HP 14-an013nr, or W2M53UA, or W2M53UAR
“W2M53UA” is a secret code to use in searches to find deals on this computer and parts and accessories for it that others miss.
Okay, it’s an “item number” or somesuch, as opposed to “14-an013nr”, which is the model number. In fact, the vast majority of computer and computer parts have such numbers in addition to the model or part number, and when you can find them they can be a valuable resource, since the same part may be used in many different computers and vendors are not going to know or list them all. In this case, for a notebook computer that has no name, sellers are looking for any clue as to what to call it and may well list it by the item number rather than the model number.
Some caution is necessary, though. For instance, there may be variations between production runs, changes made during the life of a computer model. It’s not that uncommon, for instance, to find that a single notebook computer used different screens from different suppliers at different times, often with the same specs. The problem is that they may have changed other parts to match as well, so knowing that a given item number was used in a given model is not enough, it may not be the item that was used in your particular computer. Matching the item number may be critical if you’re replacing a screen, may be important in cases like IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad models that had up to three manufacturers for a single model’s keyboard, each of which had a slightly different “feel”, or my be completely unimportant for a battery or charger.
I strongly suspect that the “R” in the second variant above was used to designate “refurbished” when they were available from HP that way. It makes little difference now.
One could legitimately wonder why there would be any interest at all in a low-end, (cheap) out-of-production notebook computer, and that’s what the HP 14-an013nr is… but there has been and continues to be considerable interest. So much so that while it initially sold for less than $200 new, as it went out of production only a couple of years later it was going for $320 or more.
I generally have little or no interest in low-end notebooks myself, and almost no interest in HP computers (lots of expensive and hard-to-work with proprietary parts), so this didn’t catch my attention at all until a few weeks ago.
I started writing a post about things I’ve learned about this computer and open questions about it, but it all got out of hand pretty rapidly- I realized at one point that I had more than enough material for a long post just discussing the quest for a single HP part for use in it, so this is an attempt to break the subject up into multiple posts, so as to give the readers options on what subjects to pursue and how far to go with it, and not overwhelm them with one huge “information dump”.
So, I’m breaking it up into chunks, and this is the introduction.
HP makes a whole bunch of low-end notebook computers, many of them looking a great deal alike on the outside, and many of them sharing a few basic cases and chassis. Most of them are pretty uninteresting, having low-end specs and almost no upgradeability. That is, of course, very deliberate. It’s pretty obvious that they are not just interested in keeping costs down, but regardless of whether a given model makes a profit at a given price-point, they don’t want the cheapest computers in their notebook lines cannibalizing sales from more expensive models. It’s a strategy that makes sense to them, looking at it from the broad view of the entire line, but one that only works in the absence of much real competition, otherwise other companies (capable of working with the same economies of scale) would be taking advantage of the market niche left vacant. I posted a shortish rant about this already.
Sometimes, though, they may leave a loophole or two open in this strategy, making one that has upgrade potential that they thought they had obscured. That’s what seems to have happened with the HP 14-an013nr.
Now, often when this sort of thing happens in a marketplace, because of the relatively tiny numbers of customers who have the inclination or ability to exploit the loophole makes it simply not worth attention, but often in both the private and public sectors there’s a sort of knee-jerk reaction that anyone benefiting in any unexpected way without paying more must be stopped. So, the HP 14-an013nr is now out of production. That’s not to say that there are none in new condition in the marketplace, but they seem to be very few. It was weeks before I spotted one for sale on eBay, and I’ve only seen two, both selling for over $325. At that price point, plus needed mods, there are a number of alternatives to get similar performance.
So, what’s the attraction of this model in particular?
Well, for a (very) low-end notebook computer, it has a number of interesting features:
A low-end but not terrible AMD E2-7110 quad core processor running at 1.8 GHz, 2 MB cache.
