HP's Chromebook plans were first revealed last week through a product sheet on its website, but now the company has made it official. Joining the likes of Samsung, Acer, and Lenovo, HP is embracing Google's browser-based operating system with its own Pavilion 14 Chromebook.
Unlike the first wave of Chromebooks with 11.6-inch and 12-inch screens, HP's offering has a 14-inch panel and a correspondingly large laptop frame. Screen resolution remains the same at 1366 x 768, however, and though HP hopes the increased real estate will contribute to improved ease of use there are some downsides to it as well. Specifically, it's notably bulkier than Samsung's model at 4 lb rather than 2.5 lb, and the larger display coupled with HP's use of an Intel x86 chip rather than an ARM chip has taken a toll on battery life – 4 hours and 15 minutes versus nearly seven hours of uptime with the Samsung Chromebook.
The Pavilion 14 offers a 1.1GHz Intel Celeron 847 processor and 2GB of RAM with integrated graphics. There's a tiny 16GB solid-state drive for storage, but you also get 100GB of free Google Drive storage for two years (usually an extra $120) and an SD card slot. Connectivity and ports include 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Ethernet, three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, and the usual headphone/microphone combo jack.
The HP Pavilion 14 is available now from the company's website for $330 – that's $80 - $130 more than Samsung and Acer are asking and you're arguably getting less in return depending on where your priorities are.