HP – 11″ Tablet – Intel Pentium – 4GB Memory – 128GB SSD – Natural Silver

TLDR:
(that’s Too Long, Didn’t Read)
All of the capability of Windows 11 in a device nearly identical in size to an iPad Pro 11. Works well for everything that you might want a tablet for, but feels underpowered for anything more. Windows still isn’t a great experience for finger use but is getting better.
Pros:
* Bright, clear, high-resolution screen.
* Designed for use in both Portrait and Landscape orientations.
* Motorized rotating camera works for both back- and front-facing use.
* Fingerprint reader works well.
* Optional stylus docks magnetically to edge (top or side depending on device orientation).
* Optional keyboard docks magnetically to edge (top or side depending on device orientation).
Cons:
* Windows 11 still has rough edges for finger-only use.
* Device is slow for anything more than basic use.
* Camera image quality is not great and is also not suitable for Windows Hello facial recognition.
* Fingerprint reader’s position requires both left- and right-hand use depending on device’s orientation.
* SIM tray is present but no cellular radio built-in.
Details – Setup:
Setting up the hardware was about as simple as can be. The provided USB-C power adapter is reasonably small with a long flexible cable which cannot be disconnected from the adapter portion. The power prongs fold in so the adapter is travel-friendly. The connection on the tablet is on the left (landscape) or top (portrait) edge. The left edge works well while in landscape but is a tad awkward having the cable come out of the top of the tablet when in Portrait orientation. The provided back cover doubles as a stand and attaches magnetically to the tablet. It bends in the middle and works really well to prop the tablet up in both orientations and can even be folded mostly back on itself to create an easel for the tablet. The cover is a tad heavy so it contributes to more heft but is attractive and useful. This model didn’t come with the detachable keyboard but there are pogo pin connections on the bottom of the tablet when in either orientation.
The rest of the setup is standard Windows 11 which is fun and easy. The on-screen keyboard was usable for basic entry of passwords and email addresses but I wouldn’t want to type a long emails on it.
Details – Typical Usage:
This is where the value proposition comes in… This device is nearly identical in size to traditional tablets such as the iPad Pro 11”, so that is likely what you’d compare it to. For basic media consumption, web browsing and the like, this device works well enough while giving you the flexibility of Windows 11 to do more. It is priced far less than an iPad Pro 11, too. If you’re shopping for a portable Windows 11 device to do productivity tasks like editing large spreadsheets, working in Adobe Photoshop or switching between a lot of apps while working on a project, this tablet will work, but you’ll probably be disappointed in its speed. Traditional tablets now have “mobile” versions of most productivity apps that work well with fingers and mobile environments, too.
Windows 11 still isn’t completely comfortable to use with a finger as your primary navigation device. A stylus or mouse is really needed to do anything other than basic stuff, and this device comes with neither but works well with both. Due to the basic processor and small amount of RAM, when stressed with a lot of “heavy” apps, this tablet grinds to a halt. Sure, Netflix and web browsing work well, but if that’s all you need, a basic iPad (Air or non-Pro) or Android tablet will be a lot cheaper and work just as well.
Presuming full Windows 11 compatibility is what you want and the processing power isn’t a turn-off, this tablet has some really nice design features. The thin rectangular power button has a fingerprint reader built in on its surface. I doubt it’s as a secure as a fingerprint sensor on a larger square button, but it’s probably enough security while providing convenience. My one complaint, though, is that you’ll most likely want to enroll a finger from each hand because it’s awkward to reach your right hand to the power button when the device is in Landscape orientation, or reach your left hand across to the power button when the device is in Portrait orientation.
The camera is rather unique in that there is a single camera module that is on a motorized arm. Normally, the camera is back-facing but a tap on the dedicated button on the left edge of the tablet rotates it to be front-facing for selfies or video calls. You can even rotate it to be angled more toward the center of the screen for video calls or to view something placed on the table in front of the tablet when in Portrait mode. HP provides a nice Camera Utility that lets you assign camera rotation positions based on the app running; so you can have the camera automatically rotate for video call apps like Zoom or Teams. You just need to be careful to not block the camera’s rotation if set to automatic. The back cover/stand even has a cutout for the camera. Even though the camera is rated at 13MP, the video quality was merely adequate; especially in lower light situations like one might find on video calls.
