Chinese websites offer a plethora of affordable Android smartphones and tablets, but we had yet to see such a device coming from a reputable manufacturer. HP’s newest 7″ Android tablet seems to be the prime example of that.
When the company launched the $170 HP 8 1401 Android tablet back in March, the world received a hint regarding how affordable HP products could get. With the HP 7 Plus, the diagonal of the display might have been reduced, but also was the price. Drastically! As the name implies, the new tablet sports a 7-inch WVA IPS multitouch-enabled display with a resolution of 1024×600. Sure, that’s nothing revolutionary, but for that price, what more could you ask for?
The tablet is powered by an Allwinner quad-core ARM Cortex A7-based CPU clocked at 1Ghz that should be OK for basic tasks. In terms of memory, HP 7 Plus comes with 1GB DDR3 SDRAM and 8GB of internal storage. Fortunately, the internal memory can be furthermore expanded by up to 32GB with the help of a microSD card.
In terms of battery life, the 2800 mAh Lithium polymer accumulator should keep the device up and running for 5 hours and 30 minutes. Of course, that will be influenced a lot by your usage patterns. Supposing you play games or run complex apps while having the Wi-Fi on, that should have a major impact on the battery life.
Video chat lovers will be delighted to know that this budget Android tablet comes with a built-in microphone and two cameras, a 2 MP one on the back and a 0.3 MP one in the front. The sound quality might be great, though, as the HP 7 Plus only features a mono speaker.
I, for one, am not a big fan of HP products ever since I owned a Pavilion laptop that died without any last words or warnings, only to find out later that the entire DV6000 series had problems with the graphic chip. Their tablets may be OK, but I would still choose a Nexus over an HP anytime of the day, even though basically they’re from different price categories and their manufacturers target different audiences with them. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks that consumer HP products are a joke. Their servers and workstations are top-class, so I’ll give them that!
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