In case you missed the news this afternoon, HP has entered the Android tablet game with their very first HP Slate 7 running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. What we have here is a sleek little budget friendly tablet to try and take on the Nexus 7 all for the low price of just $169. Below we have a few hands-on pictures and videos to see if it’s worth your dollar.

HP’s TouchPad was a well-rounded tablet, aside from the operating system that never got feet under its legs. Here however Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, more than 700,000 apps, and a nice little design should make the HP Slate 7 much more successful. The only downfall – the low resolution display. HP opted for a 1024 x 600 resolution slate while everyone else is offering at least 720p HD displays.

Now that we’ve had our hands on it, it basically reminds us 100% of the Nexus 7. Both in the overall design, feel, thickness, weight and all. Obviously this is made of stainless-steel instead of plastics, but has a soft coat red or black option on back to make it comfortable to hold. Sadly the resolution isn’t the only problem, HP also used an unknown 1.6 GHz dual-core processor while the Nexus 7 rocks the Tegra 3 quad-core. Either way it feels good, performs well from our limited chance to see it, so check out the hands-on video below.

With that said, the HP Slate 7 is just 10.7mm thin, lightweight, and comes with a pair of cameras on both the front and back. Obviously the Nexus 7 doesn’t have a rear camera – so that’s a plus here. Then with HP we have micro-SD for extending internal storage, and beats audio integration all on board. It looks and feels nice, was designed well, and is a good first device for HP.

Is this too late to the game, or will the $169 price point lure potential buyers? We’ll see. It will be available in April for just $169 so stay tuned for a full review when that time comes.

4 COMMENTS

  1. If this gets an update to Android 4.2 so that it can have multiple profiles, this would be a rocking tablet to get for my kids so that they can have their own save game profiles instead of everyone using the same save files. Also, as long as HP doesn’t pull what Toshiba pulls and makes every attempt to prevent rooting, this is almost a guaranteed sale for me.

      • I don’t even care about custom ROMs, just the principle. I will never buy another Toshiba tablet again because they go to great lengths to prevent rooting. Once I buy it, it’s my device, especially once it’s out of warranty. Stock Android would be more than sufficient for me as long as HP keeps up with the updates.

  2. “HP also used an unknown 1.6 GHz dual-core processor”
    RK 3066 an unknown processor, come on… for a mobile-based information site this is not very serious…

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