Today in TechCES 2012: Hands-on with Toshiba’s sliver-thin Excite X10 tablet
Last time around at CES, we were wholly underwhelmed by Toshiba's first Android tablet, the Thrive. This year it seems that the team at Toshiba went back to the drawing board. Its second slate effort, the 10.1" Toshiba Excite X10 is a sleek Android slate with enough ports to please anyone, and — even if only for the moment — it's actually the thinnest tablet in town.
We enjoyed some hands-on time with the Excite X10 at an exclusive Toshiba event last night, and the ultra-slim .3" tablet left us with a very favorable impression, both compared to its predecessor and as a device all its own. The Excite X10 clearly isn't cut from the same cloth as the Thrive. While the Thrive had a bulky rubberized back, the Excite X10 is svelte as can be, with a handsome brushed aluminum chassis.
The X10's 10.1" screen was crisp and bright — another big improvement over the Thrive, which seems like a now-distant ancestor by comparison. Toshiba managed to keep the port-happy spirit of the original Thrive alive, and the Excite X10 packs a micro-SD, micro USB, and micro HDMI port, unlike the relatively portless iPad. The tablet runs Android Honeycomb now, but has an upgrade to the slick new Android 4.0 in the cards for some time by the end of Q1, following its release. The X10 also features dual cameras: a not-too-shabby 5MP back-facing camera, and a 2MP cam up front for video chat and self portraiture, of course.
The Excite X10 will set you back $529.99 for a 16GB model, or $599 if you'd like to double the storage capacity. The tablet was definitely responsive, speedy, and easy on the eyes, but we did struggle with the power button and volume toggles, which were barely raised enough to find by touch alone. We also had some hands-on time with the 7" Toshiba Thrive, which is basically a miniaturized version of 2011's Thrive. Predictably, we weren't too charmed by it, considering our not so warm and fuzzy feelings toward its big brother, but the screen on the 7" version was a noticeable improvement. The 7" Thrive starts at $380, but with the Kindle Fire burning up the slightly smaller tablet market at $199, there's just no compelling reason to give Toshiba's little guy a second look.
This article originally appeared on Tecca
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