HP Chromebook 14 review (2016) - still a great Chromebook

At first glance, you could almost mistake HP's new Chromebook 14 for its similarly-named 2014 predecessor. Both have a neat, white exterior and flashes of sky blue along the side, but open them up and the differences quickly become apparent. Whereas the last model only had a sky blue finish around the lid, the new Chromebook 14 is now blue throughout, giving it a more eye-catching, vibrant finish that really draws the eye. 

It certainly won't be to everyone's tastes, of course, but the Chromebook 14’s keyboard tray has a pleasantly glossy finish to it as well as a very light patterned design. It almost resembles the plotting graph paper you used to see in Maths class in school, which is quite charming in its own way.

Overall, the Chromebook 14 feels well constructed despite its copious amounts of plastic. It’s a little lighter than its predecessor at 1.69kg compared to the former’s 1.9kg, and it’s also marginally thinner, measuring 17.8mm in thickness rather than 20.6mm.

Keyboard and touchpad

Otherwise, the two models feel very similar. The keyboard has the same springiness to it as before, and it once again proves surprisingly comfortable to type on. The only mild annoyance is its super-thin Enter key, which can sometimes be a bit tricky to press correctly when typing at speed. 

The touchpad is a good size and comes in a slightly different shade of blue to the rest of the laptop’s interior. It has a nice coating that lets swipes glide across the surface, and it was able to recognise multitouch inputs without any issues. All in all, the build quality of the HP Chromebook 14 remains as good as its predecessor, which was already very good for its price.

Performance, Battery Life & Connections

Internally, the HP Chromebook 14 has been completely revamped to better reflect today's modern hardware. It still has one of Intel's Celeron chips, but it now has a dual-core N2840 model that runs at 2.16GHz and can Turbo Boost to 2.58GHz. This is quite a bump up from the old 2955U Celeron processor in the original Chromebook 14 that only ran at 1.4GHz.

The amount of RAM remains unchanged at 4GB, though, and you still only have 16GB of internal storage. Luckily, there is a microSD card slot to give you even more room, but (as with all Chromebooks) you’ll largely be reliant on using cloud-based storage for most of your files. You do, however, get two years’ worth of 100GB Google Drive storage bundled in.

As Chrome OS is such a lightweight operating system, it doesn’t require a particularly high-powered specification to get the most out of it. A JetStream score of 52.9 was good, but a rather mediocre 10fps in the WebGL 3D Cubes benchmark was less than half of the Acer Chromebook R11, which is disappointing considering the Chromebook 14 has a faster processor and double the amount of RAM.

A SunSpider benchmark score of 585.5ms isn’t the greatest, either, but subjectively, web browsing felt responsive and reasonably quick for the most part. Only after opening several tabs did pages start to chug, but once they did eventually load, even image-heavy pages scrolled without any hiccups. 

Battery life at 9 hours 14 minutes puts it around the same level as the previous Chromebook 14, which, needless to say, is still very good. That's more than enough to get you through a full day’s use, especially since Chromebooks are generally used for lighter tasks than their full laptop counterparts.

That's not to say Chromebooks can't be used for anything more taxing than web browsing, as the Chromebook 14 proved surprisingly capable for consuming media as well. There’s plenty of USB ports for connecting external devices, with two USB2 and a single USB3 port, and an HDMI output lets you connect it to an external display as well. The built-in speakers performed well, too, and were good enough to watch films on Netflix. If you want to listen to music, however, you're better off using the headphone jack. 

Display

The display was one of the more lacklustre elements of the last Chromebook 14, but sadly the new model doesn’t fare much better. It’s got the same 14.1in, 1,366x768 resolution display as the last Chromebook 14, and it achieved almost identical scores in our calibration tests as well, suggesting HP might well have resorted to simply using the same panel.

For instance, black levels were once again exceedingly high at 0.82cd/m2, meaning shadows appear grey and washed out rather than dark and inky. White levels were respectable at least, but a contrast ratio of just 291:1 leaves a lot to be desired. Admittedly, the new Chromebook 14's colour accuracy was marginally better this time round at 64.6% of the sRGB colour gamut, but it's still not particularly rich or vibrant. All this is pretty par for course with an entry-level Chromebook, though, and the display's matt finish also helps to combat overhead reflections, too.   

Conclusion

The HP Chromebook 14 builds upon a lot of things I liked about the old model. It’s still great value for what you’re getting in terms of build quality and general performance, and if you’re looking for a general, all-round performer for Chrome OS, then this will definitely serve you well. It's definitely one of the best 14in Chromebooks I've reviewed recently, but if you’re looking for something a little smaller, or a device that serves double-duties as a 2-in-1, then you'll probably be better off opting for the Acer Chromebook R11. Alternatively, have a look at our list of the Best Chromebooks.