If you choose to buy a stylus, there’s a magnetic docking area on the top (Landscape)/ right (Portrait) edge. My Microsoft Slim 2 stylus docked there quite nicely. It doesn’t charge the stylus when docked like the iPad Pro, though. My model doesn’t have the optional keyboard, but there appears to be spots to attach it when in either orientation. This optional keyboard would also really help for more hardcore use as it has a trackpad to supplement finger navigation.
Battery life is OK but not awesome .. as would be expected from a full Windows 11 device. It’s not as good as a traditional tablet, but is good enough for most needs.
Speaker volume is OK, too… not awesome but not bad. Again, I think that a traditional tablet (iPad or Android) would be better for media consumption for the speakers, too.
A note about Windows 11 on this tablet… this tablet has Windows 11 in “S” mode whereby you are restricted to installing apps from the Windows App Store “for security and efficiency” reasons. You can remove that restriction and have full Windows 11 “Home” mode, but doing so is irreversible. I tried to install the free Microsoft utility that automatically rotates Bing “image of the day” as my desktop wallpaper, but that was not authorized in “S” mode. Just something to be aware of.
Conclusion:
This tablet is a direct competitor to the Microsoft Surface line of tablets and likely will be cross-shopped with traditional tablets like an iPad or Android tablet. For basic media consumption, web browsing, email and light productivity tasks, it works well but a traditional tablet will be cheaper and faster. For moderate productivity tasks where having full Windows 11 might be advantageous, it works well but Windows still isn’t as comfortable to use with a finger as the traditional tablets. A more powerful tablet like an iPad Pro might be a better choice. For laptop-replacement tasks, this tablet will work but will really will let you down.

I have 2 PCs, 2 laptops and 2 smartphones, but this is my first tablet. I thought it would be a nice addition for those times when the laptop was too big and the phone too small. This was also my first experience with Windows 11, so to evaluate the tablet, I first had to learn Windows 11.
I have Chrome as the default browser on all my other devices. The passwords, favorites, etc. are synced which makes it very easy to switch between devices. When I tried to download Chrome on the HP laptop I got a message that I would have to switch out of S mode to do so. I didn’t know what “S mode” was but soon found out.
S mode is promoted as an enhanced security and performance feature of Windows 11. It uses Windows Defender antivirus, will only allow downloads from the Microsoft Store and requires that Edge be used as the browser. I tried installing Chrome anyway, but got a message that if I did, the apps and other features may not work. Once switched out of S mode, there is no going back. Until I decide if I want to do that, I’m having to look up and re-enter all my passwords and favorites.
There are several annoying things about Edge, some of which I was able to change. The two things I should’ve been able to change but couldn’t were the Quick Links and the Favorites. Both were synced in from some device I had years ago and were wrong. Touching a Quick Link did nothing. Pressing the 3 dots on the Quick Link would not open up the option to remove the link. Favorites can be arranged alphabetically or deleted, but I haven’t been able to reorganize them by dragging and dropping. These could be Edge issues and not specific to the tablet.
The tablet default type size is very small, but it can be adjusted in the settings. The keyboard default size is very large, but it can also be adjusted. I started out using my finger to touch, but soon switched to a stylus pen. The screen either wouldn’t recognize my touch or my finger was too big and I’d touch something I didn’t mean to. Using a pen worked much better, but sometimes required a firm poke. There were several times when a Widget would come up that I couldn’t get rid of by touching, poking or swiping. Sometimes a really firm swipe would work.
