some esoteric use case which requires research, or a sexy pr angle, there are lots of prospective buyers at this level who are being left absolutely in the lurch by tech sites.
More of these, please!
MonkeyPaw - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
The ironic thing about the Windows Appstore is that, despite having terrible selection and quality in general, it has the best RSS (Freely) client I have ever used on a touch device in NextGen Reader.Arbie - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I agree with Hairs. These are interesting devices and some crucial facts like actual battery life are nowhere available. Others comment that 2GB etc are better; well, maybe test some of those devices too. I personally have no interest in flagship smartphones.BrokenCrayons - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Thanks for the review. I've been really curious about the Stream 7 for a while now and I'm glad it got the usual, thoughtful treatment from Anandtech. Windows tablets, inexpensive ones in particular, don't get a lot of attention which makes being an informed buyer pretty difficult.bill.rookard - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
The point of this article is that there are no bad devices, there are bad price points. I have one of these, and I picked it up at the local retail store. I didn't pay 119.00 for it, I didn't pay 99.00 for it. I got this for $79.00 out the door. They had a $20.00 off special for it, no coupons required.While certainly it is not a perfect device by any means, in truth, at $80.00 it's one of those price points where you just can't go wrong. It runs full Win8. Decent display. Sufficiently powerful for a tablet. Battery life is long enough for what I use it for, and it's removable and replaceable. I haven't tried the audio jack yet (I may do that when I get home now that I'm aware of it), but still, again for what I paid for it, how could I complain?
Michael Bay - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
Brandon, you really should have reviewed a Stream 8. Nobody expects anything from 7, but at 150$ there should be less compromise in specs and build of the device, making it much more desirable.And why all this Mami fixation, really.
Spectrophobic - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link
I don't think a mere inch is worth almost double the price of a Stream 7 on sale. A bigger battery is always good but in terms of running the thing at 100% scaling, a fine point stylus is still required. It's nice for $150 if it has 2GB RAM.Also, it's Mami-san. Who couldn't resist her?