The HP Chromebase All-in-One 22 is a well-designed, attractive Chrome OS computer with a variety of features, including a rotating display, for home usage.

HP CHROMEBASE ALL-IN-ONE 22 SPECS

The HP Chromebase All-in-One 22 ($479.99) is a Chrome OS device that isn’t a laptop: it’s an all-in-one (AIO) desktop. Instead of a Chromebook for school or as a backup computer, the Chromebase is designed for your living room or kitchen. And it’s not your typical AIO. The HP Chromebase stands out among the AIO crowd with a display that can rotate between landscape and portrait modes, in addition to running Chrome OS instead of macOS or Windows. The rotating touchscreen panel isn’t for us, but there’s a lot to like about this stylish, inexpensive, and innovative Chrome OS notebook. Among inexpensive AIO desktops, it receives an Editors’ Choice award.

From Panorama to Portrait…and Again

The HP Chromebase All-in-One 22 is supported by a cone-shaped base that also functions as a speaker. The cone is only 6.7 inches in diameter, so it should be able to fit on a desk, end table, or kitchen counter. It should also mix nicely with any modern room design because to its white exterior and gray fabric-wrapped base. It resembles an oversized iPad with a smart speaker rather than a computer.

The display is a touch panel with a native resolution of 1,920 by 1,080-pixels and a maximum brightness of 250 nits. The resolution appears to be stretched a little thin over the 21.5-inch panel, in my opinion. When seated up close, the screen is quite crisp, but it begins to seem pixelated. The resolution is adequate for browsing the web and watching 1080p videos, but it is insufficient for professional media editing. On the plus side, I believe HP is underselling the screen backlight on the Chromebase. The display’s highest brightness was nearly double its 250-nit rating in our tests. In my sunny office, there’s plenty of light.

While the HP Chromebase isn’t ideal for photo or video editing, it does include a unique feature that extends its utility for everyday use at home. You can rotate the display from landscape to portrait mode with with one finger. Simply press down on the top-right corner, and it will effortlessly rotate into a vertical position.

In portrait mode, what do you do with a nearly 22-inch display? It’s superior for scrolling across long webpages and social media sites, according to HP, and I agree. In portrait format, I particularly enjoyed going through my Twitter and Reddit feeds. I also liked watching YouTube videos in portrait mode because it was simpler to read the comments while watching them. It was fantastic to read The New York Times in portrait mode. The vertical arrangement was a natural fit for the site, and reading longer articles needed less scrolling.

However, it’s not all wine and rotating flowers. For one thing, if you have numerous windows open, the rotation will mix them around, and when you return to landscape mode, you’ll find them in different places. Most Chrome OS users have a single Chrome window open and multitask using browser tabs rather than working in separate windows, so this isn’t a significant deal.

You should also be aware that while Chrome, the Chrome Web Store, and a few other apps shrink to fit in portrait mode, others do not. In portrait mode, for example, the Google Play store is still too huge to fit within the limited borders. And my aspirations of playing supersized Android games on the display in portrait mode were immediately shattered. The functionality of the display to transform into portrait mode was not recognized by Android apps (loaded via the Google Play store).

There is no way to modify the height of the display because it is mounted high on the base. When in landscape position, the bottom of the screen bezel is 6.5 inches above the bottom of the base, and it takes all of that space to swing into portrait mode. The display turns clockwise into portrait mode, leaving only 2.4 inches of space between the monitor’s bottom and your desk or table.

The touch panel has a glossy finish, which might cause glare and reflections that are bothersome. As a result, it’s fortunate that the display has a 20-degree tilt adjustment, allowing you to set the angle exactly right and avoid the worst of the glare.

When in landscape mode, a 5-megapixel webcam sits above the display, while in portrait mode, it sits to the right. It can record video at a resolution of up to 2,560-by-1,944 pixels. It can record much clearer footage and with much less noise than the ordinary 720p Chromebook webcam. It also works well in both bright and gloomy environments, producing photographs with well-balanced colors and skin tones. A creative and unusual two-step privacy cover is also included with the camera. To turn off the video but keep the microphone on, slide it halfway over. You may also mute the mic by sliding it all the way closed.

The Base Is Ace

The HP Chromebase All-in-One 22 is supported by a cone-shaped base that also functions as a speaker. The cone is only 6.7 inches in diameter, so it should be able to fit on a desk, end table, or kitchen counter. It should also mix nicely with any modern room design because to its white exterior and gray fabric-wrapped base. It resembles an oversized iPad with a smart speaker rather than a computer.

The display is a touch panel with a native resolution of 1,920 by 1,080-pixels and a maximum brightness of 250 nits. The resolution appears to be stretched a little thin over the 21.5-inch panel, in my opinion. When seated up close, the screen is quite crisp, but it begins to seem pixelated. The resolution is adequate for browsing the web and watching 1080p videos, but it is insufficient for professional media editing. On the plus side, I believe HP is underselling the screen backlight on the Chromebase. The display’s highest brightness was nearly double its 250-nit rating in our tests. In my sunny office, there’s plenty of light.

