HP this week unexpectedly crashed the Android tablet party with its HP Slate: a $169+, 7-inch Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) device with an ARM dual core Cortex-A9 1.6 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and the first tablet to offer embedded Beats Audio.

The HP Slate has a quality look and feel, at least for its small size and price. The front of the tablet has the usual stainless-steel, black-painted frame, while the back is plastic in your choice of gray or red. The Slate includes a micro USB port, plus a microSD slot to supplement the paltry 8GB of storage.  As a comparison, Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD with 16 GB of internal storage costs $199 without a microSD expansion slot.

The Slate’s 7-inch display delivers relatively wide viewing angles that make for good viewing even in outdoor light, however at 1024 x 600 pixels (170 ppi), it isn’t quite as crisp as the Google Nexus 7’s 1280 x 800 pixels (216 ppi) display. The tablet has a 3-megapixel camera on the back and a lower-quality VGA camera on the front.

The Slate weighs in at 13 ounces (369 grams), which is just a bit heavier than Google’s Nexus 7 and the iPad Mini, which each weigh about 12 ounces (340 grams).  Compared to other small Android tablets or the iPad Mini, battery life isn’t so great: Phone Arena reports the Slate as lasting only 5 hours on a continuous video playback test.  For a complete comparison of Slate specs vs the $199 Android Nexus 7, see this chart on PhoneArena.

Like all Android devices, the HP Slate delivers quick access to Google services like Google Now, Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Google+ Hangouts for video chat, and Google Play for access to apps and media.  It looks as though HP is having a renewed love affair with Google lately, because the company also recently introduced a 14-inch Chromebook laptop running Google’s web-based Chrome OS.

HP has also bundled its ePrint application with the Slate tablet, which lets you print from anywhere to many wireless printers, and you can even print directly from most applications.

HP expects to release the Slate this April, first in the U.S. for $169 for the 8 GB model. Pricing for other models has not been released.

For more hands-on photos of the Slate at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, check out Engadget and Pocket-Lint.