HP Pro Slate 12 Review

HPProSlate12_1
HP’s enterprise-focused Pro Slate 12 does a decent but not flawless job of penwork, but it’s most certainly not a tablet for everybody.
There’s an argument that says that tablets are consumption devices. You surf the web on a tablet, or watch Netflix on a tablet, or play games on a tablet. While it’s hard to argue that indeed a lot of this sort of activity occurs, there are other uses for tablets in a more business-centric sense. It’s this market that the HP Pro Slate 12 targets.

HP Pro Slate 12: On The Plus Side

The HP Pro Slate 12 is, as the name suggests, a big tablet. Measuring in at 300.3×7.99×221.95mm with a carrying weight of 850grams, this isn’t a lightweight system at all. That mass does allow it to encompass a 12.3″ 4:3 1600×1200 LCD display, however, and with a focus on business applications that could make it quite a decent presentation device in its own right.

How big is the HP Pro Slate 12? By way of comparison, that's a Samsung Galaxy Tab S sitting on top of it.
How big is the HP Pro Slate 12? By way of comparison, that’s a Samsung Galaxy Tab S sitting on top of it.

Underneath the display lurks a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.3Ghz processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage, plus microSD if you needed more. The Pro Slate 12 is a relative rarity in the Android tablet space, as it’s built with an integrated nano SIM slot for mobile workers; if you’re using the Pro Slate 12 (as I did for testing) without a nano SIM present it will persistently remind you of this fact.
The Pro Slate 12 is an Android 4.4 (“KitKat”) device, which means it’s not sitting on the most cutting edge version of Android. Again, that’s not entirely surprising, as enterprise tools often adopt a slow and steady approach to upgrades, and for the target market the lack of Lollipop probably won’t matter. On the software side everything is slanted, as you might expect, towards enterprise users rather than consumers. Which isn’t to say that playing, say, Ski Safari on a 12″ tablet isn’t a lot of fun, because it is, but that’s not the point with this particular device. For those who live and breathe benchmarks, it scored 903 and 2483 in Geekbench 3, which marks it out as a reasonable but not stunning performer.
HP’s particular slant with the Pro Slate 12 is that it’s intended to be used as a dedicated writing tool in partnership with the supplied HP Duet Pen stylus. This is a nifty little pen with a reversible end that flips between being a regular soft stylus and a fully capable ink pen. No, you don’t write directly onto the glass, although it’s hardened enough that it can take that accidentally. Instead, it pairs via Bluetooth to the Slate 12 and tracks the pen’s motion ultrasonically on a paper pad that slots into the optional Pro Slate 12 paper folio.
The Duet Pen is a clever bit of tech that, for the most part, works well. Don't run and write and you'll be fine.
The Duet Pen is a clever bit of tech that, for the most part, works well. Don’t run and write and you’ll be fine.

You write on a pad of paper in the folio, and it appears within HP’s Notebook app like magic. You do have to be a little careful in terms of placement of the pen and folio to get totally accurate results, however. It’s notably a little quirky if the folio is held upright, but if you’ve got the space to lay it out on a table it’s quick and responsive.

HP Pro Slate 12: On The Minus Side

Larger form factor tablets all share the same basic issue, and the HP Pro Slate 12 is no exception. They’re bulky and somewhat hard to hold for extended periods of time. Putting the HP Pro Slate 12 into the paper folio case makes this a little easier because you can also use it as an ad-hoc stand, but with so many ultra-light ultrabooks on the market, it’s hard not to view the HP Pro Slate 12 as just plain podgy.
You can’t have a tablet without a camera, and the HP Pro Slate 12 has the requisite two. The front 2MP camera is reasonable enough for the kinds of videoconferencing tasks the Pro Slate 12 is pitched towards, but the rear 8MP can only be classed as lousy. Leaving aside the difficulties of photography with a 12″ tablet as your frame, pictures suffer terribly from colour distortion, noise in low light and slow response time. You really shouldn’t be using a tablet for photography in any case, but the HP Pro Slate 12 is very poorly suited to that task if your business purposes included having to capture images of any passable quality.
There’s a bigger issue with the HP Pro Slate 12, however.

HP Pro Slate 12: Pricing

HP’s RRP for the Pro Slate 12 is $899 without the included paper folio. At the time of writing, HP’s online store didn’t list an RRP for the paper folio, but it’s easily found online for around $90, giving the total package a price point just a touch under $1,000.

HP Pro Slate 12: Fat Duck Verdict

The HP Pro Slate 12 is a distinctly enterprise focused device, and for those businesses with strong ties to HP for support there’s definitely some appeal here for those heavily tied to actual paper note taking.
Or at least there would be were it not for that price point. The HP Pro Slate 12 works best with the paper folio, because it keeps your paper source close enough to the tablet to ensure maximum accuracy, but that means you’re dropping near to a grand on each tablet, and at that price point you’ve got a lot of choices in the productivity-centric space.
Microsoft’s nicely premium Surface 3 is cheaper than that, as are any number of straight up laptops. If you must play in the tablet space smaller and cheaper devices are available — including, to be fair, the HP Pro Slate 12’s smaller sibling, the $649-$799 Pro Slate 8 — that you could pair with a straight up writing solution such as the generally excellent Livescribe series of pens.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.