HP Slate 7 Review

The HP Slate 7 is the brand’s 2nd foray into the consumer tablet space.  In 2011, HP launched its Touchpad in Australia but pulled the device from shelves just 4 days after the local launch. 2 years has elapsed since then, so what has HP learnt?

The Specs

• Android 4.1
• Dual Core 1.6 GHz processor
• 1 GB RAM
• 8GB internal storage
• Micro SD Slot
• 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel screen
• Bluetooth, WiFi
• 370g

The Good

• Cheap at around $200
• Differentiable design
• Near stock Android

The Bad

• Thick bezel feels unnecessary
• Average battery life
• No further Android upgrades at the moment

The Slate 7, as its name suggests, has a 7 inch screen. At 1024 by 600 pixels it’s not the highest resolution display on a tablet in this form factor but it still performs reasonably well. The screen was fine for watching YouTube videos on and reading eBooks. While the viewing angles were not as good as an iPad or other top-tier tablet, they were fine for most purposes. The screen was bright enough for indoor conditions, but in bright sunlight it was not very readable. A thick black bezel sits around the screen and we felt it was too thick and got in the way. Battery life is around 5 hours of use the device lasted us a few days on standby mode.
The back of the device is a rubberized plastic and is available in red or silver. The bright red of our review unit added much-needed eccentric design flare to the device while the metal band around device made the build quality feel solid. The 3MP camera on the back was fairly low quality and suffered from motion blur even in everyday indoor scenarios. Photos lacked the basic amounts of contrast and sharpness expected in tablet cameras today. In slightly darker conditions, noise and grain in the images was very prevalent. The VGA quality front facing camera will suffice for Skype or video chats – don’t expect to be taking masterpieces with either camera.
The tablet has a 1.6 GHz Dual Core processor and 1GB of RAM. On paper there appears to be enough processing might, when using the tablet it does not appear so. With general use of flicking through the home screen, browsing menu systems and the internet we frequently experienced noticeable amounts of lag. When we played an assortment of games on the tablet we experienced delay in the user interaction being recognized and many dropped frames.

The Slate 7 has a near stock Android 4.1 experience with the most major change being the addition of Beats Audio. We don’t see Beats Audio as a reason to buy this tablet however, some people may find the inbuilt bass-biased Beats equalizer as a nice addition. HP has told us that they do not have any plans at this stage to offer software updates to newer versions of Android. The tablet has 8GB of inbuilt storage and a Micro SD slot for increasing the storage by 32GB.

The Slate weighs 370 grams in comparison to 308 grams of the iPad mini, 300 grams of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 and 290 grams of this year’s Google Nexus 7.

Wrap Up

The HP Slate 7 sells for around $200 and while you will find it cheaper in stores and online you must be prepared to put up with its many pitfalls.