The HTC Jetstream, AT&T's first 4G LTE tablet, is overkill. It was designed with something to prove, but that thing doesn't seem to involve anyone buying it. Sure, it's the most powerful Android Honeycomb tablet ever, but its 25-ounce weight and $699-$849 price, combined with difficulty finding apps that spotlight its powerful hardware, make it more a curiosity than a compelling purchase.

Physical Description and Connectivity
HTC left nothing out of this tablet, and that shows when you pick up its hefty 25-ounce body. At 7 by 9.9 by .5 inches (HWD) the tablet isn't stunningly thick, but it's heavy. Everything about the build says quality: the cool brushed-metal back, the detail of the slight lip around the glass screen, and the rich color on the 1280-by-800 screen when you turn it on.  The Power button and headphone jack are on the top, the volume rocker is on the left side, and powerful dual stereo speakers are on the back. Thanks to the weight, though, this tablet isn't effortless to use.

The Jetstream connects to the Internet using AT&T's HSPA+ 14.4 or LTE networks, or Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n. AT&T's LTE network is only in five cities right now, although AT&T promises 15 metro areas covering 70 million people by the end of the year. We got spectacular speeds of 24.64Mbps down in Houston, but AT&T's network is more restricted in Chicago, with average speeds more like 5.5Mbps. That's actually similar to the speeds we got on the AT&T 3G network in New York City: this is a powerful HSPA+ device, and we clocked an impressive 5.2Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up. There's no Wi-Fi hotspot mode, though.

The Jetstream uses a powerful 1.5Ghz dual-core Qualcomm S3 processor running Android Honeycomb 3.1, which is frustratingly about to be replaced by Ice Cream Sandwich, version 4.0. HTC tells us to "stay tuned" for which devices will get ICS upgrades; hopefully the Jetstream is one of them. Honeycomb has been further updated with HTC's own Sense UI, adding support for the Scribe smart stylus included for free with the tablet.

Apps and Performance
Where to start? You can start with our Honeycomb review, of course; it's an excellent tablet OS currently seriously handicapped by the fact that the Android Market is an indistinguishable mush of apps that do and don't run well on tablets. (The only way to know is to download!) AT&T and HTC tried to help with "featured apps," "HTC Likes" and "game world" apps. Of the three, only "HTC Likes" has a decent collection of tablet apps, and frustratingly, they aren't divided into categories. I still don't get why it's so hard to find and browse a good selection of apps for Android tablets.

It's especially frustrating when you find apps that look and work well on the sharp, glossy screen and speedy processor, and lament how you'd like to find more. DC Comics and Kindle books, for instance, read gorgeously on the 1280-by-800 screen. Need for Speed Shift HD plays smoothly. Then I stumbled upon Meganoid, a game suggested by AT&T's Game World app, which looked ugly as sin—yeah, it's supposed to be quasi-80s graphics, but the lack of sharpness on the control buttons reveals that the creators just weren't thinking 1280-by-800 when they programmed it.

To Honeycomb we add support for HTC's unusual Scribe stylus. A silver plastic pen, the Scribe lets you take immediate snapshots of anything you're looking at—a Web page, a document, a comic book—scribble all over them, and save or send the images to your friends. It also works with a notepad app. The Scribe software lets you draw with various colors and virtual implements (a pen, a brush, a crayon) and it's a great idea, but I found the ever-so-slight lag between drawing and your line appearing to be distracting.

The 1.5Ghz processor gave the Jetstream stellar Antutu benchmark scores, and the tablet also scored well on our browsing and graphics benchmarks—although not quite as well as devices like the Acer Iconia Tab A100 ($329, 4 stars) which have slightly lower-resolution screens and no Sense customization layer slowing things down a bit.

Web pages loaded quickly and looked good, and Flash elements loaded swiftly, although I saw some stuttering on Flash-based "Daily Show" videos. Overall performance is not one of the Jetstream's problems, though I was disappointed with some individual apps—the delay in the Scribe's writing, for instance, and how the HTC movie store crashed on me at one point.

Multimedia
Why would anyone need an 8-megapixel rear camera on a tablet? Rear cameras on 10-inch tablets perplex me in general; using one is ergonomically awkward. The Jetstream's 8-megapixel camera has decent but not exceptional sharpness indoors, and takes somewhat oversharpened-looking outdoors photos with dramatic, distinct shadows. The much more useful front camera takes 1-megapixel shots at the unusual resolution of 1280-by-752; they're blurry indoors and somewhat underexposed outdoors.

Naturally, that overkill 8-megapixel camera also records 1080p video, almost as a dare. Outdoor videos came through as 30 frames per second in both 720p and 1080p mode, but the 720p videos looked smoother. Indoors, the tablet recorded video at 24 frames per second in 720p and 1080p. The front camera captures 720p video at 15 frames per second, or VGA video at 30.

The tablet comes with two movie stores from AT&T and HTC; they're both overpriced, with $4-5 daily rentals. Netflix works fine, although it isn't preinstalled. If you want to play your own movies, you'll be thrilled to see that the Jetstream, unlike most Android tablets, includes USB mass storage mode, so you can just drag and drop files. (The device's software also claims to support USB host mode, but there's no physical adapter to plug USB drives into the tablet.) The 32GB of built-in storage offers plenty of room, and there's a slot for a MicroSD card up to 64GB under a removable panel on the back. Keep your files in WMV,  MPEG-4 or H.264 formats, though, as the tablet has no XviD/DivX support.

Outputting your video to a TV requires a special $39, HTC-only HDMI adapter, which combines the MHL technology with HTC's unusually crimped USB port. My standard MHL adapter couldn't fit into HTC's port, so I couldn't test the HDMI out.

Music? Yeah, sure. All the usual formats play, and music sounds unusually loud and clear through the Jetstream's huge stereo speakers. You could practically throw a party with this thing. The only thing it's missing is a kickstand, as lying the Jetstream flat on a table slightly mutes the sound. I couldn't find a kickstand case on the market for this tablet. 

Conclusions
HTC has made some expensive, impractical flagship products before: the HTC Advantage was a "phablet" (phone/tablet) before its time, and the HTC Shift took a stab at merging tablets, laptops and phones. The Jetstream, similarly, screams "we can do this!" We can make an AT&T LTE device. We can build a tablet with truly powerful speakers. We can make a device that feels like no corners were cut. 

But at this price—$849 without a contract, or $699 with a two-year AT&T service plan of at least $35/month (so, $1539 over two years)—it needs to match the utility of a top-of-the-line iPad or Windows 7 ultrabook, and the Jetstream doesn't. AT&T's LTE network is pretty small right now, the Scribe pen feels like a gimmick, and more importantly, the confused and frustrating Honeycomb app experience doesn't compare to either iOS or Windows yet. I'm giving this otherwise four-star product a three-star rating, a full point down, because of its impractical price.

If you want a 10-inch Honeycomb tablet, we suggest buying a 32GB Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 ($499, 3.5 stars); there's also a Verizon 4G LTE version of the tablet for $529.99 with contract, or $699 without. For even less, $449.99 at many stores right now, you can get a 32GB Asus eee Pad Transformer (3.5 stars), another pretty good Honeycomb tablet.

If you're not married to the Android idea, Apple's iPad 2 (4.5 stars) is still our favorite 10-inch tablet. The 32GB model costs $599 as a Wi-Fi-only device and $729 with no-contract AT&T or Verizon 3G. Although the iPad 2 doesn't have quite the specs of the Jetstream, it more than makes up for it with a vastly, immeasurably superior range of tablet optimized apps.

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