Cheap, functional, upgradeable: HP’s Stream and Pavilion Mini desktops reviewed

HP’s Stream Mini and Pavilion Mini desktops are for everyone who was excited about Intel’s NUC until they saw the price.

While we definitely like the NUC and think it’s a good value for what you get, the fact of the matter is a lot of people don’t need all the stuff it’s offering: fast-but-expensive PCI Express storage, a brand new Ultrabook-class CPU with a premium integrated GPU, and a build-it-yourself philosophy that your average computer buyer won’t want to deal with.

By contrast, the Stream and Pavilion Mini are inexpensive fully-equipped systems that are ready to work out of the box. They use lower-end processors and have lower specs all around, but they include a Windows license and even a keyboard and a mouse. If you or someone you know has a years-old mini-tower on or under their desk, these systems are attractive, inexpensive drop-in replacements.

If that was all they were, they’d be worth a passing look but not a whole lot more. They are rather low-specced, as you’d expect from $300-and-under desktops, and they use last-generation Haswell processors. The NUC is a showcase for this year’s high-end Ultrabook chips, and these HP desktops are showcases for last generation’s budget models. However, the fun thing about these mini desktops for enthusiasts is that they’re dead simple to open and upgrade, and if you’re willing to spend just a bit more money it’s easy to tweak them to better suit your needs.

Design

PC companies like HP and Dell are paying more attention to design and consistency lately. HP’s EliteBook 1020 looks and feels a lot like a premium version of its Stream 11 and 13 notebooks, and the Stream and Pavilion Mini share some elements in common too. HP still has a huge lineup of different, sometimes poorly-differentiated systems with a bunch of different designs, but here there are signs that the company has created some design conventions being adopted across multiple product lines.

The Stream Mini’s color and styling is strongly reminiscent of the earlier Stream 11 and 13 laptops.

Andrew Cunningham

The Stream Mini’s color and styling is strongly reminiscent of the earlier Stream 11 and 13 laptops. Andrew Cunningham

The Stream 11 and the Stream Mini.

Andrew Cunningham

The Stream 11 and the Stream Mini. Andrew Cunningham

The Stream/Pavilion Mini body is larger than the Haswell NUC (left) and the newer Broadwell versions, but it’s still pretty small.

Andrew Cunningham

The Stream/Pavilion Mini body is larger than the Haswell NUC (left) and the newer Broadwell versions, but it’s still pretty small. Andrew Cunningham

The Stream 11 and the Stream Mini. Andrew Cunningham

The Stream/Pavilion Mini body is larger than the Haswell NUC (left) and the newer Broadwell versions, but it’s still pretty small. Andrew Cunningham

The 45W power brick that ships with both desktops is identical to the one HP ships with many of its laptops.

Andrew Cunningham

An SD card slot on the right side is a nice addition you won’t find on the NUC.

Andrew Cunningham

Both of HP’s boxes have a decent port selection. We like the full-size HDMI port, though full-size DisplayPorts are a bit rarer than their mini counterparts.

Andrew Cunningham

The Pavilion Mini comes with a reasonably attractive wireless keyboard and mouse, but they connect to a USB RF dongle rather than the integrated Bluetooth.

Andrew Cunningham

The cheaper Stream Mini comes with a wired keyboard and mouse, contrary to what HP told us in January.

Andrew Cunningham

Beyond size, though, the design of a desktop really doesn’t have a whole lot to do with how you interact with it day-to-day. Both Minis are larger than the latest Intel NUC by quite a bit (the NUC in its entirety will almost fit in the Mini’s shell), but they’re still small enough to fit in most of the places a NUC would go. There’s a good reason for that larger footprint, but we’ll get to that later.

Both the Stream and Pavilion Minis share the same port layout—and, for that matter, the same motherboard, BIOS, driver set, and internal layout. They give you two USB 3.0 ports on the front and another two on the back, a gigabit Ethernet jack, and full-sized HDMI and DisplayPorts. We actually prefer the full-sized HDMI port to the mini version on the NUC since it’s much more common, though mini DisplayPorts seem to be more common than the full-size version. Win some, lose some.

