The
Toshiba Excite 10 LE is the company’s follow-up to the intriguing, and yet
ultimately disappointing, Thrive tablet from last year. In exchange for full-sized ports
and a removable battery, Toshiba has slimmed down the Excite to a lithe 7.7mm,
updated its industrial design and raised the price. Is the tradeoff worth the
extra bucks? And how does it match up to the rest of the Android tablet market?
Read on to find out.
Specs:- Android 3.2.1 Honeycomb
- 10.1-inch 1280×800
IPS display w/ Gorilla Glass
- 1.2Ghz TI OMAP 4430 dual-core processor
-
1GB RAM, 16GB/32GB internal storage
- 5MP back camera with flash, 2MP front
camera
- WiFi (b/g/n), Gyroscope, Accelerometer, GPS, eCompass
- microUSB,
microSD slot, miniHDMI port
- Stereo speakers with SRS Digital sound
codec
- 25Whr battery with 8hrs battery life
- 10.1″ (W) x 6.9″ (D) x 0.3″
(H) (25.6cm x 17.5cm x 7.7mm)
- 535g
Design:At 7.7mm, it is one of the thinnest tablets we’ve
used, and the metallic-looking body practically screams ‘premium’ upon first
viewing. And while a world of improvement over the Excite’s predecessor, the
build quality leaves a lot to be desired. Toshiba tries very hard to convince us
into thinking the Excite is made of metal, but the magnesium alloy used for the
backing feels all too much like plastic. The rear of the device looks to have
been glued on, as certain areas show seams while others are tightly fastened.
Besides exposing the Excite to dust, dirt and other unpleasantries, there is a
sense of haphazardness here that, for the price, shouldn’t be.
The screen bezel is blissfully thin, and the perimeter of the tablet is
circumnavigated by a strip of colour-matching plastic with a stripe of black in
the middle. The right side holds the various buttons — power, volume and an
orientation lock switch — which blend so exquisitely into the framework as to be
almost unnoticeable. It reminds me of those wall panel fridge units that you
don’t notice until your host opens it to reveal a perfectly stacked shelf of
beers.
On the left we have our array of ports: a headphone jack, microUSB input,
mini HDMI out and microSD slot. On the bottom is the largest dock connector port
I’ve ever seen, some 30% wider than Apple or Samsung’s proprietary port. The
only way to charge the device is with the accompanying cable which is thick and
unruly, and just another cable to carry with you on the plane.
The Excite 10 LE has a camera conundrum. On the back, a small strip of glossy
black glass covers the LED flash and 5MP camera sensor. If this was on the
front, it would blend right in. But for some reason Toshiba felt it necessary to
highlight the front-facing camera with a circular ring of silver, in so
distracting a fashion as to be unfathomable. I was constantly distracted by this
“eye” staring at me as I worked.
Yes, the Excite 10 LE is thin and light, but it takes liberties in materials
where is shouldn’t, and has some inexplicable design choices. At 535g it is
lighter still than the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and can thusly be held in one hand
without discomfort. Due to the thin bezel, the tablet doesn’t come off as
grotesque in portrait mode, despite the same 16:9 aspect ratio of other Android
tabs. In terms of design, the Excite does more things right than wrong, but
that’s not excusing the things that are done very wrong.
Display:Though the Excite has an IPS display, I noticed
some problems with it right away. First, the good stuff: viewing angles are
excellent, as one would expect from IPS, and maximum brightness is sufficient
for most outdoor use. Colour is reasonably accurate, with decent saturation
levels, and though at low brightness they are more grey than I would like,
whites are vibrant and clear at max brightness. At 1280×800, media looks good,
and text is readable with no lack of sharpness.
The digitizer supports 10 touch points, which would be fine if it responded
adequately to one finger. I found myself having to press down harder than I
would have on another tablet to achieve the same results, while the
back/home/multitasking buttons on the bottom seemed to spurn even my sternest
directions. While brightness is good, I identified a constant flicker in certain
areas of the screen, as if suffering from an asynchronous refresh rate (like in
the old CRT days). When viewed in the dark the screen had hotspots of backlight
bleeding.
Lastly, but certainly not least, the screen is entombed in a repeating
square/rectangle pattern that seems be a product of the digitizer. Regardless of
its origin, picture quality suffers as a result and it was a constant
distraction for me when doing regular activities like surfing the web or
watching a movie. While less obvious on a white background, the pattern,
combined with the relentless flickering, made the Excite one of the least
pleasant viewing experiences I’ve had on a tablet.
Performance:The Excite’s lack thereof doesn’t end at its
mediocre screen or faux chic design. There is a lot to like above board: at
first glance the tablet looks great, and only really breaks down once you get to
using it. Internally, however, things are a bit different, and not for the
better.
Sporting a 1.2Ghz dual-core TI OMAP 4430 processor and 1GB RAM, the Excite is
largely underpowered for a new tablet. This is the same processor that has
powered smartphones since early 2011, from the Motorola XT860 to the LG Optimus
3D to the BlackBerry Playbook. Alongside two 45nm Cortex A9-based cores, the
chip uses PowerVR’s SGX540 GPU, a part that too is becoming long in the tooth.
Compare that with the new iPad’s quad-core PowerVR SGX543MP4+ chip, which has a
potential fill rate of over four times the Excite, and you can see where the
problems arise. A year ago launching a tablet with this chipset would have been
acceptable; now it is unconscionable.
Benchmark results seem to confirm my suspicions: most were akin to last
year’s phone scores, and don’t come close to the Tegra 3 or even last-generation
Snapdragon S3 scores. In fact, the device scores lower in Quadrant than many
single-core devices.
