HP Stream 8

I bought another tablet computer.

It's the HP Stream 8. It's brand new. And it was cheap.

stream8 galleryZoom img2

It compares nicely with my other LTE-enabled Windows tablet, the Nokia Lumia 2520.

Feature
Nokia Lumia 2520
HP Stream 8
Display size
10.1" 1920x1080
8" 1280x800
CPU
SnapDragon 800
Atom Z3735G
CPU cores@speed
4@2.2 GHz
4@1.33 GHz
CPU architecture
ARM
x86
Operating system
Windows RT 8.1
Windows 8.1 (32 bit)
Memory
2 GB
1 GB
Storage
32 GB
32 GB
USB
3.0
2.0
Charger
special Nokia thingy
USB charger

I might have different requirements for tablets than other people. For example, I don't care about the camera. I don't even care about screen resolution so much. But I really prefer a small 8" tablet over the largish 10" tablet.

Basically, the (very expensive) Lumia tablet was supposed to be the perfect premium Windows tablet. The (very cheap less than 200 dollars) Stream 8 tablet is supposed to be an Android competitor. The Stream 8 only has the most basic hardware to support Windows 8.1.

But it does it well.

While the Nokia tablet is faster, the HP tablet feels faster. The HP tablet runs "legacy" (i.e. current) Win32 software, the Nokia tablet only runs "modern" (i.e. non-existent) WinRT software. The Nokia tablet doesn't support Remote Desktop connections to it, the HP tablet does (after upgrading its operating system to Windows 8.1 Pro). Both tablets support PowerShell remoting and the Remote Desktop client. But the HP tablet is completely open to attempts to configure system components. Windows RT on the Nokia tablet is rather restricted in that regard.

The smaller HP tablet fits in my jacket pocket. I still don't really need a tabler for anything (my iPhone and Kindle cover everything I know to do with super-mobile computers) but at least now I could carry the tablet with me. The Nokia was too large.

Neither tablet compares with my Surface Pro 2. But the Surface doesn't have support for mobile phone networks. (Microsoft, what's up with that???)

Anyway, this is a tablet computer I can recommend. It has three advantages (low price, can run Windows 8.1 Pro, supports LTE) and no real disadvantage (it's slow, but not terribly so).

 © Andrew Brehm 2016