Just as the Zeen's physical design doesn't seem optimized for use as a tablet, the same can be said of its interface. In my hands-on tests, the capacitive touchscreen was often sluggish and unresponsive, attributes that might be due to the components inside (a Freescale i.MX51 processor running at 800MHz, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage), or perhaps due to a lesser-quality capacitive touchscreen.

If HP hadn't skimped and had instead delivered a competitive display and good components inside and out, the HP Zeen tablet might have had a niche, even with its kludgy design. And you'd be able to say that you're buying the $400 C510 printer and getting a serviceable Android tablet thrown in. As it stands, though, the HP Zeen is only a step up--a small step up--from some of the generic Android tablets we've seen, sold direct from Chinese factories. If you're buying the Photosmart eStation C510, you should be buying it strictly as a printer, and nothing more.