“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. No one seems to take this old adage to heart more than HP, at least when it comes to tablets and smartphones.

The HP TouchPad might have been brilliant for its time, but the tablet never really lived to its full potential. HP has also had limited success with Windows tablets, and even the HP Slate 7 is receiving modest levels of interest. So what’s next? Take the “bigger is better” attitude and apply it to the tablet, apparently.

A new AnTuTu benchmark score has shown up for the HP Slate 21 AIO, a previously unknown device running on Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean and powered by a 1.8GHz Tegra 4 processor.

First thought: This is crazy. Second thought: Maybe they are on to something?

HP has long been the master of the PC world and knows what it takes to do well there. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Windows 8 only seems to be driving more folks away from HP’s main money maker, desktops and laptops.

Could this actually prove to be a good move?

With the HP Slate 21, Hewlett Packard could be trying to pull a tiger out of a hat, an impossible trick but a stunning one if they can pull it off right.

Microsoft has seemingly dropped the ball a bit with Windows 8, and Android could be ready to move in to Microsoft territory. Perhaps the HP Slate 21 could be the perfect catalyst for that change.

An All-in-one that doubles as a massive tablet is nothing new, and something we’ve seen both with the Asus Transformer AiO P1801 (seen above) and the Sony Tap 20. The difference for the Slate 21 is that it will hopefully be Android-only, and that would also mean that its pricing could be much more aggressive than any existing all-in-one slate.

As a parent who recently went through a cracked screen crisis with his Nexus 10, I like the idea of an all-in-one that can play my child’s favorite games without the worry of them dropping it (due to an All-in-One’s stationary nature). This could also be a useful device for those with multi-user households, without the worries and hassle that come with a Windows device.

How likely is such a device?

Nothing is official until HP says it is, but there is really nothing here that sounds too outrageous. Sure, a 21-inch tablet/AiO might be a little over the top, but as a niche device it could make sense.

It is worth mentioning that the actual benchmark score for the device’s Tegra 4 processor was only 23,584, which is a little low considering the 36,000+ point scores the chip supposedly is capable of. Of course these higher scores were on special ‘test’ equipment likely optimized for chip performance, and HP’s test was one a prototype device. These combined factors mean that the 23,000 still sounds like reasonable enough performance for the Tegra 4.

The bigger question in our minds isn’t if such a device could be in the works, but if anyone would care. Do you see yourself interested in an All-in-One device running Android? How about those with families, would this be a decent alternative over a traditional Mac, Windows or Linux PC?