HP TouchPad Go reviewed: it's a 7-inch TouchPad and that's about it
It's a fairly well-known fact that HP actually produced two TouchPad tablets before killing all its webOS hardware: the 9.7-inch iPad-alike that bombed at retail, and the unreleased 7-inch TouchPad Go that we recently saw fetch $700 on eBay.
Context & Ripple Effects
HP's tablet year ran from the February 2011 TouchPad announcement through the August fire-sale fallout and the decision to kill all webOS hardware — but not before two devices were built, including the 7-inch TouchPad Go that PreCentral detailed in a September exclusive. This week a working unit surfaced on eBay at $700, and The Verge has now put hands on it.
The verdict matters because it closes the loop on what HP shelved: reviewers find the Go is essentially a shrunken TouchPad with little else new, which retroactively supports the cancellation rather than revealing a lost competitor. HP had already signaled its pivot with the Windows-based Slate 2 in November.
First-order effects
- Collectors and webOS enthusiasts now have confirmation of what the $700 eBay unit actually is — a smaller TouchPad, not a hidden gem — which caps how much scarcity-driven prices can climb.
- HP faces no direct consequence: the device was never slated for retail, so the review only audits a cancelled product line.
Second-order effects
- The finding strengthens the case for HP's Windows-tablet route via the Slate 2, since the Go offered no differentiated answer to the 7-inch iPad-class segment it would have entered.
- A $700 secondary-market price for dead-platform hardware signals that remaining webOS units — released or not — trade as artifacts, sustaining an enthusiast aftermarket HP no longer services.
Third-order effects
- If unreleased prototypes keep fetching four-figure sums, cancelled-device hardware becomes a collectibles category in its own right, decoupled from any functional software ecosystem.
- For vendors weighing an in-house OS against licensing, the Go functions as evidence that shrinking a failed flagship rarely rescues a platform — the failure was architectural, as HP's own test showing webOS running over twice as fast on an iPad suggested.
The trend: Dead mobile platforms are entering a post-mortem phase where unreleased hardware trades as collectible artifacts while their makers pivot to licensed operating systems.