A well built tablet with a superb screen that runs Windows 11 but, don’t expect high performance. This basic tablet is generally fine if your needs are web browsing, watching videos, viewing photos, word processing, playing simple games or other light duty jobs. However, it has some limitations.
I’ll be covering the usual things like setting it up and such but not quoting specs as the product description covers that. I took mine out of Windows S mode so I could calibrate the display and run Crystal Disk Mark on it to check the SSD speed. Including photos of all my results. I also compared it to my 9th Generation iPad in certain areas.
Setup is typical Windows but a little simpler. Once you have connected to the internet it will update itself. The tablet is in Windows S (Safe) Mode which limits you to the “safe” apps from the Microsoft Store. Anything not there that you might want to run such as Chrome, then you will need to switch out of Windows S Mode to Windows Home. Once you do this you can’t go back to S Mode.
Pros:
Build quality, stylish looks, superb 2.1K IPS screen, motorized camera, 128 GB storage, micro SD slot, WiFI 6, magnetic 2 position stand, auto dimming & auto color tone display, speaker placement, USB-C, robust charger included.
Average:
Sound quality, battery, performance for basic tasks.
Cons:
CPU can be sluggish for certain tasks and web pages, only 4GB of RAM, “stunningly” poor image quality from the coolest camera on any tablet, and fingerprint reader is inconsistent.
Where the HP tablet shines is its build and screen. The HP tablet feels as good as my iPad. It’s the same size but slightly thicker and heavier. The stand’s build feels good too. The display is its best attribute. It’s on par with my iPad with color, contrast & resolution. PPI is a bit denser on the iPad since the screen is smaller, 10.2” vs 11”. HP claims 100% sRGB. My datacolor Spyder X Pro calibrated it to 98% sRGB. See photos. After calibration I think it slightly edges out the iPad’s color. You can set the display to automatically vary brightness & color temperature to suit the ambient lighting conditions. It looks like the HP has a laminated screen too. That means no gap between the glass and the LCD panel. Corning® Gorilla® Glass 5™ and a smaller bezel than the basic iPad.
The motorized 13 MP camera is a cool innovation. Sadly, the iPad’s basic rear 8MP camera blew it away in every respect. See photos. Can firmware or drivers fix it or just a cheap camera module? Bringing up the camera app brings up HP GlamCam Widget which controls the camera’s tilt and zoom among other things. But it can get in the way. The camera app offers quite a bit of manual control. When you touch the shutter button it does take the photo that instant, I tested to see, but the feedback “Click” it makes, comes over 2 seconds later. This is unacceptable in 2022! If the camera’s images were as good as the iPad’s it would be very impressive.
Sound quality is ok. Not much in the bass department compared to the iPad but clean highs. I do like the speaker placement around the display. Especially when watching videos full screen in landscape position. Beats iPad here.
Fingerprint reader worked about 20% of the time for me. Even after rereading fingers 3 times in case I didn’t do it correctly the first 2 times.
WiFi works perfectly with my Asus gaming router. Bluetooth worked with anything I tried with it. Earbuds, sound bars, headphones and Logitech BT keyboard. Speaking of keyboards, HP makes one that mates up with this tablet. You can buy them bundled too. As for the Windows Ink - stylus, I looked everywhere to see exactly which stylus worked on this tablet. No luck. I did find out that not all HP styluses work on all HP stylus enabled devices. So I didn’t buy one to compare it to the Apple Pencil and Samsung S-Pen.
Battery life is quoted by HP: “Battery life mixed usage: Up to 6 hours and 45 minutes. Video Playback Battery life: Up to 9 hours and 30 minutes”. I would tend to agree with the mixed usage figures.
Including a micro SD slot is never a bad thing.
Performance is mediocre at best. 4GB of RAM is barely enough. It’s sluggish to rotate the screen when you rotate the tablet. Everything is a bit slow on it. Even my old Samsung Galaxy Note 10.2, 2014 edition tablet is as fast and takes better photos. Even has a flash. As for the 9th gen iPad, it’s snappy, has much better battery life and is $170 cheaper. However, it only has 64GB of storage and No micro SD slot.
I wanted to install Adobe Photoshop Elements 2022 on it but 4GB of RAM isn’t enough and it probably would perform poorly.
If you’re pretty familiar with using Windows, then using this tablet will be pretty much the same except for getting used to how Windows works with a touch screen. There are a few things that annoy me such as the size of the areas where you touch are very small and sometimes I have to touch them several times for it to acknowledge it. I did go through the personalization settings and display settings among others, to try to make those elements larger but, with little success. Trying to touch those tiny little boxes to select multiple files with a finger is about useless. Maybe there's a setting I haven’t found yet. Anyways, that’s a Windows issue and not an HP issue. I think Android and iOS have the edge with touch screen interfaces.
Concerning the photos I posted. You can only post 6, so I do composites when I need to post more. You can right click to open them in a new tab or window and view them full size.
My conclusion is that this HP tablet should sell for no more than $350 considering what it does or doesn’t do / lacks depending on how you look at it. I hate that I can’t recommend it considering how well it’s made and how good the screen looks. If they had put in a stronger CPU, 8GB of RAM and a better camera module in that very cool motorized mount, I would highly recommend it at $500.