Taking pictures is a challenge. It’s almost impossible to hold the tablet to take a picture without touching an app or a widget – no matter how I rotated it. In landscape orientation the camera is right where I need to put my fingers to hold the tablet. In portrait mode the tablet is top heavy and hard to hold steady. Often I would touch something, causing the screen to go black just as I was about to take the picture and I would have to open the app again and start over. Focusing takes a few seconds. Pictures were sharp indoors and out but had an artificial look to them. The camera can be rotated into the selfie mode by pressing a button on the side of the tablet. The camera can also be rotated using the HP Glam Cam Widget. There is a slider bar in the Widget that pops out the camera by degrees until it is fully rotated.
I watched movies from several different sources. I watched them simultaneously on my HP PC with a 4K monitor as a comparison. The sound was similar on both. Colors were bright and semi-stationary objects were sharp on the tablet. However, fast moving objects were distorted and there was frequent buffering on the tablet but not on the PC.
Downloads seemed slow and multi-tasking seemed to be an issue. When downloading an app and going into settings at the same time, the download aborted. The battery life is average. A day of watching movies and videos drained the battery twice. When just taking pictures, customizing, browsing, etc. I was able to get through 2 days without recharging. Battery life can be extended by shutting down when not in use. As on a phone, a push of the on/off button only turns off the display – not the device. Shut down is accomplished by holding the button in or finding the power button in one of several places in the software.
On the positive side, it connected within seconds to my wireless network and has maintained the connection. It rotates smoothly and quickly from portrait to landscape – most of the time. It comes with a magnetic kickstand with fabric on one side. When not in use, the kickstand can be attached flat to the back of the tablet and the fabric helps with the slipperiness. The glass is Gorilla glass – which should be durable. It has an 11 inch screen, 4GB of memory and a 128GB SSD. It weighs close to 2 pounds with the kickstand attached and can be heavy to hold for long periods of time.
I’m not sure what I’ll use it for. Definitely not for taking pictures or watching movies as I have better options. I can use it to check my email, messages and on-line sales alerts while at home – but I can do that just as easily on my phone. Multi-tasking and business functions are quicker on my PC. Walking around with the tablet is easier than walking with a laptop and it’s easier to type something lengthy on the tablet keyboard vs. a phone. And it’s sometimes easier to browse a website than the corresponding app. It does have a SIM card tray. I can see it being most useful in a situation where mobility is needed and a phone is too small. Or when traveling – with an active SIM card or available Wi-Fi.

I’ve been using tablets for years. And I have to compare this new HP 11″ Tablet to other contemporary tablets with a similar price point. Like the Microsoft Surface Go, Apple iPad, and Samsung 7/8 Tablets. I have all 4. This HP Tablet has better screen resolution than the Surface Go and is very close to the same as a iPad and Samsungs. This Tablet ships with Windows 11 S. The S version means that you can only install applications from the Microsoft store, it also means that some OS functions will not be available (Microsoft claims S stans for Safety). For example I use Google Drive and Chrome on most of my computers/tablets. I can’t run either of these without defeating the “S” mode (which is easy to do). But for review purposes I avoided doing this. Microsoft Surface Go also ships in “S” mode. But the Surface Go ships with a minimum of 8GB memory, and HP ships this tablet with 4GB. All 4 tablets are a similar in physical size. This weighs the most at: 21.1oz (without folding back); the Go weighs: 19.2 oz, the Samsung weighs: 17.6oz and the iPad weighs: 17.1oz. Using the HP I got between 7-8hrs of real use on the battery, which is not bad for a Windows Tablet, but far the +10hrs I get on my iPad and Samsung Tablets.
Getting everything setup with Windows “S” took much longer than usual as I could not use Chrome to bring in various setting and MS brought over a bunch of broken icons (apps that could not be installed) when I signed in with my MS account. Which seems to be a requirement with Win 11 “S”, you must have a Microsoft account (be connected to the internet) to do the initial set up. My initial reaction was that this tablet had a really nice screen, the colors were excellent, viewing angles excellent. It works very nicely as a tablet, nice typical size, without the magnetic stand the weight is reasonable, the magnetic folding back adds an additional 6oz, and it then feels much more like a Microsoft Surface tablet, but the back is removable, and it a can be easily used in either landscape or portrait mode. It also has a fingerprint reader, that works very well.(implemented like a Apple Air tablet). I used the base version, which does not come with a keyboard, with my own backlit BT keyboard and a BT mouse, both worked well, and I’m accustomed to using both with all of my tablets.
