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As my son moves to seventh grade, I have been trying to figure out the best computer for his classwork. That is not an easy pick, because you need a device that balances a lot of factors. The biggest aspect is of course the budget, especially since there is no guarantee how long anything will last in the hands of a 12-year-old. This also means you are looking for a reasonably rugged device that can be manhandled a bit. Then you need ease of use but not at the cost of security. And this is why I had given him my old MacBook Air, which finally called it quits last week. So when the new HP Chromebook 15.6-inch came for review, I wanted to see if it would be good enough for my son.
Frankly, the new HP Chromebook 15.6-inch looks very traditional. It is a large laptop, not so heavy and with a design that doesn’t stand out much. Nothing here to make the 12-year-old go for it out of the box. But the idea of this device is clearly to be practical and not stylish.
It has a large, well-spread-out, keyboard with a separate number pad and function keys, though the latter is not what it is on a Windows device. I played around a bit to see what all these keys were, as not all of them were self-explanatory. I loved the fact that there are now keys to see all the tabs you have open, and one to even make the tab full screen. The trackpad is large too, though it is not bang in the middle. It works with gestures which is good.
For a laptop this size, the Chromebook does not pack a lot of ports. It has a couple of USB-C slots and one USB-A along with a 3.5mm jack and SD card slot. That is all that is needed these days, as the intended audience, including my son, will not know what the rest are for.
The one aspect neither me nor my son was all that thrilled about was the 15.6 HD Display. Yes, it is large and bright, but the viewing angles are a bit restricted if you want to see everything clearly. Coming from a MacBook Air this was clearly a struggle for both of us. The display looks a bit washed out from some angles and I could see my son adjust the angles so that he could watch his anime shows the way he wanted. In fact, he was also not impressed by the audio quality which gets a bit shrieky at times.
This is where the HP Chromebook does pretty well. My son’s school has a lot of aspects online and he does most of his work with Google docs and other online tools. With all of that, I could see him enjoying the Chromebook. And since these are online tools, the local performance of the device is not that critical.
The HP Chromebook is powered by an Intel Celeron N4500 processor which handles most of these tasks well. In fact, just for a test, I opened one of my extra large Google Sheets on the device and it could manage it reasonably well.
For users like my son, whose entire life is now centred around online tools and platforms, the Chromebook is like a portal to the World Wide Web. This is also important because users like him have no context of a world without Internet access where you had to run a lot of programmes locally using the power of just the computer. This is the Canva generation which hasn’t even heard about Photoshop.
In a week or so I used the Chromebook, the device did not heat up at all and that is understandable as there is no pressure being put on the local processor at all. But still, with the scores of tabs open on Chrome at the end of each day, it is surprising that the device does not feel more stressed.
There is about 100GB of local storage though and the rest will have to be managed by Google Drive. This is where I think users will run into trouble after a few months, especially with the number of creative stuff children like to do these days. Maybe an external storage drive will be an investment along with this in a few months.
The battery life is decent and can give about five hours on a full charge. I could charge with a regular USB-C charger, though it is recommended to use the charging brick that comes in the box.
HP Chromebook 15a-na0012TU specs: Intel Celeron processor | Chrome OS | 15.6 diagonal HD display | Intel UHD Graphics | 4 GB LPDDR4x-2933 MHz RAM | 128 GB eMMC storage | 1.69 kg
Yes, in fact, I am thinking of getting one for my son. This is also because being a Chromebook, I can use the Android Family Link to manage the device for him remotely and keep him secure. It is pointless trying to keep children away from devices in 2023, it is better to figure out how we can supervise what they do and guide the to more creative endeavours online.
And for this, the HP Chromebook is a pretty solid device. Since most of the stuff children do these days are in Google chrome anyway, the Chromebook is more than capable of handling their demands. It helps that the HP Chromebook 15.6 is priced at Rs 28,999, that’s less than the iPad we had to buy for his school.
