Patience rewarded: HP Chromebook X2 11 sees a $220 price drop
Did you miss out on the $200 discount seen on the HP Chromebook x2 11 Chrome OS tablet earlier this month? You patience has been rewarded with an extra 10% of savings. The recently launched, $599 HP Chromebook X2 11 can be had for $220 off, making your cost of this detachable Chrome OS tablet a more realistic $379 at Best Buy.
This isn’t an LTE model, which HP says is on the way, so you’ll have WiFi for connectivity. But you do get memory boost to 8 GB of memory, instead of just half that. The 11-inch touch display has a solid 2160 x 1440 resolution and supports the included rechargeable USI stylus. Unlike last year’s popular Chrome OS tablet, the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, the HP has a pair of USB Type-C ports. Even if they’re on the same side of the tablet, which isn’t ideal, it’s nice to have two.
Inside is the first generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c compute platform with an 8-core processor that’s good enough for entry-level performance and long battery life. A pair of cameras for video chatting and picture snapping are also along for the ride.
I still question the value of this HP Chromebook X2 11 configuration at its full price of $599. Unless you’re willing to give up performance for a smaller, more mobile Chrome OS workstation, you can get a superb Chromebook for that same cost. Or even less: The Lenovo Chromebook 5i with new Pentium Gold should easily outperform this tablet and costs around $440 when you can find it in stock.
At under $400 with the two most recent sales, however, the HP Chromebook X2 11 makes more sense for what it offers. Yes you’re still giving up some attributes of a “better equipped” Chromebook but the price difference makes it a little easier to make that trade off.
I’d be interested to hear from any readers that have bought the HP Chromebook X2 11, either on sale or at full price, to hear your thoughts on the value proposition.
I bought this a little less than two weeks ago from Best Buy for $399. I was able to get them to do a price match today on the reduced price to $379 since I was still within their return window, and they refunded me the $20 plus tax. That definitely made me happy.
I really like this Chromebook. It seems plenty fast, the screen is really nice and bright (even at the 50-60% brightness I usually have it on while indoors), the 3×2 screen aspect ratio is nice, the battery life is fantastic, and the keyboard is quite usable. The build quality also seems to be topnotch. I haven’t really done much with the stylus, but it’s nice that it comes with it. I set up fingerprints for the fingerprint reader, but I can’t seem to get it to work for logging into it. I guess I need to do some research to figure this out. Overall I’m very happy with my purchase, but would not have paid the full $599 suggested retail price. $379 seems much more reasonable.
I also own the Lenovo Duet Chromebook. Best Buy seems to be selling these at clearance right now at $199, which is a heck of a deal. It’s also a very nice device with a really nice, bright screen and incredible battery life. My biggest complaint with it is the cramped keyboard. It’s just too easy to make typos because of the smaller keys on the right side of the keyboard. The HP keyboard solves this problem, as it is much easier to type on. I use the Chrome Remote Desktop connection quite frequently to connect to my Windows laptop that I keep plugged in and turned on all the time. For some reason I could never get the screen to show up properly doing this using the Duet — everything was really big and wouldn’t all fit on the screen without scrolling left and right. I don’t have this issue on the HP, and I’ve also never had this issue on a Dell 14″ Chromebook that I have. On these there is a Session Options that you can bring up on the right side of the screen by clicking on an arrow that allows you to adjust the screen, but for some reason this doesn’t appear on the Duet. The extra inch screen size on the HP over the Duet also makes a big difference. To me the 11″ inch screen is the perfect size for small Chromebook that you can take with you anywhere because of its weight, yet which still has an adequate size screen to easily read.
Is the actual screen size something like 10.5 inches?
Also, can you tell me/us the actual length and width of the tablet?
Thanks!
Nope, the actual screen is 11-inches diagonally. I measured with a ruler. 🙂 Dimensions are 9.94 x 6.96 x 0.3 inches according to HP’s product page and verified those as well. Cheers!
I like my Chromebook Duet (the 128 GB model), but I don’t love it. The HP looks like a better fit for me with its 3:2 screen and better keyboard for typing. So I just ordered it for delivery tomorrow from Best Buy. I also put my Duet (complete with iPlume USI stylus) on Ebay. I will have a few days with both on hand before the Duet sells to do comparisons. It should be interesting.