I recently heard about the HP Slate21 on A Mummy Too blog and though it sounded like a really good family friendly device, so I was pleased to be offered the chance to try it out for myself.

The HP Slate 21 is a 21 inch android device, which functions as a cross between a tablet and a desk top pc. It runs from the mains and has an inbuilt stand, or it can be wall mounted. It was very easy to set up and we found it worked best in our living room, as the central room of the home. It can be moved fairly easily from room to room if you wish.

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURESOf course one of the main uses we found with it was for the children playing games. Mr Z in particular loves games, and he found it easy enough to work the HP Slate21 – to find and install the games he wanted. The Slate21 uses the Android google play store and there are plenty of free games available. He found quite a few racing games that he really enjoyed.

As the screen is much larger than a regular tablet, this lends the HP Slate 21 more to being shared between a few children at once. The boys were all able to see the screen at once which helps to avoid arguments!

It works well for casual gaming for all ages. The boys’ Dad and I enjoyed playing Angry Birds on it.

I didn’t find that it would replace my laptop for doing work, or writing blog posts but it is ideal for quickly googling something or casual internet surfing. My husband likes to read a lot of film reviews and watch film trailers to keep up with what is coming out or will be coming out soon, and for this kind of internet usage it’s perfect.

We installed Spotify and Netflix so it also served as an entertainment device. If you were in a small home and wanted to save space, you could use this to watch most TV programmes through catch up or on demand TV apps so the name “all in one” really does fit well for the HP Slate21.

The RRP of the slate is £349, and if you shop around you may be able to pick it up slightly cheaper. This seems like good value to me, and some of my friends and family who visited and saw it actually thought it would have cost more than that.

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We were sent the HP Slate21 as a loan in order to review, and it has gone back now. I am thinking about buying one in future. Although we have laptops and tablets already, the HP Slate21 seemed to fill a slightly different role and I do think it would be a good addition to our home.

Here are the full technical specifications:

Brand HP
Item Weight 4.8 Kg
Manufacturer reference E2P18AA#ABU
Series Slate 21-S100 E2P18AA
Color WHITE
Screen Size 21.5 inches
Processor Brand nVidia
Processor Speed 1600 MHz
Processor Count 4
RAM Size 1024 MB
Hard Drive Size 8 GB
Graphics Card Description ULP GeForce

 

What do you think of the HP Slate21? Let me know in the comments!