HP Slate 500 Tablet: Review

Hewlett-Packard launched the Slate 500 tablet last week, ending months of speculation about a potential competitor for Apple’s iPad, running Windows 7. In the end the tablet has turned out to be a very different kind of device.

The 6 inch by 9 inch HP Slate 500 is aimed at business users and, as eWEEK found in a road test, it does not give the same experience as the iPad at all. HP is positioning it in the business market because it won’t compete well in the consumer market at all.

HP Slate 500 versus iPad: more features, less fun

In the six months since the iPad has been available, it has owned the consumer tablet market with more than 5 million sold—more than 300,000 on the first day alone, one million in the first month and 2.5 million are expected to sell per month in the short term. Demand shows no signs of letting up, and a recent poll confirmed it as UK eWEEK Europe readers’ favourite tablet.

HP isn’t predicting how many of the new Slate 500s it will sell – in the US it costs $799 (£507), and in the UK there is no definite word on its delivery. However, the world’s largest IT company clearly has a steep road to climb to get into the touch-screen tablet race. Dell faces the same challenge with its Android-based Streak tablet, which is already on sale in the UK through O2.

As in any comparison of products, there are tradeoffs. With the iPad, you get Apple’s elegant user experience of outstanding touch control and magically moving icons and images, among other smooth features (read our iPad Review). But you don’t get anything near a full menu of business-type features, and you don’t get a camera — not yet, anyway.

With a Slate 500, you get more horsepower (1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 processor, 2GB RAM), more storage (64GB NAND flash), more immediately usable business applications, two cameras, a Webcam port and a series of other practical goodies. But the ease of use and elegance of application performance aren’t as special as an iPad’s.

This is as one might expect; Apple has built its business for more than 30 years on knowing exactly how to cater to its users, and no other computer maker has been able to get near it on that level.

More choice on the HP Slate

Operationally, the Slate 500 has a lot of things going for it. It runs Windows just like a PC, and you can use any browser you like (Firefox and IE fans, rejoice!) With the iPad, you’re stuck with whatever Safari allows and, as most people know, it is very finicky about what applications and plug-ins you can download and use.

And there’s the little matter of Adobe Flash. Yes, it runs on Windows, and thus it will run on the Slate 500. Can’t say that for the iPad. How many Flash presentations fall by the wayside on the iPad because Apple has a bone to pick with Adobe? It’s time Apple just got over it and added that functionality.

There are several little things about the Slate 500 that can be irritating. For example, when the orientation is changed from vertical to horizontal, or vice versa, the image on the screen disappears while the change is made. There is the daunting feeling that maybe the unit has crashed, and when the image does return, you breathe a sigh of relief.

Making images larger or smaller by opening or closing two fingers or more across the screen is not nearly as smooth as the iPad. This was among the most disappointing attributes of the Slate 500. The image was slow to change sizes — very slow — and when it did change, the result often wasn’t what was desired. Often the type we were trying to read wasn’t readily located.

Because the Slate 500 screen is smaller than an iPad’s, many people are going to want to increase the size of the web content they’re reading more often. If all Slates are as slow-moving as the one we tested, HP is going to have to answer to a lot of frustrated users.

Granted, any touch screen would turn out second-best to Apple’s. But there’s no question that a user will have to employ an entirely different touch approach in working with a Slate 500; the touch control is different and it’s simply not as responsive as an iPad.

On the Slate 500, Web pages do not magically appear out of a central location on the screen, as on the iPad; they simply pop into place. Nothing wrong with that; it’s just different.

Again, the screen itself is smaller than the iPad’s. Links, buttons and images are all smaller, making it a bit more difficult to navigate — especially for users with eyesight challenges.

Keyboard smaller, but pen is available

The soft keyboard — which rolls out from the side at a button press — is quite a bit smaller and harder to use than the iPad’s. For this reason, a small pen is included in the Slate package for precise typing and button-pushing. People with larger fingers will have some difficulty, but that’s the case for all touch-screen devices.

While we certainly would not call the Slate 500 a clunky device, it is a little more difficult to use than an iPad. But with all those important business features, the cameras, the Webcam port and everything else, there will surely be a substantial number of buyers waiting in virtual lines to buy it.

That’s right, virtual lines. You won’t find the Slate in the shops – and there seems to be no UK availability, but it can be ordered form HP’s US site.