Hewlett Packard has finally put its new range of Slate Android tablets on sale, with three new models now available to purchase through the company’s own website. The tablets were announced back in September, and were given a vague November street date, which HP has only narrowly missed.
In case HP’s new devices passed you by, here’s a reminder about why you may want to check them out. The first, and cheapest, tablet is the Slate 7 Plus. It has a 7-inch touchscreen with a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution, and is powered by Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3 processor. It has 1GB of RAM, 8GB of memory, a 5-megapixel camera, and a microSD card slot. It’s good value at $150, as that’s cheaper than the lower-specced Amazon Kindle Fire HD.
Then we have the Slate 7 Extreme, which has a Nvidia Tegra 4 chip and 16GB of internal memory, and a slightly higher $200 price tag. The tablet’s design has been altered to include a set of forward facing speakers, plus you get a stylus and a micro-HDMI out socket.
Completing the set is the Slate 8 Pro. It’ll come as no surprise to discover the screen has been increased in size to 8-inches, which brings with it a welcome bump in resolution to 1600 x 1200. A Tegra 4 chip and 1GB of RAM run the show, and other features include 16GB of storage, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a stronger battery, and Beats Audio. You’ll pay $330 for the Slate 8 Pro. Finally, all three HP tablets run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.
Both the Slate 7 Plus and the Slate 8 Pro are listed as available right now, but the Slate 7 Extreme shows up as out of stock, with no indication when it’ll be back. We got a chance to try out the Slate 7 and Slate 8 tablets when they were announced, and you can read more about them here.