Both PCs also have a headphone jack, though it’s on the back instead of the front as it is on the NUC. The layout you prefer here will depend on your audio setup; if you have speakers on your desk that hook into the jack, having it on the back will make your setup cleaner. If you have the desktop on your desk and want easy access to a port for occasional headphone use, a front-mounted jack is preferable. In any case, the Minis don’t have integrated speakers, so you’ll need to use that jack or send audio over HDMI or DisplayPort to a monitor or TV with speakers if you want sound.

Neither Mini has an integrated IR receiver for use with remote controls as some NUC models do, but both have integrated SD card slots that the NUC lacks. They’re useful for importing photos or expanding storage in a pinch—it’s not the best way to get more space, but it’s the cheapest and easiest way.

Out of the box: Specs and performance

The first differentiation point for the Stream and Pavilion Mini is in specs. At $179, the lone Stream Mini configuration has the least inside it: a 1.4GHz dual-core Celeron 2957U CPU, 2GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM, and a 32GB SATA SSD attached via a B-keyed M.2 port. Since they share similar components, power consumption is broadly comparable to the Asus Chromebox we reviewed last year.

At a high level, the spec sheet looks just like the one for the Stream 11 and 13 laptops: Celeron, Intel HD integrated graphics, 2GB RAM, 32GB storage. The Haswell-based Celeron in the desktop has a slightly faster CPU and substantially faster GPU, though, which is something we touched upon a bit in our original Stream 11 review. The sole difference between the Celeron 2957U and the 2955U referenced in that piece is support for Intel’s Quick Sync video encoding and decoding feature.

Another point in the Stream Mini’s favor is that its 32GB of storage is connected to the SATA bus and not the slower eMMC bus.

Because of the way SSDs work, a 32GB drive is going to have lower read and write performance than a higher-capacity model—those drives have more NAND chips on board, and part of SSDs’ performance advantage comes from the ability to perform multiple reads and writes from and to different chips at the same time. It’s why OEM-provided performance numbers for 128GB drives are usually lower than those for 256GB or 512GB drives. Still, having that NAND chip attached to the SATA bus will give you higher disk performance than eMMC.

The Pavilion Mini comes in two flavors: a $320 base model with a dual-core 1.7GHz Pentium 3558U and a 500GB 2.5-inch 7200RPM hard drive, and a $450 upgraded model with a 1.9GHz Core i3-4025U and a 1TB 2.5-inch 5400RPM drive. Both come with 4GB of RAM. Power consumption in the Core i3 box was broadly comparable to the Haswell NUC we reviewed, with a few watts added to accommodate the spinning hard drive.

The Pentium CPU has the same features as the Celeron—same cache, same GPU, same Quick Sync support—but bumps the maximum speed up by 300MHz. The Core i3 adds another 200MHz plus some other perks, including Hyperthreading, another MB of cache, an HD 4400 GPU, and Wireless Display support.

These are all desirable features, but the price of this model is creeping up into NUC territory (especially if you’re considering RAM or drive upgrades), and Intel’s is still the more capable box. The presence of Quick Sync in the lower-end models also reduces the need for a faster CPU if you plan to use the computer as some kind of media box.

The 2GB stick of RAM in the Stream Mini is problematic for two reasons. First, it’s only 2GB of RAM, which feels especially limiting in 64-bit Windows. Having faster storage along with a better CPU makes the Stream Mini feel faster than the Stream 11 just about all the time, but 2GB is still a tight bottleneck once you get to multi-tab Web browsing and general multitasking.

Second, that stick only populates one of the Mini’s two RAM slots, limiting memory performance to single-channel mode (in other words, you lose half your theoretical bandwidth). This is also true for the Pavilion Minis, which include a 4GB stick of RAM that likewise fills only one slot.

