Gadgetory

hey guys this is Austin this is the 188 dollar HP stream so when I did a video on this recently I was impressed with just how much laptop you're able to get for that kind of price however lots of you guys commented some other options for around 200 dollars on the laptop side one of the main things people suggested was to pick up a Chromebook and you can see if there's a lot of Appeal here what you're getting is a very cheap computer that while it's going to be lightweight it's only running Chrome OS so it's actually not really going to be a big problem however even more people suggested to pick up a used laptop so that is where I found this HP EliteBook which even though it's a couple years old still comes in around $200 ever since Chromebooks were first announced they've actually kind of been pretty much the same thing so what you're getting here is a very very basic laptop however when you're just needing to run a web browser that kind of actually works out okay and especially considering just how cheap it is especially how easy it is to set up stuff like schools and different like places that are kind of constantly going through hardware I actually really do get a big advantage out of using a Chromebook so this is a fairly small laptop with an 11.6 inch display so I will say it actually does feel reasonably well-built even though it is all going to be plastic and if we open it up we'll see lots and lots more plastic inside the design is about as safe as it gets so to be fair Chromebooks actually do have a lot of the basics figured out so the keyboards are pretty much always fine the track pads are pretty decent the screens are going to be kind of mediocre but you're going to be getting decent Wi-Fi as well as just enough ports for while whatever you're gonna do on a Chromebook what you're getting here is a stripped down operating system that is entirely built around Chrome now for a lot of people you actually can do most things inside the browser however there are also some other options that happen to run full windows when you get into the world of used laptops there are options absolutely everywhere they try to keep things at least somewhat even I want Amazon and tried to find something that was going to be refurbished at least you get some kind of warranty and you know it's not going to be completely beat up or whatever at least I hope it won't be super beat-up and terrible in the box oh well okay that's quite the unboxing experience we get the giant old-school power cable so that's the laptop and this giant cardboard thing well that's actually really heavy as you can see things that definitely evolved in the last few years and your two hundred dollar laptop is much much thinner and lighter than it used to be there are advantages to using something a little bit older though including a ton of ports so addition to a full DVD Drive we also have an SD card reader a pair of USB 3.0 ports we get firewire around back you're going to be getting VGA a modem Ethernet and you flip it over to the other side we're getting a full-size display port another USB port as well as issei that and your headphone and microphone jacks so you know don't complain about your single port macbook anymore this guy for 200 bucks has you covered you'll have the magical experience of being able to remove your batteries so when inevitably your old laptop has a terrible 35 minute battery life is easy just grab another one off eBay and throw it in there definitely advantages in going with a little bit of an older design but what I'm curious about is what are the trade-offs is this really going to be your best option for $200 when it comes to the Chromebook 3 use it for about 30 seconds and you will immediately appreciate just how small and lightweight it is just over a kilogram or about 2.5 pounds it's so lightweight it kind of feels like a toy however with the exception of the bezels which are shiny and look a little bit cheap it actually is reasonably well-built take a look at the screen and you'll see it's rocking an 11.6 inch 1366 by 768 panel well it's not incredibly sharp it's going to be totally usable for something especially at this price point I'm kind of impressed with how bright the screen gets a lot of the time when it comes to a budget laptop the screens are a little bit on the DEM side but it's actually pretty impressive here although it's not impressive are the viewing angles but I mean for less than 190 bucks what do you expect the biggest consideration when you're picking up a Chromebook though is whether or not you're ready for Chrome OS now for a lot of people it's going to be more than enough and completely fine but for a lot of other people they're gonna want the flexibility of something like Windows it really just does depend on what you're using it for the basic idea is the Chrome OS is a stripped-down version of Linux that is focused around the Chrome browser now while that might sound crazy especially if you live your life and a lot of web apps such as Google Docs and office 365 it is usable some newer Chromebooks though including the Chromebook 3 do support Android apps and while it's an option it's not exactly a great one on this system first most ads expect a touchscreen which is fine when you're using an Android phone but not so great when you're using an 11 inch laptop so when it comes to actually clicking to say jump in Super Mario run it's not the greatest experience and on top of that a lot of other games just won't run all that well even completely ignoring the controls and performance really is an area where you notice the low price of the Chromebook it's powered by a seller on in 3050 processor which is a putt as low-end as it gets and a laptop in 2018 to be fair for basic web browsing which is what most people are going to be doing with the Chromebook anyway it's totally fine maybe not the fastest thing in the world however once you start loading up a few tabs it does noticeably slow down and keep in mind that I'm using the upgraded model with 4 gigs of RAM there is another model of the Chromebook 3 which only has 2 gigabytes of RAM if