HP Android Slate Tablets Finally Go On Sale

Better late than never? Perhaps. HP has finally put its lineup of HP Android Slate Tablets up for sale on its website and at Best Buy. There are three models and two sizes to choose from: The HP Slate 7 Plus, the HP Slate 7 Extreme, and the HP Slate 8 Pro. Prices begin at $149.99 for the 7 Plus, $199.99 for the 7 Extreme, and $329.99 for the 8 Pro. Sounds like a bargain, right? Check the specs before you get too excited.

The bargain basement Slate 7 Plus is running an NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip and comes with skimpy 8GB of storage. The Slate 7 Extreme takes a leap on the processor side to the NVIDIA Tegra 4 chipset and and also packs 16GB of storage. The Slate 8 Pro runs that same NVIDIA Tegra 4 chipset with the same 16GB of storage but also bumps up the screen size. All three Tablets are powered by Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). The 7 Extreme lists screen resolution of 1280 X 800 and the 8 Pro lists at 1600 X 1200.

HP announced these Tablets with quite a bit of fanfare back in September aiming for a November roll out, which it missed by a couple of days.

The Slate 8 Pro is obviously HP’s attempt to go head to head with the iPad mini with its familiar looking  4:3 display ratio. While the 7 inch variants will feel more like the Nexus 7 in your hand. The Slate 7 Extreme comes with a stylus on board, but do note that it does not come with an active digitizer merely a capacitive touch screen.

Reports are that the 7 Extreme is already showing up as Sold Out at Best Buy in some locations.