Hewlett-Packard is now in the Chromebook business. The company announced its first Chrome OS device, the Pavilion Chromebook, on Monday, and it's a mixed bag.
The key feature of the Pavilion Chromebook is its 14-inch 720p display, which is a bit larger than the screens found on Chromebooks from Acer (11.7 inches), Lenovo (11.6 inches) and Samsung (11.6 inches or 12.1 inches).
Screen size aside, the Pavilion's feature set largely parallels those of its rivals. There's a dual-core Intel Celeron processor inside, 16GB of built-in flash storage, Wi-Fi connectivity, an 720p camera sitting above the display and a minimum of ports: three USB 2.0, one HDMI and an SD card slot. The most notable downside is battery life. HP is listing the Pavilion Chromebook's battery life at a mere 4.25 hours. When compared to the six hours of batteries each of Samsung's two Chromebooks, and Lenovo's ThinkPad Chromebook offer, HP's juice is disappointing. Acer's Chromebook, with a battery life of about 3.5 hours, has an even bigger low-power problem.
Like all new Chrome OS devices, the HP Pavilion Chromebook will ship with 100GB Google Drive Cloud Storage for two years. The HP Pavilion Chromebook is on sale now for $330.
