Toshiba Unveils the World’s Thinnest 10-inch Tablet

LAS VEGAS: Super thin, super light, rather sexy. It's hard to believe that those are the words one would use to describe a new tablet from Toshiba, the company that brought us the hefty, too-thick Thrive, 10-inch Android Tablet. Yet, I challenge you to look at and, if you’re lucky, hold the new .3-inch-thick, 1.2 lb Toshiba Excite 10-inch Android tablet, introduced here at CES 2012, and come up with a different set of superlatives.

With its burnished, magnesium alloy back, gorilla-glass face and unique channel trim, Toshiba‘s latest tablet entry stands apart from the pack. It is, for now, the thinnest tablet, besting the slim iPad by .04 inches. It's also a tad lighter. The iPad 2 weighs 1.35 pounds and the Excite is just 1.2 lbs. It honestly feels impossibly light, but, thanks to the rigid back, not flimsy.

Perhaps more surprising is the number of buttons and ports Toshiba squeezed onto this tiny frame. That’s right, ports. Like the much-thicker Thrive before it, the Excite offers a pleasing set of inputs and outputs, including micro-SD, Micro USB, Micro HDMI and, of course an audio jack.

Buttons are hidden along the edge in a channel that runs the full perimeter of the device. In fact, they’re almost too hidden; I noticed that I couldn't always see where the power/wake button resided. The Excite also has a physical volume button—a welcome choice when compared to the market's second most popular tablet: the Amazon Kindle Fire. It has just one button for power and no ports beyond the audio Jack.

Like the iPad 2, the Excite packs two cameras, though the Excite’s are somewhat more powerful: 2 megapixels on the front and 5 megapixels on the back. Its 10.1-inch screen supports a 1280 x 800 resolution and sports an anti-smudge coating on its surface (though Toshiba execs admit that nothing will ever keep these screens smudge-free) Inside, the Excite is running a 1.2 GHz dual-core Texas Instruments CPU and 1 GB of RAM.

As for the mobile OS, it will be a “stock” Android experience, though Toshiba has not yet decided if it'll release the uber-light slate with Honeycomb or the new Android 4.0. It is, though, built to support Ice Cream Sandwich. While Toshiba doesn’t mess with the Android interface — and earns a Google logo on the device, in part, because of it, the Excite will feature some special Toshiba apps for media and file management.

Final pricing has not been set, though the Excite should be in the $499 to $599 for the base configuration when it ships sometime early this year.

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• Toshiba Sells Lighter Tablet (gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Impossibly Thin Tablets - The Toshiba Excite is Finally Debuted at CES 2012 (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Toshiba Excite X10 impressions: It's certainly thin, but is it too expensive? (digitaltrends.com)
• Toshiba Excite X10 Super Thin Tablet (ubergizmo.com)
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Nuovo tablet Toshiba con Tegra 3?

AnTuTu on the site would be found credible traces of a new Toshiba tablet, probably with the new quad-core Nvidia Tegra SoC 3, already seen for Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. Sul sito AnTuTu sarebbero state scoperte tracce credibili di un nuovo tablet Toshiba, probabilmente dotato del nuovo SoC quad core Nvidia Tegra 3, già visto per Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime.

In a list published on the site AnTuTu have appeared in scores of some benchmarks performed with a mysterious tablet, called Tostab06. In una lista pubblicata sul sito AnTuTu sono apparsi i punteggi di alcuni benchmark svolti con un misterioso tablet, denominato Tostab06 . For some clues which is thought to be a new device, Toshiba, probably powered by the Nvidia Tegra System on a Chip 3, a quad core processor at 1.3 GHz frequency. Da alcuni indizi si ritiene che possa essere un nuovo device Toshiba, probabilmente equipaggiato con il System on a Chip Nvidia Tegra 3 , un processore quad core a 1.3 GHz di frequenza. The reason is simple: the words Tostab06 would in fact perfectly in line with the code name of the tablet of the previous Japanese manufacturer. Il motivo è semplice: la dicitura Tostab06 sarebbe infatti perfettamente in linea con il nome in codice dei precedenti tablet del produttore nipponico.

In fact, the 10.1-inch Toshiba Tablet AT100 (AT300 in Japan) was listed as Tostab03, the Toshiba AT1S0 (AT3S0 always in Japan) was instead the Tostab04 and finally the Toshiba AT20 0 (AT700 Japanese soil) was designated as Tostab05. Infatti il tablet da 10.1 pollici Toshiba AT100 (AT300 in Giappone) era indicato come Tostab03 , il Toshiba AT1S0 (AT3S0 sempre in Giappone) era invece il Tostab04 e infine il Toshiba AT20 0 (AT700 sul suolo nipponico) era designato come Tostab05 . Regarding the hardware configuration there are no explicit recommendations but here it is suggested based on the frequency of the processor, shown at 1400 MHz and the results produced, which would be roughly aligned with those obtained with the same benchmark Asus Eee Top Pad Transformer . Riguardo alla configurazione hardware non ci sono indicazioni esplicite ma anche qui si è avanzata l'ipotesi basandosi sulla frequenza del processore, indicata a 1400 MHz e sui risultati prodotti, che sarebbero allineati grossomodo con quelli ottenibili con lo stesso benchmark di Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime .

