HP goes big with 12 inch tablet, skinny with 1.57cm laptop

By David Flynn, February 5 2015

TRAVEL TECH | How's this for irony? While notebooks keep getting thinner, a new crop of tablets are upsizing to notebook-sized screens.

Ahead of Apple's rumoured release of a 12 inch iPad Plus (or iPad Pro – we're putting a dollar each way on the name), HP has pushed out a 12.3 inch Android tablet.

The HP Pro Slate 12 ($899) is touted as a 'commercial-grade' tablet and despite its massive footprint, at 850 grams it's not going to induce much wrist-ache provided you hold it in both hands.

The Pro Slate 12 is accompanied by a more conventionally-sized sibling in the 8 inch Pro Slate 8 ($649), with both slates powered by a Quad-Core Snapdragon 800 series processor and bundled with a digital Duet Pen.

Also served up in this week's HP launch of its 'business class' range for 2015 is the EliteBook Folio 1020, an ultra-thin (15.7mm) and ultra-light (1.2kg) 12.5 inch Windows 8 notebook.

The Folio 1020's slim curved lines and sleek silver chassis could well be the end of MacBook Air-envy for corporates where HP is the brand of choice for reasons such as robust build, platform security and manageability.

There's also an up-market EliteBook 1020 Special Edition with a shell cast from magnesium-lithium alloy and carbon fibre to nudge the scales at just 1kg.

The EliteBook 1020 has a starting price of $2,299; the SE version is due to land in April, price to be confirmed.

Another headliner from the HP 2015 range is the HP Elite x2 1011 G1. Available later this month from $1,800 it's a lightweight, stylish, 11.6-inch Windows 8 Pro 'two-in-one' which transforms from a tablet to a laptop.

There are also two $499 Intel Atom-based pads with optional keyboard: the HP Pro Tablet 10 EE for Windows and the HP Pro Slate 10 EE Android tablet (note HP's OS-identifying lingo to help you make sense of the family: Tablet = Windows, Slate = Android).