So my initial experience was pretty positive, next I brought up edge and gmail in the browser; not exactly snappy; 20sec to load vs 4sec on my iPad vs 6sec on my windows notebook. As I loaded messages, the time that it took to display images was lagging, compare to my iPad and notebook with the same WiFi connection (5G AX). As I opened additional tabs, things got slower, a sign I believe, is caused by the limited 4GB memory. The HP 11 Table has only 2 ports a USB C charging port that can also be used as a Display Port to connect a second monitor (USB-C), this worked very nicely when duplicating the display, but when extending the desktop, it got even more sluggish. It worked, I had 2 full HD displays, but there was some jerky behavior, I don’t think 4GB is sufficient for Windows with dual monitors. It also has a Micro SD card slot (that requires a tool or a pin to to access), I tried a 256Mb, 400Mb, 512Mb and 1Tb Micro SD cards, all worked without issues, they worked best (the fastest) when formatted with NTFS. I’m happy to see this, as it’s my biggest complaint with Apple, lack of extendibility.
Next I tried a Microsoft teams session, one of the best selling points of the HP 11 is that it features a 13MP camera, much better than all of it’s competitors (only a iPad Pro [twice the price] comes close with a 12MP camera). But the HP camera not only looks at you, it can be pointed down to view documents or drawings. Pretty cool. With sufficient lighting it’s most excellent, but does not work as well under low light conditions. But the resolution is excellent. I tried to being up a drawing program while running teams, it took over a minute to load with live video on the screen and my browser opened. Again I attribute this to too little memory. I rebooted, and just accessed Facebook, this worked pretty well, doing the simple stuff. But I then tried to run a game that does not run at all on my Samsung, well after 3 attempts I did get it loaded, once I switched to full screen it actually ran very well, a few screen repaint glitches (that I attribute to the app). going back to a windowed display with facebook active it struggled to keep up as I used Facebook at the same time.
The long and short is HP almost made a decent Windows tablet. At the time this was released it was only available with 4MB memory. If it had 8MP it might be acceptable, but with only 4MB I’d have a tough time using it as I normally would. The flexibility of the camera is very nice, but using it with other apps at the same time is painfully slow. I wish it had 2 USB C ports so I could charge it and drive a separate USB-C display at the same time. I guess a powered USB-C hub might allow this but I did not have one on hand to try. My experience with Windows and 128GB of memory has been that system updates can quickly consume available disk space. Requiring you to run Disk Cleanup and select “Clean up system file” frequently to free disk space. I’d much prefer 256GB of SSD as the base (unless Windows 11 improves this – too early to tell).

A well built tablet with a superb screen that runs Windows 11 but, don’t expect high performance. This basic tablet is generally fine if your needs are web browsing, watching videos, viewing photos, word processing, playing simple games or other light duty jobs. However, it has some limitations.
I’ll be covering the usual things like setting it up and such but not quoting specs as the product description covers that. I took mine out of Windows S mode so I could calibrate the display and run Crystal Disk Mark on it to check the SSD speed. Including photos of all my results. I also compared it to my 9th Generation iPad in certain areas.
Setup is typical Windows but a little simpler. Once you have connected to the internet it will update itself. The tablet is in Windows S (Safe) Mode which limits you to the “safe” apps from the Microsoft Store. Anything not there that you might want to run such as Chrome, then you will need to switch out of Windows S Mode to Windows Home. Once you do this you can’t go back to S Mode.
Pros:
Build quality, stylish looks, superb 2.1K IPS screen, motorized camera, 128 GB storage, micro SD slot, WiFI 6, magnetic 2 position stand, auto dimming & auto color tone display, speaker placement, USB-C, robust charger included.
Average:
Sound quality, battery, performance for basic tasks.
