Toshiba has started shipping its newest generation of tablets this week, starting with the Toshiba Excite 10. It is part of the series of slates that will replace Toshiba older gen products, such as the Thrive and the X10.
The Excite 10 had been announced just about a month back, along with a 7.7 inch version, and a gargantuan 13 inch one as well (interestingly enough, the latter has been called the ‘Galaxy Note’ of tablets by TechRadar as it seems to be way too big to be a portable tablet, like the Note seemed to be too big to be a phone).
Coming to the Excite 10 itself, Toshiba has priced it at $449 for the 16GB version, a full $50 less than the price they’d announced for it initially last month. The 32GB model comes in at $530, and the 64GB one costs $650.
The new Toshiba tablet packs in an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz. It has an Nvidia branded GeForce GPU as well, which in theory should make for a very powerful tablet for your gaming and multimedia needs.
On the other hand, the fact that the screen packs in just 1280×800 pixels in its 10.1 inch LCD screen, with a pixel density of 149 ppi, makes its display specifications look measly when up against the likes of the new iPad.
Moreover, this also undercuts its powerful CPU-GPU combination, and comes off as a bit of a compromise.
There a 5 megapixel shooter at the back of the tablet as well, to cater to the people who don’t particularly mind clicking photos with 10 inch tablets. But most importantly, Toshiba promises a 10 hour battery life for the Excite 10, which is a massive upgrade from the atrocious 4 odd hours that the last gen Thrive tablets could last.
All in all, the Toshiba Excite 10 doesn’t seem to have anything especially outstanding in its spec sheet to, literally, ‘excite’ a customer at first glance. Sure, the processor may be quite the beast, but there are only a handful of games on the Android platform that can truly make the most of the Tegra 3′s brute power.
