Summary

HP has just renewed its range of tablets and released two fairly strange devices last June: the HP Slate 6 Voicetab and Slate 7 Voicetab phablets.What is it to be left out of the 6 and 7 inch shelves?Not much.On the other hand, we are a little more surprised when we learn that these immense devices also act as a phone ... We spent a few days in the company of the Slate 7 Voicetab and we would be very difficult to advise you.

Technical sheet :

If you follow a little news from the world of smartphones, it will not have escaped you to read this technical sheet that we are dealing with here with an entry -level product.There is no shortage of clues.Between an ancient version of Android (the indestructible Jelly Bean in 4.2.2), a processor whose founder is not specially known for the performance of his chips, not frankly sexy measurements and the notable integration of two SIM ports, no doubt, it is a Chinese product and above all, aChinese product that does not necessarily feel the quality.Only hope in this tablet with characteristics worthy of 2012: an HD screen which, on paper, can give a little hope.And again, as we will see below, it is not certain that it is a strong point ...

Design: banality I write your name

Let's be frank and direct, the HP Slate 7 Voicetab does not have much of a phone.The device looks like a tablet and it has clearly been designed as such.Its dimensions of 189 × 115.4 × 9.5 mm leave little doubts about this.For comparison, it is practically the same dimensions as the Nexus 7.It is therefore impossible to use it with one hand and difficult to call by sticking the speaker in the ear (even if it is possible).On this subject, one wonders why HP did not include automatically in the box a hands -free kit.You must therefore have one under hand or a bluetooth headset to be able to call comfortably and without being well deserved.

Regarding the design itself of the thing, it is a frightening banality.Here we hold a rectangular tablet, surrounded by shiny plastic imitation metal and decorated with two speakers at the top and bottom.Should it be specified?Everything is in plastic, from the loudspeaker grid to the rear shell.The edges of screens are not particularly thin (and it is an understatement), the tones of black on gray are sad, the screen leaves beautiful fingerprints at each passage, it looks like this device was designedby an engineer just learned his dismissal and who would have just released a screening of Luc Besson's latest film.On the verge of suicide, in a way.

There is little to notice about the slices of the Slate 7 Voicetab.With the exception of the notch allowing to lift the rear shell, the right edge is virgin.The one on the left, logically, welcomes the volume and ignition buttons of the tablet.At the top is the USB port as well as the jack, while a tiny hole acts as a microphone at the bottom.

The rear shell is perhaps what saves this sinking tablet.In itself, it is not particularly special.Its plastic is relatively pleasant to the touch and does not keep the fingerprints.It is especially detachable and can be exchanged with hulls of different colors.HP had presented us green, purple or blue shells that we can buy for around twenty euros.After all, it's better than this very sad silver gray ...

A very average screen

On paper, the screen of the Slate 7 Voicetab is certainly its biggest strong point.This is an HD screen in 1280 × 800 (a 16/10 ratio, therefore) of IPS LCD technology and a resolution of around 216 pp.And this is not the most beautiful display that we could see this year, far from it.

The first blatant defect in this screen comes from the display surface in itself.The glass and the screen are quite far from the other.This has the consequence of displaying very important reflections that literally spoil the field of vision.If we do not deny the usefulness of these reflections to get back, we will question the usefulness of such an accessory during daily use.It is indeed necessary to keep constantly ensuring that the tablet remains well in front of the eyes and does not capture the slightest reflection of light emitted by a lamp, a window or a ray of sunshine.These reflections are all the more annoying since they highlight even more fingerprints already very visible on the surface of the screen ...

Red blackens a lot when looking at the viewing angles

We said it a little higher, we can very clearly see that there is a very visible gap between the window and the tablet touch screen.Not only is it very ugly, but it does not help the angles of visions.The latter are not too bad, but after a certain angle, a large part of the screen darkens.The good point in all of this is that there is no light leakage.It’s always taken.

The colors are poor.Red is drinking and is not too tendency to shoot orange and black is not too clear.However, colors lack warmth and prove to be very pale and dull overall.HP is seems to be well aware of these faults and did not hesitate to frankly push the brightness of this tablet.It's quite rare on entry -level devices, but it was not necessary to put the brightness as much as possible to see something.

Android 4.2.2 in mid-2014, seriously?

There is no surprise in terms of the software aspect, this is a pure stock version of Android in its version 4.2.2.In other words, this is an old version of Android that we hoped were practically no longer meeting on devices released in the middle of 2014.And there is practically no hope for this tablet one day to Kitkat, yet much better suited to entry -level components.

