You can rarely go wrong by making a product thinner and lighter. Toshiba, a company whose first foray into Android tablets was a relative behemoth, is showing the world that its designers can do "thin" better than anyone. Yes, even better than Apple.
Priced at $530 with 16GB of storage, or $600 for 32GB, Toshiba evidently feels that its tablet's iPad-besting thickness and weight deserve a slightly higher price than the competition.
The Excite 10 LE feels impossibly thin and light. After a week handling the 1.44-pound new iPad, the 1.2-pound Excite feels like it's in a different weight class. The difference may sound insignificant, but for a device that's often held for long periods in one hand, it's a difference you can feel. It's also a difference you can see, as the Excite measures just 0.3 inch thick. If most 10-inch tablets feel like a cutting board, this one feels like a knife.
For some, having the thinnest, lightest 10-inch tablet money can buy is enough to justify the $530 investment. If that doesn't describe you, then there are a number of design disappointments here to scare you off.
The first design feature that threw me was Toshiba's big honkin' charging adapter. It connects to the Excite using a proprietary dock connection on the bottom edge of the tablet, and terminates in a standard USB plug that can be used with an included charging block. Granted, Apple pulls the same stunt with the iPad, but you can probably find a replacement cable for that in even the darkest corners of the world. Samsung'sis also guilty of this crime against universal charging standards, but at least its adapter will fit easily in your pocket. For what it's worth, you can charge the Excite over its Micro-USB connection, but it takes much longer.
My other gripe about the Excite's design is a seemingly petty thing, but it's something you'll feel every time you'll pick it up. The back of the Excite is covered in a thin sheet of brushed magnesium alloy. Aside from the fact that this light, soft metal feels an awful lot like plastic, we have no problem with it. The issue is that it butts up against the rough edge of the tablet's plastic siding precisely where you naturally hold the device. It's like the prickly edge of a shirt tag that can't be ignored. For a device that sells on the strength of its premium design, it's a detail that should have been taken care of.
|Toshiba Excite||Apple iPad (2012)||Asus Transformer Prime|
|Weight in pounds||1.12||1.44||1.32||1.24|
|Width in inches (landscape)||10.1||7.3||10.3||10.1|
|Height in inches||6.9||9.5||7.1||6.9|
|Side bezel width in inches (landscape)||0.75||0.87||0.8||0.8|
Given the Excite's price and the context of other 10-inch Android tablets on the market or on the horizon, Toshiba's tablet isn't offering the best value. The honor of having the most cutting-edge processor goes to Asus and the quad-core Tegra 3 chip inside its Transformer Prime.
The Excite is also trailing behind on having the most up-to-date Android OS. It's running Android 3.2 (Honeycomb), which is a fine OS, but doesn't have the same new-car smell as Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Toshiba is promising a spring update to ICS, but you won't have it out of the box. In my experience, the , but it's nonetheless a measuring stick worth considering.
In terms of hardware, Toshiba includes an impressive array of ports and capabilities considering its slender profile. On the left edge, you get a Micro-USB port for transferring media and (slowly) charging, along with a headphone output, microSD memory slot, and Micro-HDMI video output.