Though the loss of theoretical bandwidth doesn’t hinder your actual performance, it does slow down operations that rely on memory speed. In these systems, the integrated GPU is one of those things, and running in single-channel mode will lower your GPU performance by 10 or 20 percent in most cases.

While the Pavilion Mini’s large hard drives make them better candidates for full-on desktop replacements than the storage-challenged Stream Mini, the fact that it’s a spinning HDD means that the more expensive computer often feels like the slower computer.

Software

The Stream Mini comes with the 64-bit version of Windows 8.1 with Bing, while the Pavilion Mini comes with vanilla Windows 8.1. The only real difference between the two is that the Bing version requires OEMs to leave Bing selected as Internet Explorer’s default search engine in exchange for a discount. Users can change it, though, and since the Pavilion Mini uses Bing as its search default anyway there’s no difference in Windows features or functionality.

Of its 29.8GB of storage, the Stream gives users about 19.4GB of usable space out of the box. 6.71GB of that space is used by a recovery partition and is therefore unusable by default, something we criticized in the Stream 11 and that we’ll criticize again here. Windows 8.1 comes with a “Create a recovery drive” feature that will copy that partition to an external USB drive; once you’ve done that, you should be able to delete the local partition and regain the space.

Because of the relatively small amount of drive space, HP’s add-on software selection is reasonably restrained on the Stream. McAfee is here, easily uninstalled in favor of Windows Defender if you don’t care for it. A 25GB Dropbox offer, various HP support and documentation apps, a handful of Start screen apps and website shortcuts, and an Office demo round out the list. The Stream Mini includes a 200GB-for-two-years OneDrive offer, but no free Office 365 subscription.

The Pavilion is another matter. 26.8GB of the 1TB drive was taken up by the core OS and apps and 20.7GB was dedicated to the recovery partition, leaving 882GB of free space out of the box. Copying the recovery partition over to a (larger) USB drive is still an option, though it’s perhaps not strictly necessary here.

HP uses the larger drive as an excuse to load up more bloatware, though. In addition to all the stuff on the Stream Mini, the Pavilion includes full CyberLink media suite install, a total of 31 (!) WildTangent Games, Foxit PhantomPDF trialware, and Evernote. Neither desktop has a clean “Signature Edition” version available for purchase from the Microsoft store, so you’ll have to clean all of this up yourself if you like stock Windows installs.

Alternatively, at least on the Pavilion, you can use a Windows 8.1 upgrade installer and the product key included in the box to download a stock Windows 8.1 ISO, create a USB installer drive, and perform a clean installation yourself. HowToGeek has fairly thorough step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

Out of the box conclusions

Neither system is perfect as-is. The 2.4GHz 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.0 combo adapter is a weak point in the spec sheet (5GHz 802.11n would be preferable, 802.11ac is still well outside this kind of system’s price range). The Stream Mini’s SSD feels quick but doesn’t give you enough space to replace most full daily-use desktops, while the Pavilion Mini’s HDD has the opposite problem. And neither computer’s RAM configuration is ideal.

But the foundation these desktops are built on is fundamentally pretty good. Sure, we’d like to see some Broadwell CPUs instead of Haswell versions, but Broadwell’s CPU performance improvements are minor (we wouldn’t mind those CPU upgrades, though). Even low-end Haswell GPUs are capable of very basic gaming, and the addition of Quick Sync makes them all fairly appealing HTPC candidates. The Pavilion is a decent desktop replacement, and the Stream is a good TV streaming box or kiosk PC.

Still, you can get more out of these desktops. In the next section, we’ll show you how to get the most out of both. As it turns out, each is dead simple to open and upgrade.

Open up

The bottom of both systems is covered with a rubber flap.

Andrew Cunningham

The bottom of both systems is covered with a rubber flap. Andrew Cunningham

Lift it, and you’ll expose three Phillips head screws.