This stock version is really what is most basic for Android, with its advantages and disadvantages.There is therefore no overlay, the settings of the parameters are very simple, just like the applications of contacts or SMS sending.On the other hand HP has filled any of the painful shortcomings of this version.Impossible to have a percentage of battery in the status bar and you have to go through the Google keyboard settings menu to deactivate the noise of the keys when you come from the text.It would not have cost much to repair this kind of annoying detail.

HP, for its part, pre-installed a handful of anecdotal applications on the Slate 7 Voicetab.Among them are box, the Dropbox-like of HP, HP Eprint to print documents from its tablet, WPS Office, a reader and publisher of documents from Microsoft Office for Android and Skype.Nothing very transcendent and it is not possible to uninstall them.

Performance in the low fork

Entry -level tablet, entry -level components.Slate 7 Voicetab does not sell dreams.Between a Marvell PXA1088 processor practically unknown to the battalion, a living GPU GC1000 without real tone and 1 GB of RAM, we are very far from what can be expected from a device sold about 250 euros.Especially when you start comparing it to the Nexus 7, for example.

For an unknown reason, the Antutu score is blackened when you consult the details.

Benchmarks speak for themselves.Less than 12,000 points on Antutu, just over 3,700 on quadrant and a very modest 33.5 FPS on average on Epic Citadel confirm our fears well: the performance of this Slate 7 Voicetab are really bad.By way of comparison, the Archos phablet, the 64 Xenon displayed a score of 16739 on Antutu and approached the 45 FPS on Epic Citadel.We don't even dare to compare with a Nexus 7.

Benchmark's result with Epic Citadel

The worst in all of this is that this weakness of performance is felt during daily use.Going from one page to another on the Launcher makes the tablet row, navigation within applications or menus of the parameters is painful as the whole is slow and simple games like Jetpack Joyride tend to display falls ofFramerate from time to time.Difficult in views of these performances to advise this tablet, whether for leisure use and even less for professional use.In terms of performance, this is surely what we saw worse this year in this range of products.

Communication: a very complete device

Slate 7 Voicetab is also a very large phone equipped with a double SIM card port, one in 2G and the other in 3G only.The two SIM cards are managed directly in the Android settings menu and you can easily activate or deactivate them on the fly, assign them a specific ringtone or change operator.We have not encountered any reception problem with our 3G SIM card, the flows were in accordance with what we used to receive on another phone.

The management menu of the two SIM cards is very complete

Also note that the Slate 7 Voicetab is theoretically the first device sold in bundle by HP with its HP HP Data Pass service.This concretely means that a SIM card should be present in the box and that it will have free for two years of 200 MB (and not 250 as initially planned) of 3G in France, but also in a list of countriesEuropeans.We had detailed the program in this article.So why do we use the conditional?Because we have not seen a single trace of this HP data pass in the box or in the user manual provided with the tablet.HP, however, insisted on this point in these press releases and has not yet answered our questions about it.We simply hope that this HP Data Pass will be present when this tablet will be released in France.

The HP Data Pass should be included with the Slate 7 Tabvoice

It is possible to make and take calls without hands -free kit.But, as I was able to have the painful experience in writing Fandroid, it is enough that this huge tablet begins to ring so that all of the people present in the open space turns to you and laugh with good heartof your pitiful look when you get.In 2014, it is still not socially accepted to call with a 7 -inch phablet under penalty of being ridicule.This is also the hard life to report the extreme.

Nevertheless, once the laughs are tus, the quality of call is better than what one might think at first.The sound is certainly not excellent, but it is completely audible despite its slight tendency to quickly saturate the bass.My interlocutors noticed that the treble is very pronounced when I called with the Slate 7 Voicetab.On the other hand, do not plan to phone more than five minutes with this kind of device, it is a good way to catch tendonitis.

The result of GPS benchmark under GPS data

GPS is also satisfactory.Cold, GPS Data has put a little more than a minute thirty to fix our position the first time and a little less than 10 seconds the second time.It is in the average of the aircraft of this price range, there is nothing to complain about these results.

Photo: the minimum union

The photography aspect of the tablet was not the center of HP attentions.On the back of the device is a 5 -megapixel sensor with a self -ficus without any flash to assist it.And whether indoor or outdoors, the overexposure is systematically of.Slate 7 Voicetab does not like light and the few shots taken below are there to testify.This sensor is just good to take to practical photos, but it will never bring you followers on Instagram.

The top of the image is completely burned

The slightest light source deteriorates the image

Autonomy in the standard

With a 4100 mAh battery, the autonomy of the Slate 7 Voicetab is average.After an hour of reading a video on YouTube with the sound to the maximum, the battery has lost only 18 % of autonomy, which is not bad, but not exceptional.For normal use, we did not have any particular problems concerning the battery when it was a question of going to the Internet, consulting social networks or sending SMS or making calls.On the other hand, the battery drops much more significantly (and the phone tends to heat a lot) when launching games.