Cons:
CPU can be sluggish for certain tasks and web pages, only 4GB of RAM, “stunningly” poor image quality from the coolest camera on any tablet, and fingerprint reader is inconsistent.
Where the HP tablet shines is its build and screen. The HP tablet feels as good as my iPad. It’s the same size but slightly thicker and heavier. The stand’s build feels good too. The display is its best attribute. It’s on par with my iPad with color, contrast & resolution. PPI is a bit denser on the iPad since the screen is smaller, 10.2” vs 11”. HP claims 100% sRGB. My datacolor Spyder X Pro calibrated it to 98% sRGB. See photos. After calibration I think it slightly edges out the iPad’s color. You can set the display to automatically vary brightness & color temperature to suit the ambient lighting conditions. It looks like the HP has a laminated screen too. That means no gap between the glass and the LCD panel. Corning® Gorilla® Glass 5™ and a smaller bezel than the basic iPad.
The motorized 13 MP camera is a cool innovation. Sadly, the iPad’s basic rear 8MP camera blew it away in every respect. See photos. Can firmware or drivers fix it or just a cheap camera module? Bringing up the camera app brings up HP GlamCam Widget which controls the camera’s tilt and zoom among other things. But it can get in the way. The camera app offers quite a bit of manual control. When you touch the shutter button it does take the photo that instant, I tested to see, but the feedback “Click” it makes, comes over 2 seconds later. This is unacceptable in 2022! If the camera’s images were as good as the iPad’s it would be very impressive.
Sound quality is ok. Not much in the bass department compared to the iPad but clean highs. I do like the speaker placement around the display. Especially when watching videos full screen in landscape position. Beats iPad here.
Fingerprint reader worked about 20% of the time for me. Even after rereading fingers 3 times in case I didn’t do it correctly the first 2 times.
WiFi works perfectly with my Asus gaming router. Bluetooth worked with anything I tried with it. Earbuds, sound bars, headphones and Logitech BT keyboard. Speaking of keyboards, HP makes one that mates up with this tablet. You can buy them bundled too. As for the Windows Ink – stylus, I looked everywhere to see exactly which stylus worked on this tablet. No luck. I did find out that not all HP styluses work on all HP stylus enabled devices. So I didn’t buy one to compare it to the Apple Pencil and Samsung S-Pen.
Battery life is quoted by HP: “Battery life mixed usage: Up to 6 hours and 45 minutes. Video Playback Battery life: Up to 9 hours and 30 minutes”. I would tend to agree with the mixed usage figures.
Including a micro SD slot is never a bad thing.
Performance is mediocre at best. 4GB of RAM is barely enough. It’s sluggish to rotate the screen when you rotate the tablet. Everything is a bit slow on it. Even my old Samsung Galaxy Note 10.2, 2014 edition tablet is as fast and takes better photos. Even has a flash. As for the 9th gen iPad, it’s snappy, has much better battery life and is $170 cheaper. However, it only has 64GB of storage and No micro SD slot.
I wanted to install Adobe Photoshop Elements 2022 on it but 4GB of RAM isn’t enough and it probably would perform poorly.
If you’re pretty familiar with using Windows, then using this tablet will be pretty much the same except for getting used to how Windows works with a touch screen. There are a few things that annoy me such as the size of the areas where you touch are very small and sometimes I have to touch them several times for it to acknowledge it. I did go through the personalization settings and display settings among others, to try to make those elements larger but, with little success. Trying to touch those tiny little boxes to select multiple files with a finger is about useless. Maybe there’s a setting I haven’t found yet. Anyways, that’s a Windows issue and not an HP issue. I think Android and iOS have the edge with touch screen interfaces.
Concerning the photos I posted. You can only post 6, so I do composites when I need to post more. You can right click to open them in a new tab or window and view them full size.
My conclusion is that this HP tablet should sell for no more than $350 considering what it does or doesn’t do / lacks depending on how you look at it. I hate that I can’t recommend it considering how well it’s made and how good the screen looks. If they had put in a stronger CPU, 8GB of RAM and a better camera module in that very cool motorized mount, I would highly recommend it at $500.