you know you're really all about that single tab light as a Chromebook you don't exactly need a lot of storage which is good because the Chromebook 3 only has 16 gigs of storage onboard now well that might not be enough to get you a full copy of Windows 10 onboard it's actually fine for Chrome OS it gives you about 9 gigs or so free to install other Android apps or whatever kind of stuff you want to actually download one thing that is decent is the battery life so Samsung claims up to 11 hours on a charge and while that might be a little bit ambitious this is a laptop that I would feel totally comfortable going for a full day without taking the charger I know they sound pretty negative but don't get me wrong there is definitely a market for Chromebooks however if it's my money I'm gonna spend my $200 elsewhere like for example with this giant used HP EliteBook look this thing is absolutely enormous I'm sure you're getting a lot of extra ports and features that you're not getting on the other laptops but you're also getting something that weighs over five pounds it's like basically both of those combined there are also some really weird quirks with the elite block so beside the webcam there's a little light button press it that tiny LED pops out to illuminate the keyboard so you know if you're heavily working in the dark or your need to sign some incredibly important legal documents on your keyboard this tiny light has got you covered a quirk that I'm not as big a fan of is the trackpad now sure you're going to have left and right click buttons on top and bottom but even for 2012 this one's a little bit raw now it does support two finger gestures my big problem is just the tracking sure once you crank up the sensitivity it's not that bad but especially compared to even low-end stuff like on the stream in the Chromebook is just not in the same league on the plus side though in the middle of the keyboard is a little trackpad nipple you know who's ever gonna complain about having an extra nipple and those performance-wise you're getting a core i5 3360 em now is a third gen Ivy Bridge part it is definitely little bit on the older side but it actually holds up surprisingly well today we run it through Geekbench and there's no context it absolutely destroys both the Chromebook and the stream it's not just for benchmarks either you really do notice the difference when you use all three of these laptops back-to-back the EliteBook just feels much much faster and to be fair I'm not going to want to do a lot of gaming on this for example but for normal use it stays very snappy pretty much throughout which is definitely not something I can say about the stream especially when it starts doing something like an update in the background and everything grinds to a halt that Core i5 is backed up by a good bytes of RAM and a 320 gigabyte hard drive well 4 gigs of RAM is fine on the Chromebook and feasting on the stream is really nice to have that extra memory when you load more than say 2 things up at a time and something that really surprised to say is the 320 gigabyte hard drive actually isn't terrible screen wise we're looking at a 40 inch panel with a resolution of 1366 by 768 and that's actually pretty mediocre these days to be totally honest but when you compare to these other two laptops at the very least you're getting a nice we're looking panel it's low res but it's not gonna you know make your eyes bleed or something something else is slightly behind the times is the 802 dot 11 and Wi-Fi now keep in mind this is actually a pretty solid implementation with 2x2 Wi-Fi antennas and I was actually able to get around 200 megabytes per second on the download but it isn't quite match up to the latest AC solutions still though for under 200 bucks I'm not complaining and speaking of price this laptop was originally over $1000 five years ago considering that it's now about 20% of that value it's actually not too bad and you do see a lot of the advantages of having something that was much more expensive when it first came out however everything comes crashing down when it comes to the battery life so as you would expect from a five-year-old business laptop it's exactly the strong suit I'm meeting somewhere between two to three hours of fairly basic use on this guy a big part of that is because it has a pretty small 55 watt hour battery so even though it is swappable andthere you could carry a couple around I feel like especially when you put this side-by-side with the newer laptops like the Chromebook in the stream which are getting well over double the battery life it kind of hard to justify carrying this huge big of a laptop around and of course the other big wildcard is the fact that you're buying a used laptop so like I said earlier I picked up a refurbished model from Amazon which does come with a warranty and at least someone in theory went over it to make sure everything works and thankfully I lucked out everything actually does work pretty much flawlessly now there are a couple of very very minor blemishes on the outside of the laptop but honestly I'm surprised with just how clean this thing is of course your mileage will definitely vary depending on where you find a laptop whether it's been refurbished or not whether someone took care of it or not for me it really comes down to two things you can either go with this safe option and get a brand new laptop with good battery life it's gonna be small and portable but you're going to be losing performance or do you want to take a chance on an older laptop that might have a couple of problems that is going to deliver a lot more performance and a lot more features if it's my money if you find the right used laptop I think it's totally worth considering even something that's five years old it's still going to be good enough for 99% of people and the good thing is a lot of the upgrades that you might want to do and like more memory or an SSD or fairly cheap these days I'm curious what do you guys think is the best option for a two hundred dollar laptop today let me know in the comments below and I will catch you on the next one