HP dives into Android with the Slate 7 tablet

-Hello. I'm Luke Westaway for CNET here at Mobile World Congress 2013 taking a look at the HP Slate 7. So, this is the first Android tablet that HP has ever made, and as you can see, it's going very, very much for the Nexus 7's style of Slate. So, it's got a 7-inch screen that has a 1024 x 600-pixel resolution. It's reasonably thin and it feels quite light. Around the back, you can see it's got this matte gray effect and the Beats audio logo just down here. Inside, there's a dual-core ARM A9 processor which is clocked at 1.6 gigahertz. It feels quite smooth swiping around. I've another chance to run some benchmarks, but preliminarily, my first impressions are that it feels quite smooth. Around the back, this camera has a 3-megapixel sensor and there is a front-facing camera as well which is gonna come in handy if you want to make video calls. It's running on Android version 4.1 which is Jelly Bean, but it's not the very latest version of Jelly Bean. Don't worry though because HP told me it does have plans to update to version 4.2 in the near future. Those who know their way around Google's operating system will realize that this is very, very close to the stock version of Android that you'd get on devices like the Nexus 4 or the Nexus 7. So, what is different? Well, HP has put some of its own audio software on board that is Beats audio of course, the same partnership that it has with its laptops and what that basically means is if I go into settings, you can see there's a Beats audio option here and you can tweak these options and that will modulate the sound probably making it a little bit bassier, giving it a little bit of extra punch. Now, this tablet is very, very cheap. It's going to cost $169 or 149 euros when it comes out in March, just coming out in the US first and yeah, that's going to be in March. So, it's very, very cheap. It's cheaper than the Nexus 7. I would say the screen possibly isn't as luxurious as Google's option, but there is of course that trade-off because you're getting a cheaper device. So, first impressions are this isn't the most powerful, jaw-dropping, luxurious tablet ever, but it is extremely cheap, so it could turn out to be really good value. I'm Luke Westaway for CNET and this is the HP Slate 7.