Andrew Cunningham

Lift it, and you’ll expose three Phillips head screws. Andrew Cunningham

The bottom of both systems is covered with a rubber flap. Andrew Cunningham

Lift it, and you’ll expose three Phillips head screws. Andrew Cunningham

Unscrew them, and the bottom of the case lifts right off to expose the inside of the system.

Andrew Cunningham

Unscrew them, and the bottom of the case lifts right off to expose the inside of the system. Andrew Cunningham

The Pavilion Mini includes a SATA data/power ribbon cable that connects to the HDD. Both the Stream and Pavilion Mini have M.2 slots for SSDs (empty here) and the Wi-Fi card. All systems also have one empty RAM slot.

Andrew Cunningham

The Pavilion Mini includes a SATA data/power ribbon cable that connects to the HDD. Both the Stream and Pavilion Mini have M.2 slots for SSDs (empty here) and the Wi-Fi card. All systems also have one empty RAM slot. Andrew Cunningham

Unscrew them, and the bottom of the case lifts right off to expose the inside of the system. Andrew Cunningham

The Pavilion Mini includes a SATA data/power ribbon cable that connects to the HDD. Both the Stream and Pavilion Mini have M.2 slots for SSDs (empty here) and the Wi-Fi card. All systems also have one empty RAM slot. Andrew Cunningham

On the bottom of each desktop is a big rubber flap. Its primary use is to keep the boxes from scooting around on your desk, but pry up from the left side and you’ll reveal three Phillips head screws (don’t try to remove the rubber foot all the way—it’s designed to stay attached).

Once those three screws have been removed, lift straight up and the whole base of the computer comes off easily. This exposes a 2.5-inch drive caddy—in the Pavilion Mini, this will of course be filled up with the system’s hard drive. In the Stream Mini, it’s empty. That 2.5-inch drive can be replaced with any other drive you want, whether it’s an SSD or an HDD.

Unfortunately, it uses a proprietary ribbon cable to provide SATA power and data, and the Stream Mini doesn’t come with one—you’ll have to wait for this cable to start showing up on eBay or HP’s parts shop before you can add a 2.5-inch drive to the Stream.

Remove the drive caddy assembly by unscrewing the four black Phillips head screws in the corners, then lift up to expose the rest of the motherboard. The ribbon cable is long enough that you can set the Pavilion’s drive caddy beside the rest of the system while you work on it; if you’re more comfortable detaching the cable from the motherboard, remember that the blue side faces toward the rest of the system, while the white side with the pins exposed faces outward away from the system. It makes a big difference. Don’t ask how I know.

RAM

Now we’re getting to the good stuff. Both computers have two DDR3 RAM slots, only one of which is populated. This is bad for out-of-the-box performance, but good for upgraders—you can order a single stick of RAM to populate the other slot without replacing and “wasting” the stick that came with the computer.

Adding 2GB of RAM to bump the Stream Mini to 4GB costs just $21; adding 4GB to the Pavilion Mini for a total of 8GB costs about $30. That would be the purchase we’d recommend—in both cases you end up with a more comfortable amount of RAM and dual-channel memory bandwidth. However, if you think you need more memory, both systems support a total of 16GB across two 8GB sticks. Here’s how both systems perform with 8GB of RAM in dual-channel mode (though the numbers should be basically the same for any amount of RAM).

Just switching to dual-channel memory mode is enough to boost memory and graphics speed quite significantly. Geekbench’s memory scores go up by 25 to 33 percent in all systems, and this boosts graphics performance by 10 to 20 percent on the Stream. The Pavilion’s HD 4400 is even more constrained by memory bandwidth, so going into dual-channel mode increases things by around 33 percent.

If you plan to do any gaming on either system, fixing the single-channel RAM configuration will help you squeeze all the performance out of it that you can.

