Various brands overview

HP Slate 7

The HP Slate 7 is an upcoming tablet from HP aimed at rivalling the Nexus 7 from Google. It's not as robust as Google's offering, but it does occupy a lower price point. Inside the Slate 7 there's a dual-core 1.6 GHz processor, front and rear-facing 3MP cameras, 8GB of internal memory and 1 GB of RAM.

The display is a fingerprint magnet

The 7 inch display is of 600 x 1024 pixels resolution, and is about the same mediocre quality as that of the Nexus 7. Colors are washed out, there's not much contrast, and the screen is very prone to fingerprints; we suspect there's no anti-smudge coating to be found anywhere.

The buttons on the sides are solidly built and don't feel as if they'll break anytime soon, but the back seems to be made of a material that, although it looks nice, will undoubtedly scratch easily from use.

The construction of the tablet is decent

You can check out a brief hands-on video here:

Benchmark performance is also about what you'd expect from a device of this caliber.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Asus Padfone Infinity
  144
• HTC One
  151
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  305
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  350
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  359
• Meizu MX 4-core
  362
• HP Slate 7
  422
• Nexus 4
  431

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Asus Padfone Infinity
  875
• Samsung Ativ S
  891
• Apple iPhone 5
  915
• Nokia Lumia 920
  910
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  972
• HTC One X+
  1001
• Motorola RAZR i XT890
  1059
• HTC One
  1124
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1192
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1312
• LG Optimus G
  1353
• HTC Butterfly
  1433
• HP Slate 7
  1698
• Sony Xperia Z
  1906
• Nexus 4
  1971
• Oppo Find 5
  2045

The Slate 7 comes with Android 4.1.1 on board, and has Beats audio integration thrown into a very competitive $169 price tag. Look for the HP Slate 7 this April.