A very nice 14″ 1920×1080 full-HD screen (unusual in this class)
Dual-band (ac) Wifi adapter
Bluetooth 4.2
A USB 3.0 jack (+ 2 USB 2.0 jacks)
An Ethernet connector (being eliminated now on a lot of notebooks)
An HDMI jack
A VGA jack (being eliminated now on a lot of notebooks)
A removable battery (being eliminated now on a lot of notebooks), so you can carry a spare
A trackpad with real physical buttons (being eliminated now on a lot of notebooks)
Here is a link to the basic specs, as it came from the factory:
https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c05214762
The bad news is, it comes deliberately crippled, somewhat by memory (4 GB) but mostly by a horrible lack of storage. It has only a poorly-performing 32GB eMMC board masquerading as an SSD. Neither is listed as upgradeable.
The processor itself it may not meet your requirements. It might help to know that this is being typed on a nearly-antique, battered and somewhat modified Lenovo T60p which I find acceptable to work on (using so long as there’s an SSD installed. There’s also the fact that I use Linux exclusively on my personal machines (currently Manjaro XFCE) which less demanding with regard to hardware, and generally faster and more responsive (along with other virtues, besides being free) than Windows. I DON’T RUN WINDOWS, so I’m not going to be researching questions of cloning the hard drive and trying to meet bureaucratic and legal requirements there. If there is any doubt, THIS IS NOT A GAMING MACHINE. IT WON’T RUN GAMES. Okay, it’s fine with a couple of MS-DOS games running under DosBox in Linux (I never solved 8-bit Neuromancer in the ’80s, that’s how much of a gamer I am NOT) and I hear it does okay with Minecraft on some settings, but if you’re a serious gamer… why are you still reading this? It’s a sub-$200 notebook. Get serious. Still, there are seemingly thousands asking that question in the review comments.
The processor (with “integrated” Radeon graphics) will, however, handle full-HD 1920×1080 video just fine, so it does fine for movies and Youtube, whatever. That’s a significant advantage over a whole lot of other cheap notebooks, they don’t have this screen resolution not just to save money on the screen, but to save money on the horsepower needed to run it.
Some dismiss this model out-of-hand because of the processor without really needing more. For decades we all bought off on the Microsoft-Intel-Microsoft-Intel software-hardware treadmill, where each version of M$ software was even more needlessly bloated and required more powerful hardware, and we were told that we constantly needed expensive but incremental improvements in processor power, graphics and RAM. A large number of people really realized they’d been “had” when they upgraded their old hard drives to SSDs for the first time, and experienced huge improvements in speed unlike anything they’d ever experienced form an upgrade before. That’s not so much the case for gamers or those with specialized requirements, but for most of us upgrading the slowest parts of the system was far more rewarding than upgrading the parts that were already the fastest. In that light, having a modest processor but a lot of RAM and fast storage makes some sense at the low end of the price range.
If the processor might meet your requirements, here’s the real attraction- it turns out that if you’re willing and able to open the case without damage, upgrading the memory up to as much as 16 GB is simple, and there are two possible places to physically add a 2.5-inch SATA solid-state drive (or hard drive, if you’re into technology that’s WAY overdue to be retired), and two (practical) possible ways to connect it to the motherboard. Maybe a third that’s not so practical.
I don’t want to gloss over the difficulty. Getting the case open is a somewhat tricky and delicate operation that voids warranties and is not for everyone. Some of the ways to mount and connect hard drives may require I don’t find it and obstacle, but then I’ve been working with computer hardware since the early 1980’s. In fact, this seems almost designed to appeal to my personality, a way to parlay my experience and skills into both a bargain and a learning experience… but it’s definitely not for everyone.
Some of the possible options require either hard-to-find Hewlett-Packard parts (apparently often available only from HP themselves for some reason, at ABSURDLY, INSULTINGLY HIGH PRICES) or some ingenuity and improvisation. All of the approaches require some research to accomplish. Some are well documented in Youtube videos, other facts that I’ve found I haven’t seen repeated anywhere in on-line discussions.
The thing about research, though, is that it only has to be done once. After that, if it’s published, everyone benefits. That’s what I’m working toward.
“HP 14-an013nr”? What is this computers name? What line is it in?
Sorry, that’s it. There is no name for this computer, and none for the line of similar models often built with the same case, motherboard and chassis. HP seems to be signaling that it’s not worth naming. In case you’ve missed the message, they really want you do comparisons of published specs, and buy something more expensive, or at the very least to move to something more expensive as soon as possible. If you’re not getting that message, they’ll make it even clearer as time goes by.