At the moment there are no other reports of any kind, but the possibility of a tablet with Nvidia Tegra 3 Toshiba is very believable, the rest on the market soon Acer would also be debuting a similar solution . Al momento non si hanno altre notizie di alcun tipo, ma la possibilità di un tablet Toshiba con Nvidia Tegra 3 è molto credibile, del resto presto sul mercato anche Acer potrebbe far debuttare una soluzione simile . If the rumors prove to be founded is therefore likely that already at the next CES in Las Vegas in January 2012 we will live this tablet. Se i rumors dovessero rivelarsi fondati è quindi probabile che già al prossimo CES di Las Vegas di gennaio 2012 vedremo dal vivo questo tablet.

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• Review: Toshiba Thrive (edtechmagazine.com)
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• Toshiba Thrive 7-inch tablet hits retailers (digitaltrends.com)
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Toshiba Thrive 7″ Review: Cute, But Clunky

Short Version

While the 7-inch Toshiba Thrive is much more comfortable in the hand than its 10-inch counterpart, many of the best features in big brother never migrated over to the 7-incher. That said, this still may be the slate for you if gaming and web-surfing take precedence over e-reading. Otherwise, I’d point you to the Amazon Kindle Fire.

Features:

• 7-inch 1280×800 resolution display
• 1GHz Tegra 2 dual-core processor
• Android 3.2 Honeycomb
• 5MP rear camera (720p video capture, LED flash)
• 2MP front-facing shooter
• MSRP: $379.99 (16GB), $429.99 (32GB)

Pros:

• Great size/comfortable in the hand
• Brilliant screen with high pixel density
• Very responsive

Cons:

• Lost all of its full-sized ports
• No more removable back cover and interchangeable batteries
• Tough price point, especially for 32GB of internal memory

Long Version

Hardware:

Despite less connectivity than big brother, I actually enjoy the 7-inch Thrive much more in the hand. It’s rather thin compared to the 10-inch model, with rounded corners and slightly angled edges. The charging port is placed squarely on the bottom of the slate, which makes it annoying to play around with in landscape while charging.

A 3.5mm headphone jack sits up top, with a power button, volume rocker and auto-rotate lock all along the top left side. Below that you’ll find a plastic cover protecting a microUSB, miniHDMI, and microSD card slot. If you can dig back into the corners of your memory, you’ll recognize that the 10-inch Thrive came will full-sized USB and HDMI and SD card ports.

The 10-incher also had a removable back cover and interchangeable battery, which isn’t the case on the Thrive 7″. The same rubberized, textured finish along the back panel is still present, though, and makes the tablet even more manageable. I actually let this thing sit on one leg for most of the time I used it, and it automatically gripped my pants so that it never slipped once. (Look, Mom! No hands!)

When stressed, the Thrive 7″ crackles and pops quite a bit. But I didn’t find anything so suspect that would lead me to believe this isn’t a solid build.

Display:

I’d say the Thrive’s best feature would be its display. A 1280×800 pixel resolution on a 7-inch display is pretty beautiful, and Toshiba has of course layered its Adaptive Display and Resolution+ technologies on there, as well. The display doesn’t take prints as much as some other slates I’ve dabbled with (talking to you, Sony Tablet S), but of course, there’s no such thing as an entirely print-free display.

As far as input goes, the display is super responsive. It was able to follow my finger in scrolling, even while I flicked it back and forth as fast as possible. Most Android tabs have a bit of a lag on that front, but the Thrive 7″ kept up with my pace.

Software:

The Toshiba Thrive family is special in that it runs pure Android 3.2 Honeycomb. No annoying overlays. No unfamiliar UIs. Just Honeycomb, the way you know how to use it. Toshiba did include its media player, along with a handful of other pre-loaded apps like Netflix, NFS Shift, File Manager, and Quickoffice HD, but on the whole this is a very vanilla experience.

Of course, access to Google’s apps such as Google Maps, Google Talk, and the Android Market is included.

I did have a little trouble with the Thrive’s 5-megapixel rear-facing camera. The shutter is frustratingly slow, though I was surprised to find that in camcorder mode the camera actually adjusts well between low-light and well-lit settings.

Performance:

I tried to do all my work on the Thrive one day (which in retrospect was a bad choice on a 7-inch tablet), from 8am to 6pm. It made it to around 3pm before giving out, which includes the usual breaks for bathroom, food, and an occasional mission on Grand Theft Auto III for iPhone.

The good news is that it charges quickly. I was able to go from dead to 85 percent power in less than half an hour.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, the 7-inch Thrive is a solid, albeit hefty, little Android tablet. Even without the full-sized ports, there’s still quite a bit of connectivity there and we saw perfectly acceptable performance the whole time. However, the price tag puts this little guy in a tough spot.

For just a couple hundred more, you can nab yourself an iPad, and anyone shopping for something a little lower on the pricing totem pole has plenty of options. Most notably, the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is just $249 from T-Mobile, though that requires a two-year agreement.

Of course, we do have the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, which certainly can’t compete with the Thrive in terms of performance or capabilities. Then again, that won’t matter to the novice user.

Related articles

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