HP Pro Tablet 608 G1 Discussion Thread

Has anyone tried to play some games yet? Curious how Civ 5, Starcraft 2 and whatnot would run.

 

Random observations after the upgrade to Windows 10. This is my first hands-on encounter with the new OS. Only pics and videos before today.

Mail app is so much better in Win10. There was no way to view emails under Outlook.com aliases when in portrait view with the 8.1 Mail app. Heck, you can't even view the Archive, Trash, etc.

Win10 lets me use the split popup keyboard while in portrait view. It was greyed out as an option in Win8.1. Yay!

Edge needs work, but it's a lot better than Edge in WM10 on my Lumia 920! Still, I'm writing this in IE. It has the ad blocking that Edge sorely needs.

Tablet mode disabled until they improve things.

Wow, Win10 allows 175% scaling, a nice compromise that gives an effective 1170x878 for applications that scale properly (not as many as one could wish). I'll use it for a while to see if it suits me.

BTW, everything went shockingly smooth and is working properly after a simple upgrade using a USB flash ISO, Win8.1 Pro 64—>Win10 Pro 64. Before upgrade I used the HP SoftPaq Software Downloader to get every update, including BIOS 1.05, from HP and totally exhausted all Windows Updates, optionals too—everything except Silverlight and Skype desktop. Knock on wood, it looks good so far.

At some point I'll probably nuke the installation, wipe the eMMC clean, and install Win10 again. That's why I made the flash drive ISO instead of upgrading directly. Saves another big download over Verizon LTE.

 

Don't trust HP's SoftPaq downloader once upgraded to W10. It showed no updates, but when I experienced the digitizer failure after prolonged standby I looked and found several under Windows 10 on HP's website. The Intel stuff looked the same as what I installed under W8.1, but I (re-)installed it all anyway. Then there was one from HP specifically for W10.

My 608 sat for 2-3 hours on standby this morning and woke with touch working as normal. I'll tentatively call the issue fixed.

No other issues so far other that the battery draining too quickly, a common W10 complaint. I just now let it drain till it turned itself off then put it on the "Quick Charge" pogo pin charger to see if I can calibrate the battery a bit better--it was claiming stuff like 85% charge and 3 minutes left. Ha! BTW, you can probably ignore the Quick Charge accessory unless, like me, it makes sense when hooking up a USB hub and charging at the same time. It's 18W and the USB-C charger is 15W, so not much in the way of "quick" by comparison.

Loving the fact that whether via Quick Charge accessory or USB-C, the 608 actually does recharge while I'm using it. The discharge isn't simply slowed as with some tablets which charge via USB.

200% scaling, the default, is actually not bad. I've been using that the past day. For some reason there's still plenty of room in portrait view for sidebars in Word even though it's just an effective 1024x768 at 200% scaling. IE, however, often needs to be scrolled side-to-side in order to see all of a web page. I miss "Modern" IE, which did wonderfully at 200% on my Fujitsu Q584.

 

Charging went from forced shutdown (showing 5%) to 53% in 1:15 hrs while turned off. So, roughly 2.5 hours to fully charge *if* the % readings are close to accurate.

Maybe this falls under the "when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade" category, but I've found a nifty way to take advantage of the somewhat high initial activation force of the 608's pen. I can lightly slide the tip around on the screen for easy, accurate positioning before pressing down to make it do a selection or ink. I like it! ;-)

 

Thanks for your posts dellaster, good to get other ideas and feedback about the device. I thought I'd share another tip I just applied to my 608 Pro, I used the compactOS feature of Windows 10 to clean up 3 GB of data on the drive. (see: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9676/windows-10-feature-focus-compactos)

I have the 64GB model, so every GB helps. Haven't seen any noticiable difference in performance, (It might even be quicker since the eMMC is pretty slow and now has less data to read.)

 

C:\WINDOWS\system32>Compact.exe /CompactOS:query
The system is in the Compact state. It will remain in this state unless an administrator changes it.
​

Thanks for the tip, cbutters. As you can see, mine was already in the Compact state, right from the factory.

Even with a 128 GB eMMC space can get tight—heck, I was starting to run out on my SP2 with a 256 GB back when I had it. You use up (or nearly) whatever storage you have, regardless of amount. I do, anyway. I've been fine, though squeezed, on my 64 GB Q584 for 1.5 years and I felt like getting more elbow room this time around. I'll surely be just as "squeezed " in a month or two.

 

oh nice, good to see that HP is maximizing space with their install scripts. I had clean installed windows 10 so mine needed that command to compress the OS files. it went from 19GB used to 16GB used. I would have ponied up the extra $$ for the 128GB for sure if this was my main mobile device, but I couldn't justify it for this as a secondary note-taking device. Especially since I didn't get close to filling up the 64gb on my vivotab note anyways.

 

After nuking my W10 installation and clean installing this morning I noticed that BIOS 1.06 has appeared on HP's driver download page for the 608. Hopefully it'll improve the already good W10 experience for this device.



Not a smooth process for me today. I kept losing my keyboard and mouse during the install. You'd think that since it's a Microsoft RF dongle peripheral that they'd make sure it worked properly at these times. I eventually got it done by constantly moving the mouse around so it wouldn't sleep and go bye-bye, Not fun, but at least that's over with!

 

So the spec's on this Tablet look amazing but I have yet to see a real review of it so I have got a couple of questions for people that actually own it.



I'm coming from an Acer W4 8 inch tablet, 2GB ram and 64GB HD that gets about 9 hrs battery life in real use. A primary use of the tablet will be a portable audio player which the Acer W4 does well, I'd just like a better screen and more RAM and drive space. 8 inch Windows Tablet are perfect for my needs so I'm not thinking about getting a bigger tablet.



1. What is the actual real battery life of it in normal use?

2. Can the Audio be set to output 24Bit 96K in windows control panel? The older Baytrail chip maxed out at 16BIT 48K?

3. How is the audio quality of the headphone jack?

4. How is the Dock and Keyboard folio?

5. Does the pen work well?

6. any deal breakers or bad design decisions?



Besdies the Dell Cherry trail 8 inch is anyone awhere of any other 8 inch Tablet's coming out with the spec's of this one? The new HP envy is a no go with 2GB ram and only 32GB space.

 

Last question first: Dell is going to release a Cherry Trail refresh of the Venue 8 Pro with a 1920x1200 version. No official announcement or specs, yet. Looks like it'll have a Wacom AES pen, which is great news.

1. "Real" battery life: too soon for me to say. On the powercfg /batteryreport I'm seeing 6.5 to 7.5 hours as I do my application installations & configurations, browse the MS announcement comments with Chrome, and listen to an audiobook or watch a video now and then. I figure it'll settle in at around eight hours for my normal usage. YMMV
2. I have no idea how to set audio bit rate, etc.
3. I'm no audiophile but everything sounds good when using my Sennheiser HD555 headphones. Unlike my Q584, which was useless with its scratchy noise from the audio jack.
4. I have neither dock nor keyboard folio, so can't comment.
5. The pen does not work "well". Only Wacom pens work well. The Surface pens are getting there, apparently. The 608's pen works adequately for casual use, I'd say, once you get used to it.
6. No deal breakers for me or it would already be dstraussed, on a truck back to the retailer. Any bad design decisions? You'll get different answers on that, depending on the needs and wants of the responding individual. They certainly could have done better with the dual front-facing speakers. They're underwhelming. Maybe a driver update could improve them, if HP cares enough to do that.