What does it really cost?
Well, it’s basically what you pay for the 14-an013nr, plus what you pay for whatever amount of RAM you want, plus whatever you pay for whatever size SSD you want, plus maybe $40 or so for cables, adapters or whatever bits and pieces.
As I mentioned above, I’ve only seen two “brand new” 14-an013nr’s for sale since I became interested, one for about $325 and the other for about $350. That’s a pretty steep markup for a computer that came out for under $200 (street) just a couple of years ago, and I plan to ignore it. Guess I’m not the only one, to my knowledge neither has sold at this writing.
The first one I ordered, which seems fine except for one deep scratch to the side of the keyboard, cost me something like $183 shipped. The second, which promised to show only slight scuffing, cost $100 shipped but hasn’t arrived yet. I expect to upgrade these to 8-12GB of (used) RAM for about $45 each, and about 500 GB of SSD which I expect to buy new for about $130 or so each.
Bottom line, here’s what we get from the mods above:
A low-end but not terrible AMD E2-7110 quad core processor running at 1.8 GHz, 2 MB cache. A very nice 14″ 1920×1080 full-HD screen (unusual in this class)
8-12 GB RAM
500 GB 2.5″ SATA SSD
A very nice 14″ 1920×1080 full-HD screen (unusual in this class)
Dual-band (ac) Wifi adapter
Bluetooth 4.2
A USB 3.0 jack (+ 2 USB 2.0 jacks)
An Ethernet connector (being eliminated now on a lot of notebooks)
An HDMI jack
A VGA jack (being eliminated now on a lot of notebooks)
A removable battery (being eliminated now on a lot of notebooks), so you can carry a spare
A trackpad with real physical buttons (being eliminated now on a lot of notebooks)
For about $315-$403. Go ahead, compare that to what else is available out there. I’d like to hear about it, so long as screen resolution is at least 1080.
There’s been some discussion on-line as to how much RAM this processor can usefully use. I’m probably not going to be a good sample for that, my primary notebook (today, that T60p I mentioned) has 3GB of RAM which I pretty frequently max out by having 35 or 80 tabs open in a browser at once. Do keep in mind, though, that with integrated graphics, the system RAM is also the video RAM, so the question of how much the processor uses is a bit misleading. That’s part of the reason that the 4 GB it comes with is apt to be an unsatisfactory bottleneck.
In any case, in this range it looks like you could bump it up to 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD for $450-$550. Would it be worth putting that money into this platform? I don’t honestly know. I don’t need the SSD space (I use a home network NAS that’s automatically backed up for a lot) so it’s just a question of RAM for me to find out, so I probably will try 16 GB at some point and see if it seems any better.
The negatives:
I think this has the potential to be a great bargain for the tasks that most people use a notebook for at least 95% of the time, plus a whole lot of basic tasks, but it’s far from perfect as a computer:
The screen is gorgeous, but also glossy and reflective. You can get what are advertised as replacements for this model, in 1920×1060, in anti-reflective matte finish, for about $50 slow-boat-from-China. I have no idea how that would work out. After a couple of weeks I’m guessing I won’t much notice anymore anyway.
The keyboard is… pretty awful. Not terrible, I guess, but I’m used to older Lenovo keyboards, and you pretty much can’t get notebooks with keyboards like that anymore. Again, I guess I can get used to it.
The speakers are… pretty awful. Not loud enough, and pretty tinny. Sigh. However, note that it has Bluetooth 4.2, which means that in the places you typically use the thing you can pretty easily have whatever quality of sound you care to pay for, or build, wirelessly… and have it work with all your devices. It also has a mini-headphone jack that might be better than the speakers in many cases.
Strategy:
The entire computer industry is famous for changing fast, but some segments change faster than others, and some periods witness much faster change than others.
