Gadgetory

when the Nexus 7 first came out a lot of people thought it revolutionized the tablet market with its accessible size and very affordable price point well it was only a matter of time before other companies decided to adopt the same general strategy and possibly do it even better hey it's Josh of agar from Android thorny what's going on everybody and this is the HP Slate 7 as the name suggests the HP Slate 7 is a 7 inch tablet much like the Nexus 7 as a matter of fact it looks a lot like the Google tablet at first glance I'll try my best to keep this from being a comparison but the Nexus 7 does make a good benchmark you get the front black slate with the sizable bezel around the screen and front facing camera up top in size it has a similar profile but it's thicker and noticeably heavier this is due to a middle spine that joins the back in the front a thick spine that allows for easy gripping in one hand the power button SD card slot and headphone jack are up top the volume rockers are on the side and the speaker grilles are on the bottom the back is of a rubberized material around the rear facing camera it's almost as if HP took the somewhat cheaper feeling Nexus 7 and gave it a more industrial look and feel the thicker profile makes it easier to hold in one hand and they have to just helps elevate its build quality the attractive back can be found in some other colours like a really vibrant red but this gray still looks quite good HP can be commended for making a sturdy feeling and attractive seven-inch tablet if the seven-inch tablet market is supposed to be generally more affordable the HP Slate 7 definitely fulfills the criteria we'll get to the price later but know that with a low price comes accommodating specifications this starts with the screen the seven-inch LCD is actually lower in resolution than a vast majority of other devices coming in at 1024 by 600 resolution at only 170 PPI while it does look quite decent at a distance away you can already notice some fringing in the colors and that only gets worse when you get closer just about everything from shapes and text looks jagged and pixelated even the general user will notice this lowered quality in the display experience you pretty much do get what you're paying for here considering that other options only somewhat more expensive give a much better screen performance the performance of the slate 7 is decided in range as HP outfitted this tablet with the dual-core cortex a9 that clocks in at 1.6 gigahertz this isn't a slow performer by any means as it works just fine for the budget slate 7 it slides through its menus and elements just fine though it takes longer for it to load more intensive apps gaming is also just decent due to the Mali 400 MP 4 which is a respectable graphics package and the 1 gigabyte of RAM that gets you some multitasking abilities all in all you'll be able to get around typical tasks without any problems but expect some sutter and lag when you're trying to get crazy benchmark scores are the swear you would expect and - - puts it squarely right above the 10,000 mark while Epic Citadel at just high performance was only able to maintain about 40 frames a second Hardware on the slate 7 does get a bit of a boost with an SD card slot found at the top being able to extend the included 8 or 16 gigabytes will help people get more media usage which is always nice otherwise you would expect a standard bevy of other features like Bluetooth which you do get but you don't get GPS here making the slate 7 the last choice of navigation and you also don't get NFC perhaps a bit of a bizarre oversight is the exclusion of a gyroscope Beats Audio is perhaps the only real Edition that differentiates the slate 7 it does its job here adding volume and some richness to music through headphones too bad it can't do the same for the outer speakers which are just not loud enough for more than just one or two people trying to listen it's hard not to be disappointed by all that is missing here as a concerted effort to offer even the standard tablet experience at such a low price point could have propelled this tablet a 3500 milliamp hour battery is included in the slate 7 which HP claims will keep the tablet running for up to 5 hours this is mostly true after about a couple hours of usage mostly on YouTube it did get down to about 45 percent life now no one really expects cameras on tablets to be very good but sometimes they are nice additions not so on the slate 7 this 3 megapixel rear shooter is a far cry from just about anything we see on devices these days while it is in addition that the slate 7 has over the nexus 7 it's one you probably won't be using anyway the app is that standard as it can get with only really panorama as the added mode and pictures are all full of grain and lag good color reproduction even the lack of autofocus adds to the troubles in this camera the front-facing camera is decidedly lower quality too capable of only VGA resolution and consistently washed out pictures if you really need a camera on your tablet then you got one here but you're likely better off just taking out you're much better performing camera phone in just about every case and finally we come to the software simple story here the jelly bean 4.1.2 powered HP Slate 7 keeps things about as stock as possible there are pretty much no changes to the original formula here and without a proprietary ecosystem like Amazon with its Kindle to back it up this is about as vanilla as you can get a lot of us do prefer the nexus experience and you do get it here which is nice but there's not much to say otherwise finally we end on price I end on this because it's important to know all that HP had to strip away in order to make this one of the most affordable 7-inch tablets on the market today at 169 dollars however it is only $30 cheaper than a nexus 7 with twice as much storage and better performance pretty much all around sure you will lose a camera in that jump but it's up to you if that is worth it honestly I think so and so there you have it I give HP props for putting themselves out there to make an affordable tablet it's just such a disappointment that something so well-constructed doesn't have anything to show for it underneath perhaps it's useful for us to take a look at it from at least one positive angle maybe a tablet that is this affordable would make a great learning tool for children but the mere fact that I had to think outside of the box just to justify the slate 7 should tell you everything you need to know about it it's a very worthy try especially in design and I hope it only gets better for HP and Android tablets don't forget to drop us some likes on our videos down below don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and then stay tuned for all of the best coverage on Android authorities YouTube channel because we are your source for all things Android