HP TouchPad review

Other built-in apps work well – the web browser loads graphics-heavy pages quickly and has Flash support, so we had no problems playing video on several different websites. BBC iPlayer worked flawlessly in full screen mode, but 4 On Demand showed some jerkiness in a window and graphics corruption full-screen. It’s not quite perfect, but the ‘all the web’ Flash support makes the iPad 2’s iOS seem stilted and primitive.

The app tray at the bottom gives quick access to the most common functions

You can navigate around the operating system using the app trays, which contain shortcuts to your apps, or use Just Type. This is a universal search box, a bit like Windows Vista or 7’s Start menu or Apple’s Spotlight, which brings up matching content on the Touchpad, from contacts to emails to events. You can also search straight from the Just Type box – type in some keywords and click on Google, Wikipedia, Twitter or the HP App Catalog. It’s a fast way of navigating the OS without having to hunt through app trays.

The built-in Contacts and Email apps work well, and we had no problems pulling in contacts from Facebook and Gmail, or setting up our personal Gmail and corporate Exchange email accounts. The Calendar app marks different calendars in a range of pleasing colours and makes it easy to turn each calendar on and off, but it’s jerky to navigate around. Also, when you change between days the display defaults to one o’clock in the morning, and takes half a second to scroll down to the middle of the day – annoying when you’re flicking between days and want to see at a glance what you have coming up.

Email is handled brilliantly, with a powerful yet flexible system that lets you work on multiple messages with ease

The email app is well designed – it shows your various accounts in a pane on the left, with mails in the middle and a preview on the right. You can also minimise the Accounts pane to free up some space. We had no problems viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments, which open in the Quickoffice app. This can also be used to view documents stored online with Google Docs. You can print directly to HP printers on your local network as long as, according to HP, they’re up to around five years old and support PCL. Unfortunately, you can’t upgrade Quickoffice to edit documents, and there isn’t, as yet, anything in the HP App catalogue that will.