Toshiba only had a single new tablet yet unveiled that they allowed people at CES to “ohhh” and “ahh” over this year! It is with good reason, this tablet is billed as the worlds thinnest. How does it rank hardware and experience wise to make it a viable purchase?
The Toshiba Excite is the worlds thinnest 10.1 inch tablet that is only .3 inches thick! It is very light too for a large screen display, which makes it easy to hold for long durations of time. Hardware wise it features a resolution of 1280×800 and should take all of the thrashing you are dispense on it with the Gorilla Glass used for the screen. Underneath the hood lurks a Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor giving you 1.2 GHZ of speed. A fair amount of cool features are found internally which are sure to impress you with a built in accelerometer, gyroscope and GPS. There is enough space for all of your media, music and books with a 16 and 32 GB editions to choose from and can be further expanded via the MicroSD. On the side of the Excite is physical volume buttons, power, Micro HDMI, Micro USB, mic, 3.5mm headphone jack.
If you are into video conferencing via Skype or one of those people who take pictures of their friends with their tablet instead of a real tablet or an SLR you might dig this unit. It features a front facing 2 MP camera and on the back a 5 MP one with LED flash. This will be handy for people who want to use Skype and are disappointed with many tablets on the market with feeble front facing ones.
On the software side of things what can you expect? Firstly it is not bundled with Ice Cream Sandwich and instead is shipped with the latest version of Google Honeycomb. A Toshiba rep told us that within the next month they will dispense a new version of the Google OS and everything underneath the hood is fully compliant for the imminent upgrade. One of the huge deciding factors when buying an Android tablet is the ability to connect to the official Android Market. This model gives you full access and comes Adobe Flash ready, to enjoy a rich internet experience. It comes with the Google Book Reader and a number of apps and games out of the box, but nothing you won’t find on the market. It seems Toshiba is giving you a stock Android experience with no frills or gimmicks like Motoblur or TouchWIZ.
In the end, this tablet is thin and light, which are the two main factors going for it. Really, it is only dual core and many competitors like Asus (Transformer Prime and Acer (Iconia A510) are now giving Quad Core tablets a go, many tech geeks will go with the added processor power. I can see this selling, but not selling well. The Toshiba Excite X10 is quite daunting with the price, costing $530 if you’re getting the 16Gb model and $600 if you opt for the 32GB version. They are due to be released within the next two months and available at most major electronic retailers. Check out the official Press Pictures and Tech Specs HERE.
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Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
