Hewlett Packard revealed that they’ll be releasing a new tablet pretty soon, known as the Slate 7. The price tag on this new tablet will be a wise, and inexpensive, $169, a smart move for HP as a whole, and why not:? With so many expensive tablets coming out nowadays (like the Google Pixel) it’s nice to see one in a more reasonable price-tag for a change, especially coming out of a company that’s known to have fairly reliable, and high-quality products, like HP. But, will this be enough to make the tablet a hit? Maybe, but I’m not too sure…
While it’s generally a nice-looking tablet, featuring a 1024 x 600 display, it kind of resembles a Samsung 7-inch tablet, but with wider screen. The screen is almost 17″, pretty good size for a tablet in my opinion, but the exterior could use some design improvements. Somehow, even though I found the screen to be very bright, the display just doesn’t do it for me, it doesn’t have that beautiful sharpness, found on other tablets.
While it might do well, just by the fact that it’s so cheap, and will probably run successfully without too many bugs, it just doesn’t seem like HP took any risks with this one, not wanting to alienate any part of the “I want a really cheap tablet” audience. While it seems sturdy enough, the exterior of the device just seems rather dull, even though it does feature a soft-touch plastic on the rear of the device, and a stainless-chassis, overall, there’s nothing here to really write home about, (except the low price-tag).
So, now that we’ve gone over the hardware, let’s talk about the actual performance of this new gadget. It really does work, no big surprises here. Obviously, the device isn’t super-fast, but I wouldn’t really demand that of a $170 tablet…who would? I didn’t really enjoy the smooth swiping you would expect to find on an iPad, or another Apple device, so overall, it was a bit choppy of an experience, but nothing I couldn’t handle.
Also, loading new apps took a bit longer than I’d like, but again, you get what you pay for, and that’s certainly the case with this new Slate 7. Then again, probably not all of the software is completed for this device, so I can’t say the tablet itself is completely to blame for the slow load times.
So, as far as the specs? It’s currently rocking a 1.6 GHz processor, and a whopping 1 gig of ram, which, while unimpressive, is enough to tackle most jobs you’d be using a portable device for. So, where does a processor come from in a $169 tablet? Well in this case, it’s a Chinese company called Fuzhou Rockchips Electronics. Ouch. I get you want to go cheap guys, but a Chinese processor? Did we really have to go THAT cheap?
Well, if this new, untested equipment holds up, it might not be a bad idea to get your hands on it, but there’s really nothing here that’s all that special. Overall,, I think HP went a little too far on the cheapness, but we’ll wait and see.