HP has quietly added a new Android tablet to its line of business tablets. The HP Slate 8 Pro Business Tablet is a slightly updated version of the Slate 8 Pro consumer model that launched in late 2013.
There are a few key differences. The new tablet ships with Android 4.4 KitKat instead of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. It includes support for NFC wireless communication. And it sells for $349 from the HB business site (instead of $330 from the home & office).
The rest of the specs are pretty much the same.
We first spotted the new HP Slate 8 Pro Business tablet in an FCC listing on April 4th. Blogger Mike Cane noticed the new tablet is already available from HP.
Like its predecessor, the new tablet features an 8 inch, 1600 x 1200 pixel display with a 4:3 aspect ratio, and an NVIDIA Tegra 4 ARM Cortex-A15 quad-core CPU. Those specs make it one of the most powerful Android tablets available… or they would if the tablet didn’t also ship with just 1GB of RAM.
It features 16GB of storage, a microSD card slot, micro HDMI port, and micro USB cable. There’s an 8MP rear camera and 720p front-facing camera, and the tablet has a 21Whr battery which HP says is good for up to 11.5 hours of run time.
The HP Slate 8 Pro Business tablet features 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and support for Miracast wireless display streaming. The tablet measures 8.7″ x 5.6″ x 0.4″ and weighs about 1 pound.
Last time I checked KitKat costs the same as Jelly Bean. (Free). This thing honestly hits you like a slap in the face.
Used to buy HP stuff. Now they just seem mostly like also-rans. “Well, everyone else has a mediocre 8″ tablet, so here’s our version.” Instead of aiming at Apple, maybe they aspire to be the American version of Acer, except Acer is looking better these days and at least Acer charges less. And that comment about HP seeming to insist on having at least one fatal flaw per device. So true. They’re not alone, maybe just the most devoted practitioners.
It has the usual HP fatal flaw. There’s always at least one, as if they just can’t stand to make something great. 1MB RAM.
Yeah I know.. There’s a few tablets who has excellent specs until they only have 1gb of Ram. I am sure ppl would pay the extra $25-$40 for smithery 1gb of Ram. It feels like it’s either 2gb of Ram or no SD slot for these $400 range tablets excluding Chinese tablets of course.
DOA
Well, not a great update but this means kitkat for the slate 8 pro “basic” will be a reality soon. Even if hp doesn’t launch if officially someone will give it a little tweak to work on the first 8″ slate. Wonderful, wonderful tablet despite a little overweight, it’s a champ!
So is this how you get updates to HP tablets by having to buy a whole new device? Who would even buy anything from this company knowing it will just be abandoned.
This is what traditional PC companies still don’t “get”, we no longer live in a world where you can release a product & then never support it again like in the height of the PC era. In a device-based world like with Apple, Nexus, Surface, ChromeOS, game consoles, Roku, FireTV, the devices get continuous updates until end of life.
I have to share your dismay. The “old” HP, the one
that actually invented new things, supported its products.
They would make drivers available for their printers,
even discontinued ones, through several versions of
Windows. Hate to point fingers, but the “old” HP
may have started dying the moment HP acquired
Compaq. Was that during Carly Fiorina’s term?
If so, I shudder to think what she would have done had
she won political office. HP has gone downhill since
that acquisition.
See its products like these that convince me that HP truly has no clue what they’re doing.