About a year after launching an 8 inch Windows tablet with an exceptionally low starting price of $150, HP is back with a new model that costs more than twice as much. But that’s because the new HP Envy Note 8 is in a completely different class than last year’s entry-level Stream 8 tablet.
The HP Envy Note 8 has a full HD display, an Intel Atom Cherry Trail processor, 4G LTE, Wacom digital pen and an optional keyboard dock that lets you use the tablet like a notebook.
HP offers the Envy Note 8 and stylus for $329 or you can get a bundle that also includes the keyboard for $429.
Most 8 inch tablets don’t come with keyboards, because if it was the same width as the tablet, the keys would be almost too tiny to touch. But HP wanted to deliver a tablet that could be used for work or play, so the company built a keyboard dock that’s about the size of a 10 inch notebook or tablet keyboard.
There’s a groove at the top of the keyboard which you can use to prop up the Envy Note 8 in landscape or portrait mode. And when you’re not using the tablet, you can slide it into a notch on the back of the keyboard, allowing the dock to act as a screen cover.
The keyboard feels pretty good and has 1.5mm key travel distance. There’s a touchpad below the spacebar that’s wide but not very deep.
The tablet itself has measures about 0. 3 inches thick and weighs about 13 ounces. It has a 1920 x 1080 pixel display with wide viewing angles and Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
Unlike most recent Windows tablets, the HP Envy Note 8 ships standard with a 4G LTE modem: it’s not an optional feature. Like the Wacom pen, every Envy Note 8 includes cellular capabilities.
The tablet also supports 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
The HP Envy Note 8Â is powered by an Intel Atom x5-8300 Cherry Trail processor and features 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It has a 5MP rear camera and 2MP front-facing camera, a micro USB 2.0 port, headset jack, and microSD card reader.
HP currently has no plans to offer models with more powerful processors, more memory, or storage.
So, $200 extra for GPS, 5g wifi, LTE, gorilla glass, and a 5mp camera?
32GB of storage, 2gigs of ram, and the z8300 for $329?
You’re kidding me, right?
The keyboard doesn’t even look like it belongs with the product, good thing it’s optional.
I guess HP was envious of all the tablets that Dell is not selling, and wants to not sell tablets too.
Soz but this is a weird thing.
It’s so fugly that I don’t eve care about the specs.
If only it had 4GB of RAM… BayTrail and CherryTrail are very close to eachother in speed and power consumption, and only marginally better in graphics (30% better than shity is still shity), so it doesn’t make sense to upgrade unless you get a memory-bump too. Man, those $200 DV8Ps proved to be really good investments.
Looks ideal for sketching 🙂
Anybody got any links for where this can be bought in Europe?
That keyboard looks rediculous. I’d buy a cover with a kick stand and get the little MS bluetooth keyboard like the wedge
They really dropped the ball on this one, we need one with 4GB ram and at least 64GB of drive space. HP has a more expensive business model that has 4Gb ram and up to 128GB space but is as much as $700 for the 8 inch HP 608 Pro. I’d like something in between.
2GB of ram is a limitation of that processor.
Yep. That’s why I asked HP if they had any plans to offer a version with a faster Cherry Trail chip. The answer was nope. There’s only one configuration and the only option is whether you want the keyboard or not.
Stupid decision not to go cherry trail, makes it DOA
It has a Cherry Trail chip. It just has the cheapest Cherry Trail chip. You need the x5-8500 or x7-8700 to support more than 2GB of RAM.
Chuwi begs to differ.
An otherwise nice product hobbled by 32 GB
of internal flash storage. You have to ask, what
was HP thinking (or maybe they weren’t). Could be
partially mitigated if it supported 200 GB or larger
microSDXC cards.
I’ll be the first to say…. 4gb of ram? Wtf!
And 64gb storage. That should be the new standart.
Too bad. It had my attention until 4gb RAM and 32gb storage. What a waste of an otherwise cool concept. Maybe if they had stripped the LTE modem and made the Wacom pen optional they could have added the extra silicon at that price point.
it has 2GB of ram