HP quietly launches new Android tablets
The four new Hewlett-Packard slates popped up for sale online on Monday with little fanfare.
Hewlett-Packard is looking to drum up tablet sales with the rollout of four new devices, which went on sale Monday.
The new lineup includes the HP Slate7 Plus, the HP Slate7 Extreme, the HP Slate8 Pro, and the HP Slate10 HD. Equipped with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, the tablets are all listed as available with the exception of the Slate7 Extreme, which currently is out of stock.
For $150, the HP Slate7 Plus offers a 7-inch 1,280x800 display, 8GB of internal storage, an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, a microSD card slot, and more than 6 hours of battery life. Selling for $200 when it's available, the HP Slate7 Extreme also comes with a 7-inch 1,280x800 display but bumps up the other specs to 16GB of storage, an Nvidia Tegra 4 processor, a microSD card slot and an HDMI port, and more than 10 hours of battery life.
Further up the chain, the $330 Slate 8 Pro offers an 8-inch screen, a 720p front-facing Webcam, and up to 11.5 hours of battery life. And finally, the $300 Slate10 HD ups the screen size to 10 inches, is powered by a Marvell SoC PXA986 dual-core processor, and includes 16GB of built-in storage.
HP revealed the future rollout of these slates in September. But the company didn't issue a new press release announcing their sale on Monday. And Cyber Monday isn't an ideal time to start selling a new product since it's guaranteed to get lost amid all the holiday discounts.
The HP Slate7 Plus and HP Slate7 Extreme certainly are priced competitively at only $150 and $200, respectively. But HP is going to have to generate more buzz about these slates if it expects to steal sales away from rival Android tablets.