Yeah, that's quite a shocker truth be told. I bought a little "netbook" last year for my mom and I was surprised the Intel Goldmont+ [0] it has inside could pull 11 hours of netflix.
Now having a beast like those Ryzens pull a similar feat? Sign me up! I'm looking forward to getting one of these!
[0] Goldmont(+) is an architecture where Intel pulled a few tricks from Skylake, put them in the blender with an Atom and got a surprisingly good, yet power efficient design... For late 2018 that is. Seems AMD topped them there too, and without having to go for a less powerful design.
I'm OP: got a way too stripped down hp stream. For the use case ("here you go mom, you got firefox and netflix installed") it was more than enough.
But it does have some severe limitations. Soldered 4GB RAM and 32gb eMMC drive. Soldered everything basically. The procesor has a 6W TDP [0]. The free storage space is so limited that once it got a big windows update and I had to disable virtual memory just to get windows to update, then clean the update files and re-enable virtual memory.
OTOH, the processor has 4MB of L2 cache. That's a monster performance boost in that form-factor, so it doesn't feel like previous Atoms (and props to intel for not calling an Atom, it's called Celeron N4000 or Pentium N5000). Do take into account this is Q4-2017 tech, so the Ryzens these year have leapt over it/are about to.
The computer doesn't have fans, but it never gets hot, a bit warm at most. The final touch is a mate screen[1] at 11", paired with a comfortable keyboard. Nothing about it is incredible, but I got it at a good discount (about $180) which was a killer price.
I did a quick amazon search and it seems the 11" model has been discontinued and people are selling at $300 (that's a good one) and the 14" stands at $240 lowest price.
As for buying someth today, I've read great reviews of the Motile 11" "netbook" [2] (not the 14") that packs a Ryzen 3200 (that's Zen+, not Zen 2) which packs good performance into a low power envelope, with decent build and good specs. They sold those at sub-$200 for a while, but then the (too?) good reviews bumped that price up to the $300+ range. Still better than other alternatives at that price, but not a killer.
I'd certainly look to buy one of those today if I was looking for the same use case, mainly because I want to support AMD and low-power intel is still kicking forward the arrival of Tremont (the successor to Goldmont+). And given the performance AMD is pulling from these mobile Ryzens (specially the Renoir chips), I doubt intel's Tremont chips will hold their ground -- rumour was about 30% IPC improvement over Goldmont+, but that's already a very underpowered chip.
Well this got quite a bit longer than I expected. That's all I know/care about small, lightweight, cheap laptops these days. Hope it's useful to someone!
I love to tinker but my best investment has been a recent purchase of an Acer 11" Chromebook ("311 spin") for the kids. Touchscreen/convertible, Celeron 4100, 64gb.
It just works, is less than 1kg, 9h battery life, no worries or what the kids might click/install/... and for myself a hassle-free Linux (VM?) for some quick evening fun.
Just wow. All my preconceptions about Chromebooks are gone.
Only downside is that for kid accounts you can't install chrome extensions - so no ublock. But you can install Firefox' android version so also not the worst.
Yeah, forgot to mention weight. The hp stream I talked about is about 1kg/2lbs weight so it's super lightweight. Seems like we're talking about similar machines, though you have extra storage space that would certainly make it more comfortable to use on a day-to-day basis.
Don't really know why hp decided to kill de 11" form factor. I suppose that "competes" with 11" tablets? Who knows. It's super comfortable to use and I've taken it on a few trips sometimes and it can certainly show a presentation slide, and even some light python programming on the go (but certainly not numpy or anything "heavy").
Which is why those Ryzen 3200 notebooks looked so interesting at sub-$200! But like I said, I'm certainly waiting for Renoir and seeing if some lightweight, well powered, energy efficient, well-priced notebooks apper in the market.
Now having a beast like those Ryzens pull a similar feat? Sign me up! I'm looking forward to getting one of these!
[0] Goldmont(+) is an architecture where Intel pulled a few tricks from Skylake, put them in the blender with an Atom and got a surprisingly good, yet power efficient design... For late 2018 that is. Seems AMD topped them there too, and without having to go for a less powerful design.