HP Slate 500 business tablet gets official, priced at 800 bucks

We’ve seen some early details on HP’s much awaited Slate tablet before, but now this product is official and called the HP Slate 500. Designed as a rugged and stylish touchscreen tablet meant for business and enterprise environments, it manages to bring good hardware and performances, while running an Windows 7 OS. It will go for $799, which might look a little bit expensive, but you do get quite a bunch of different accessories included as well.

We’re going to talk more about it in these next rows.

First of all, let’s take a look at aspect and build quality. The HP Slate 500 is a 8.9 inch tablet, so slightly smaller than the iPad, although because the screen is a 16:9 one, it is actually almost the same in terms of length, but narrower. On the front face there’s the tough glass covered display, while the back is covered in a textured rubberized material, which actually looks quite nice and will provide good grip when using the tablet. It’s also meant to be rugged, hence the reinforced edges that should cope well even with falls.

HP Slate 500 business touch tablet is here, and looks good

Of course, you might say the Slate 500 is not as sleek as the iPad and i won’t argue with that, but seems more practical and sturdy to me, which is great for a device meant to be on the road with you, in all kind of environments.

Of course, there’s no point of having a reliable device if it won’t be able to run the apps you need. Hence, let’s take a look at specs and hardware:

• 8.9 inch 1024 x 600 px capacitive display
• Z540 1.83 GHz processor + GMA 500 graphics + Broadcom Crystal 3D accelerator
• 2 GB of memory by default
• 64 GB SSD storage
• 1 USB slot + dedicated keys for keyboard, CTRL+ALT+DEL, Volume, etc
• front facing VGA webcam and rear-facing 3M camera
• Wi-Fi N, no 3G (not sure about Bluetooth)
• 5 hour battery
• Windows 7 Home Premium

So, there are good and bad parts. First, having 2 GB of memory and SSD storage should make this tablet pretty snappy. However, the Z540 processor will drag overall performance down, but if you’re looking for everyday basic tasks, should be OK, even with multitasking. Still, 64 GB storage space is kind of small for a device launched in 2010, especially since you have no options to upgrade it (easily). Having that Broadcom chip means the device will be able to run HD content, including 1080p if you want to, both self stored on streamed. Connectivity is good also, although there’s no 3G and there’s no plan for a 3G enabled version either (for now). Of course, you can connect a 3G dongle via USB if you want to, but an integrated modem would have been a better solution.

Rubberized back provides good grip

You should know that HP do not see the Slate 500 as an iPad competitor, although we all are thinking about it. No, they say their device is meant for enterprise and business use, hence the bigger price and the bunch of included accessories: a docking station with extension ports (USBs, HDMI), a leather case, a special Pen used for digitizing content (tablet also comes with a smart N-trig active digitizer , which paired with the pen, should make taking notes on this one quite a breeze – although latest rumors signal there’s no Palm Rejection technology implemented, which would actually ruin the whole thing if true).

Digitizing should be a breeze, but the tablet seems to lack Palm Rejection

There’s much more to be said about the HP Slate 500. From the details available right now, it definitely is a tablet we should consider. Comes with a nice solid design, has some specs most of its competitors lack and an accessories bundle with basically all the things you’d need for. Can run you daily tasks, can run multimedia as well if you want to, supports Flash, can output content towards a bigger display or a projector in the conference room, can be used for digitizing content and taking notes. Still, having 3G onboard would have been a must for a business tablet in my eyes and I’m not really satisfied with project battery life (5 hours), especially since the battery is not replaceable.

The clip below should tell you more about the device.

After reading all the things said above, you can decide for yourself if the HP Slate 500 is what you’d be looking for and if it’s worth paying $800 for it. As a business tablet as marketed by HP, there’s not much competition right now (at least till we see the BlackBerry Playbook on the market), but there are other nice tablets available, with WeTab and Tega2 the ones in my mind right now.

Via Slashgear, Gottabemobile , Engadget

Tags: business tablets, HP tablets, touch tablet, touchscreen

Last updated: March 30, 2012 | Published: October 23rd, 2010 | Add the first comment!