Back at Google and Intel’s shindig they held last month for Chrome OS devices, they showed off a new Chromebox from HP, that would go on sale in June. Well it’s on sale now and its going for $179. Although there are two models, and both are under $200, so we can’t really complain about that. As far as the specs go, we’re looking at a Intel Celeron 2955U @ 1.4GHz processor. Which is a Haswell-based chip. It comes with either 2GB of RAM or 4GB of RAM – I’d suggest the 4GB of RAM model myself. Also has Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, HDMI and Display ports, 4 USB ports, 3-in-1 card reader and an ethernet port. There’s also a 16GB SSD inside, which if it’s anything like the ASUS Chromebox, we can probably upgrade the SSD ourselves to something of higher capacity.
HP also has a third model which is priced at $629 and has an Intel Core i7 processor inside with Intel HD Graphics 4400. It’s a pretty big jump in price, but also a pretty big jump in performance. However, for Chrome OS I don’t think we need anything as powerful as an Intel Core i7 processor inside. Seeing as Chrome OS is literally just a web browser.
It’s a nice little Chromebox, but don’t expect it to replace your gaming PC or anything like that. Like I always say about Chrome OS devices, if you can live with just a web browser, then it’s a perfect piece of hardware otherwise, it’s not going to fully replace your laptop or desktop. But it will be a nice addition to your setup.