While the HP Chromebase isn’t ideal for photo or video editing, it does include a unique feature that extends its utility for everyday use at home. You can rotate the display from landscape to portrait mode with with one finger. Simply press down on the top-right corner, and it will effortlessly rotate into a vertical position.

In portrait mode, what do you do with a nearly 22-inch display? It’s superior for scrolling across long webpages and social media sites, according to HP, and I agree. In portrait format, I particularly enjoyed going through my Twitter and Reddit feeds. I also liked watching YouTube videos in portrait mode because it was simpler to read the comments while watching them. It was fantastic to read The New York Times in portrait mode. The vertical arrangement was a natural fit for the site, and reading longer articles needed less scrolling.

However, it’s not all wine and rotating flowers. For one thing, if you have numerous windows open, the rotation will mix them around, and when you return to landscape mode, you’ll find them in different places. Most Chrome OS users have a single Chrome window open and multitask using browser tabs rather than working in separate windows, so this isn’t a significant deal.

You should also be aware that while Chrome, the Chrome Web Store, and a few other apps shrink to fit in portrait mode, others do not. In portrait mode, for example, the Google Play store is still too huge to fit within the limited borders. And my aspirations of playing supersized Android games on the display in portrait mode were immediately shattered. The functionality of the display to transform into portrait mode was not recognized by Android apps (loaded via the Google Play store).

There is no way to modify the height of the display because it is mounted high on the base. When in landscape position, the bottom of the screen bezel is 6.5 inches above the bottom of the base, and it takes all of that space to swing into portrait mode. The display turns clockwise into portrait mode, leaving only 2.4 inches of space between the monitor’s bottom and your desk or table.

The touch panel has a glossy finish, which might cause glare and reflections that are bothersome. As a result, it’s fortunate that the display has a 20-degree tilt adjustment, allowing you to set the angle exactly right and avoid the worst of the glare.

When in landscape mode, a 5-megapixel webcam sits above the display, while in portrait mode, it sits to the right. It can record video at a resolution of up to 2,560-by-1,944 pixels. It can record much clearer footage and with much less noise than the ordinary 720p Chromebook webcam. It also works well in both bright and gloomy environments, producing photographs with well-balanced colors and skin tones. A creative and unusual two-step privacy cover is also included with the camera. To turn off the video but keep the microphone on, slide it halfway over. You may also mute the mic by sliding it all the way closed.

Testing the Chromebase All-in-One 22: Pentium Pep in Chrome OS

Our HP Chromebase All-in-One 22 review unit has a dual-core Intel Pentium Gold 6405U CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of eMMC storage as the entry-level model in the series. On HP’s website, you can select a configuration with the Core i3-10110U processor, up to 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. Because the HP Chromebase is the only Chrome OS-based AIO desktop we’ve tested, we’ll be using laptop-format Chromebooks to evaluate its performance. From the Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 to the Core i5-based Google Pixelbook Go, I chose a variety of Chromebooks.

Test System Configurations

We put Chromebooks through their paces with three different performance benchmark suites: one for Chrome OS, one for Android, and one for internet. The first, Principled Technologies’ CrXPRT 2, assesses how rapidly a system can complete common tasks such as applying photo effects, charting a stock portfolio, analyzing DNA sequences, and building 3D shapes using WebGL. The second, UL’s PCMark for Android Work 3.0, uses a smartphone-style window to do various productivity tasks. Finally, Basemark Web 3.0 combines low-level JavaScript calculations with CSS and WebGL content in a browser tab. All three produce numerical results; the larger the number, the better.

The HP Chromebase was completed amid the pack on these assessments. It trailed the Core i3-based Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 and Core i5-based Google Pixelbook Go, ended forward of the IdeaPad Duet 5 and Celeron-based Dell Chromebook 11, and was neck-and-neck with the Pentium Silver-based HP Chromebook x360.

The Chromebase appeared snappy in my testing, from browsing the web through a dozen Chrome tabs to streaming 1080p video to playing Android games. The Pentium Gold CPU and 4GB of RAM are sufficient for most home users to operate the lightweight Chrome OS smoothly.

The CPU and GPU are the focus of two more Android benchmarks. Geekbench from Primate Labs uses all available cores and threads to simulate real-world applications such as PDF rendering, speech recognition, and machine learning, while GFXBench 5.0 stresses both low-level routines such as texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering that exercises graphics and compute shaders. GFXBench counts frames per second, while Geekbench gives a numerical score (fps).

On Geekbench, the HP Chromebase underperformed, finishing second only to the Chromebook 11 and much behind the Chromebook x360. Outside of the Pixelbook Go, none of the Chromebooks posted frame rates that would raise a gamer’s eyebrow on GFXBench. The HP Chromebase, on the other hand, is still capable of running casual Android games.

In Chrome, I’m Painting a Portrait

I doubt I’d regularly swivel the HP Chromebase’s display into portrait mode, but I could imagine myself doing so while scrolling through Twitter and Reddit, or while reading The New York Times. Rotating between landscape and portrait modes can be clunky when you have numerous windows open, but it works nicely when you only have one Chrome window open, which is how I spend most of my time with Chrome OS—and as I’m sure you do, too.

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