HP has so far ducked acknowledging the existence of the new model 11″ HP Chromebook, which surfaced in JB Hifi stores mid-last month, but today, they’ve acknowledged it and at the same time given us dates for the recently announced Android running HP Slatebook and the HP Chromebox.
Paul Gracey, Business Manager, Personal Systems Category, HP South Pacific spoke about the new ChromeOS and Android products that HP are introducing saying
Customers have made it clear that they need devices that better adapt to work and play the way they do. Today, we are announcing the next generation of PCs that combine power, versatility and design for home and on the go.
The 11.6″ HP Chromebook comes in a choice of two colours – Ocean Turquoise or Snow White – and is (obviously) instores already, priced at $399. The official specs on the chromebook include an 11.6″ 1366 x 768 resolution display, 1.7GHz Samsung Exynos 5250 Processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of on-board storage, 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, and come with a 6.5 hours 3-cell 30WHr Li-Ion polymer battery.
We’ve already heard thoughts on the new Chromebook from Lachlan who purchased one of the machines, but he’s since done an update after spending a full 3 weeks with the Chromebook :
Next up is the HP Chromebox, the Chromebox from HP will be available in four colours – Smoke Silver, Ocean Turquoise, Snow White and Twinkle Black – and are expected to arrive in-store in July at a price of $299. The machine is Haswell based, but being a desktop product battery life won’t be a concern here.
Specs on the official site are incomplete at this stage, but the list so far looks like this :
- Intel Haswell based Processor
- 2GB DDR3 RAM
- 16GB SSD
- 2 x USB 3.0 (front), 2 x USB 3.0 (back), SD Card reader, HDMI Port, Display port (full size),Combo Mic/Headphone Jack
- Gigabit Ethernet + WiFi 802.11 b/g/n 2×2, BT 4.0 combo
- 126mmx124mmx39mm @ 630grams
Last, but not least, is the most recent announcement – the HP Slatebook 14, the Android powered Laptop from HP. Arriving in Australia at a price of $449, the SlateBook is expected in July where it will compete with the rest of the HP range, specifically their Chromebook 11 and Chromebook 14.
It’s an odd duck the Slatebook 14, which technically doesn’t allow as much productivity as the Chromebooks, which offer a full version Chromebook, but it will obviously have a fairly rich App eco-system through Google Play.
The Slatebook 14 website is now live and shows the full specs of the machine, which starts with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean installed on the laptop. Hardware wise you get the 14″ 1920×1080 FHD touchscreen, with Nvidia Tegra 4 mobile processor with quad-core CPU (1.8 Ghz) GPU and 2GB of RAM powering the device. There’s 16GB of on-board storage with a microSD card to back it up. With a 9 hour battery life, you’ll be using this bad boy all day.
There’s quite a few devices here we’d love to play with and we can’t wait to see them up close and in person. The Slatebook specifically is going to be a hotly sought after item here at Ausdroid, where we want to see how it goes against a Chromebook for productivity.
I like the look of the Slatebook 14. As an owner of the 10″ Slatebook, I’m reasonably happy with the device although the battery life is still a little disappointing. Hopefully they’ll do a better job with the 14″ device battery life.
Signed up to HP for updates on availability of the SlateBook 14.
Really looking forwards to this.