What’s New in HP Tablets?

The tablet form factor has really started to hit its stride in the business world. What started out as a nifty consumer product has quickly become a productivity powerhouse for the modern professional.

This is a trend that HP knows all too well. It has been developing its tablet offerings over the past few years with small business and enterprise customers in mind. You can play Angry Birds on just about anything, but it takes a combination of performance and a good price for hardware to make it in the business world.

HP’s attention to these details is apparent when you look at the latest it has to offer. These tablets are built for productivity, but are made available at a cost that reflects the BYOD trend currently popular in small and medium businesses.

All of the tablets listed below have bundled software from HP intended to assist with productivity. This software includes Kingsoft Office, as well as HP applications that help users manage their files and data across multiple devices.

Slate7 Plus

The Slate7 plus sites at the low end of HP’s current tablet product line. It’s an Android tablet running 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.

The target audience for this tablet is a young adult or casual user that would like an Android tablet with enough power to handle email, browsing, and to run apps, but doesn’t necessarily need the the bells and whistles a power user would demand.

The Slate7 Plus starts at $149 and comes with these built-in features:

• 7-inch display (1280 x 800)
• microSD expansion slot
• 8 GB eMMC internal storage
• 1 GB DDR3 SDRAM
• NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor
• stereo speakers, microphone, and 3.5mm headphone jack

Slate7 Extreme

The Slate7 Extreme is a tablet built for gamers. It includes front-firing speakers to deliver a more immersive sound. Additionally, a stylus gives you advanced precision.

With 10.5 hours of battery life, it has a bit of an edge over the Slate7 Plus for long flights and other situations where an outlet may not be readily available.

The upgraded Tegra 4 processor is also no slouch. It should be able to handle just about any Android 4.2.2 capable application with overhead to spare.

At a starting price of $199, it’s still one of the more budget-friendly tablets on the market today.

HP Slate7 and Slate10 HD 4G

Want 200MB of free 4G wireless connectivity on your device for two years after purchase? You can get that with the Slate7 HD 4G, and its 10-inch cousin, the Slate10 HD 4G.

These tablets both feature the same powerful Marvell SoC PXA986 Dual-Core (1.2 GHz) processor, 4G connectivity, and 1GB DDR3 SDRAM. You will also find 16 GB of storage onboard, with integrated Beats audio.

The Slate7 HD 4G has about 7 hours of battery life, while the Slate10 HD 4G has an additional three hours.

Both of these screens carry the same 1280×800 resolution, which is enough to see vibrant high-quality 720p video with room to spare for the on-screen toolbar.

Slate8 Pro

The Slate8 Pro sits on the high end of HP’s current tablet product line. It’s the powerhouse made for users that demand the latest and greatest in productivity.

The 8-inch 1600×1200 resolution display is beautiful, and even at just one additional diagonal inch over the 7-inch tablets in this lineup, it certainly packs a visual punch.

It’s not as large and cumbersome as a 10-inch tablet, either. It’s still somewhat pocketable.

The NVIDIA Tegra 4 A15 processor has a 4 + 1 core configuration that allows you to run at quad-core or single-core settings to conserve battery life when you need it most.

Like other Android tablets in this lineup, the Slate8 Pro has Android 4.2 Jelly Bean installed.

Omni10

If Android isn’t your preferred platform of choice, the HP Omni10 may have what you’re searching for. It’s a full Windows 8.1 solution, which includes a full version of Microsoft Office. Unlike many other Windows tablets, the Omni10 isn’t limited by a Windows RT environment. It’s capable of running the same software you would find on a laptop or desktop workstation.

A 10.1-inch full HD touchscreen gives you the ability to watch full-HD video, and take advantage of the additional screen real estate a higher resolution device provides.

The Omni10 isn’t going to compete with your desktop workstation in terms of processing performance. It’s running an Intel Atom Z3000 processor under the hood, which is great for a tablet, but not necessarily something that would replace your primary desktop for intensive tasks like video rendering or ultra high definition photo editing.

The Omni is a great solution for on-the-go productivity. Office applications will run as well on it as just about any other device out there, and all at an entry price of around $400.

As we move into 2014, HP’s tablet line looks pretty good. It should be on point to compete with just about any other Android or Windows 8.1 offering out there, especially at a price point that hits all of the right notes.