Wi-Fi

The next fixable problem is the Wi-Fi card. If you plan on using the gigabit Ethernet port, you can ignore this—the included adapter will do basic Wi-Fi in a pinch and will work with whatever Bluetooth accessories you need to pair. But you ought to be able to replace it with any A and/or E-keyed M.2 Wi-Fi adapter. Removing the existing adapter is as easy as removing the screw, removing the black tape over the antenna connectors, and disconnecting them.

There aren’t a lot of M.2 Wi-Fi cards out there for people to buy, but luckily one of them is the ubiquitous (and pretty solid) Intel 7260 802.11ac/Bluetooth 4.0 adapter. Grab one for $40 and stick it in, and you’ll have 867Mbps 5GHz Wi-Fi, same as the new NUC or any high-end Ultrabook. The desktops don’t appear to have any kind of Wi-Fi card whitelist, but we can verify that this one works just fine.

SSD

Two M.2 slots on the motherboard of the HP Stream Mini. The left one is E-keyed and used for the Wi-Fi card. The right one is B-keyed and used for the SSD.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Both the Stream and Pavilion Mini have a single B-keyed SSD slot that will accept M.2 cards up to 42mm in length. In the Stream Mini, this is already populated with a 32GB drive from SanDisk. In the Pavilion Mini, the slot is empty but still included and functional.

As we discussed in the NUC review, M.2 SSDs aren’t as plentiful as their SATA or mSATA counterparts, and most of the ones that are readily available are 80mm in length so as to maximize the amount of board space available for NAND chips. Sticking with 42mm drives means your capacity will top out at 256GB. Speeds will be limited somewhat, too, since these cards can only fit two NAND chips and as we pointed out above SSDs go faster when they can distribute reads and writes across multiple chips simultaneously.

Of the admittedly limited options available, we’d probably recommend Transcend’s MTS400 lineup for anyone looking to upgrade one of the Minis. Capacities range from 32GB up to 256GB, and the 128GB ($60) and 256GB ($105) are pretty reasonable values for the space you get. Here’s the performance of the 256GB Transcend drive relative to the 32GB SanDisk drive and the 1TB hard drive.

The upgrade process is similar for both systems. The easiest way to transfer your Windows license (especially for the Stream Mini, since Microsoft doesn’t offer install media for the Bing edition of Windows 8.1) is to back the recovery partition up to a USB drive, put the new SSD into the system, and then boot to USB to restore the OS. If you’re upgrading the Pavilion Mini and need a screw to secure the SSD, you can use one of the four securing the HDD to its bracket in a pinch.

For the Stream Mini, this is a simple capacity upgrade. For the Pavilion, this means you can use the SSD as a fast boot drive while continuing to use the HDD for mass storage (or you can even replace it with another SSD if you want). One thing you can’t do is RAID the drives together, whether you want a typical RAID 0 or RAID 1 array or you just want to use Intel’s Smart Response Technology SSD caching feature (only technically available on the Core i3 system, anyway). The BIOS doesn’t support a RAID option, so the drives will have to be configured as separate volumes.

What’s the best way to spend your money?

The Pavilion Mini and Stream Mini.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The major advantage of HP’s mini desktops is that they’re self-contained, working-out-of-the-box PCs available for pretty good prices from a major manufacturer. If you’re not really into the DIY aspect of the NUC or the Gigabyte Brix computers, HP isn’t the only game in town, but it’s certainly one of the cheapest.

The $320 version of the Pavilion Mini probably strikes the best balance between price and specs if you’re just looking for a decent, cheap replacement for an older desktop. 4GB of RAM and 500GB of drive space are enough for basic desktop use, and the GPU is powerful enough for older games or the occasional Minecraft session (you know, family room PC stuff).

The $180 Stream Mini, on the other hand, is the most appealing if you just need to buy the cheapest thing you can find that runs Windows and powers on. It’s a little limited without upgrades but it’s fine as a streaming TV box, a Web kiosk, or a light-use desktop in a public area. If you’ve ever looked at a cheap Chromebox and thought “I want that, but with Windows (or maybe to run Linux),” that’s pretty much exactly what this is.