The general sense seems to be that the entire laptop/notebook segment has been more or less in the doldrums lately. A whole lot of their thunder has been stolen by phones and tablets, and traditional notebooks have been increasingly neglected. Aside from the (amazingly slow) introduction of SSDs and the rather dubious insistence that we all need touch screens on every device, there’s been little progress in general, and screens in particular have gotten worse.
The segment is not going away, though. As much as people love their phones and tablets, they are designed for consuming content, not creating it. That’s fine for some people all of the time, and maybe for all people some of the time, but so far there’s no really practical solution for using a phone or tablet to knock out a few paragraphs of text while you’re on the move or just stopped temporarily somewhere. Many people need to be productive, not just entertained.
The notebook computer industry has fallen into defensive mode, and while they have legitimately lost some economies-of-scale, it’s hard to avoid the impression that they’re mostly just fighting to keep prices from dropping fast. I suspect that’s going to end pretty soon, and probably quickly when it does. The general designs of notebooks in general haven’t evolved much, and have yet to take real advantage of significant changes like the increasing move toward solid-state storage. It’s all just circuits now, there’s really not much mechanical left, no real moving parts other than the keyboard keys, but still, when you open one up, you’re generally confronted with a not-particularly-lightweight metal chassis and possibly metal shell. There was more justification for this when there was a need to protect, cushion and power fragile and power-hungry mechanical whirling disks, but it seems like we’re producing anachronisms now.
I personally don’t think there are any new notebooks out there now with the potential to be a long-term solution the way the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad line once was, nothing that seems to carry the promise of longevity that justifies the kind of prices that the industry still wants to charge. There are clearly big changes coming, so it’s more a game of getting something inexpensive to get by for at most a few years until there are better options available, probably at much lower prices, than there are now. It’s a short-term game, so we want to focus minimal expenditure to meet our needs for the immediate future, and not even consider trying to make a future-proof investment in hardware. In this time, paying what the industry asks for technology that’s already half-obsolete just makes no sense. Full-HD, HDMI, USB 3.0, dual-band ac Wifi and Bluetooth 4.1 or later are things that make life easier right now, have an immediate payoff… and spending a few hundred bucks is not going to feel like a tragedy if in two or three years we can buy something considerably better for $150. Don’t laugh, things are going in that direction, and as I’ve mentioned before the Quad-Core HD/HDMI ac Wifi and Bluetooth enabled Raspberry Pi 3 model B+ for all of $35 shows what is possible. Unless you have a real, immediate need, investing $1,500 or even $700-800 in a notebook computer in a time when such bargains are possible seems likely to end in regret.
Conclusion:
If you’re a hardware-hacker type, this is a cheap and (relatively) easy way to get a far more usable notebook computer than you can usually get at this price. Even if it won’t do for you personally, I’d bet you can think of people that it would do just fine for.
Unfortunately, I’ve been digging up as much information as I can on it for some time now, and I don’t remember ANY computer that I’ve seen so much misinformation being spread about. DO NOT take the word of any one source on any hardware matter with regard to the 14-an013nr. I’m going to try really hard not to add to the misinformation myself. Unfortunately, that means experimentation, and that’s going to take some time and probably multiple parts orders.
That’s an overview. I expect to be posting more about the particulars of upgrading this model soon (parts of it are written, parts waiting for hands-on experimentation, or acquisition of parts). I will link to it here, so if that word “here” isn’t a link, it’s not up yet. 😉
If there’s interest, I may also do a post on techniques for finding them and buying them… mostly doing on-line searches in some unconventional ways. Not this week. I don’t need the competition out there right now. 😉
One thing I WILL say now, though, is that you want to be SURE that you’re getting this exact model and no other. If you don’t get precisely the HP 14-an013nr, not just anything close like the an012nr or an011nr, you’ll almost certainly end up saddled with something that either has an inferior screen or is difficult or impossible to upgrade in some critical way. If we accept no substitutes maybe HP or someone else will start to think that there may actually be reasons to make a low-end but upgradeable notebook for merely a reasonable profit… on purpose.
— Robert the Wombat
Happy Hacker’s Notebook: Opening the case of the HP 14-an013nr
Happy Hacker’s Notebook: Mysteries of the HP 14-an013nr: RAM
Coming: Storage. That’s the big one…