Linpack:
60MFLOPSSmartbench 2012:
2394
Productivity /
1699 Gaming
CF-Bench: Native Score
9561 / Java Score
1939 / Overall Score
4987Quadrant:
1308
But specs are not important if the tablet runs smoothly, right? The Excite
runs a bare-bones version of Android 3.2.1, meaning Toshiba has made no changes
to the core operating system. But this is still Honeycomb, and with it comes all
the performance problems that were fixed in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
General performance is good — browsing the web, playing games, watching video —
but it’s tinged with a creakiness, an unavoidable feeling of dead weight that
Google managed to lift in ICS. Whether scrolling through the various homescreens
or waiting an extra second or two for an app to open, it’s obvious that
Honeycomb, like its smartphone equivalent Gingerbread, needs to disappear, and
soon.
As I stated earlier, the Excite has trouble with touch precision. On its best
day Honeycomb is not altogether 1:1 responsive: there are often times that it
just doesn’t respond to input, or takes a second too long to acknowledge. The
problem is exacerbated by Toshiba’s lacklustre screen, which will altogether
ignore you given half the chance. This made typing a chore, and forced me to use
the included version of Swype, on which I managed to struggle through a few
paragraphs of this review as a test.
When touch does work, the experience is pleasant enough: watching Netflix was
great, as was reading a book on Google Play. Apps that are designed for the big
screen look and feel great on the Excite, but every once in a while one will act
up, force close and remind us that we’re using Honeycomb.
Software:Toshiba includes a bunch of interesting paid
apps on the Excite, some more useful than others. They’ve bundled ThinkFree’s Office Suite: Calc (spreadsheets), Show (presentations), and
Write (documents). All of them are functional, responsive and adapted fairly
well to the Android platform, with drop-down menus mimicking the majority of
basic desktop tasks. For example, in ThinkFree Write it is possible to create
number lists, insert tables, photos, clip art, and even draw your own patterns
using the built-in Scribble Pad. With support for exporting to Microsoft
Office’s .docx (and Excel/Powerpoint equivalents), ThinkFree’s Office Suite is a
great addition, especially since it costs $10 in the Google Play Store.
The rest of the bundled apps are not quite as exciting: Toshiba decided not
to pay the $7.12 for Splashtop Remote Desktop HD, instead bundling the free version
of the popular remote desktop program. If you’ve used VNC, LogMeIn or Citrix
GoToMeeting you’ll be familiar with how Splashtop works: you install a client on
your Windows or OS X machine and log in using a username and password. Splashtop
differentiates by claiming to be able to stream high-resolution video and audio
from your computer to the tablet, though I’d imagine it would depend upon the
speed of your connection. You can even play 3D games, watch Flash videos and
transfer files between devices. We couldn’t find the Free version on the Play
Store to know what you
don’t get, but the bundled version seems pretty
feature-filled.
The remaining fare equates to McAfee’s Mobile Security app which, once configured, protects
your device from malware and thieves by tracking its location; and Toshiba’s
DLNA-enabled Media Player, which finds media servers connected to the same WiFi
network and shares music, photos, video and files to connected devices. Both
apps work well, and thankfully the former can be deleted. Also bundled are
PrinterShare and TuneWiki, both perfectly able and yet ill-adapted to
tablets.
Camera:
The 5MP camera on the Toshiba Excite is perfectly adequate for taking the odd
still photo. In good lighting, the sensor is not good at accurately adjusting
white balance, so the majority of our photos were washed out. That being said,
colours look good and there is no more grain than the average tablet camera.
Focusing is fast and the shutter is reasonably quick, making the experience
better than the majority of other Android tablets.
The same thing can be said for the tablet’s video, which is capable of
achieving 1080p recording at 30fps. While detailed, the results lack image
stabilization, and audio captured from the microphone is quite poor. On the
front of the device, the 2MP camera is more than capable of capturing you at
your best, or worst, in grainy, washed-out perfection. Thankfully Toshiba saw
fit to amp up the resolution of the front-facing camera, though the tiny sensor
captures what appears to be the same amount of detail as the iPad’s VGA
equivalent.
Battery Life:The 25Whr cell inside the Excite 10 LE is
non-removable, unlike the previous-generation Thrive, and offers up to eight
hours of continuous usage. With no 3G baseband and a reasonably efficient
processor I had no trouble reaching, and surpassing, that number. The auto
brightness setting is fairly conservative, and I found myself having to manually
set luminance to around 50% for optimal viewing. Left to its own devices the
Excite tends to push brightness below 30%, leaving the screen difficult to read
in most lighting conditions. It’s nice to see that, despite the Excite’s lithe
profile it still managed to compete with the majority of Android tablets on the
market.
On our video looping tests, in which I played a 720p-encoded video until the
battery died, the Excite achieved
7 hours and 28 minutes which
is a reasonable amount of time for a tablet and should get you across the
Atlantic without having to recharge.
Sound and Connectivity:The Excite boasts “exclusive
sound enhancements by Toshiba and SRS Labs,” and indeed there are options in the
Settings to boost volume, optimize voice clarity and equalize ambient noise. All
of these settings, except for volume boost, are enabled by default and though I
found no discernable difference in quality between the “On” and “Off” settings.
The SRS option certainly opens up the sound stage by artificially separating the
left and right channels. It also has a side effect of boosting the volume by
increasing dynamic range — essentially emphasizing lows and highs while
maintaining the midrange. I won’t say the effect is unpleasant, and in a noisy
environment the SRS effects are advantageous, but only certain music benefits
from such “enhancements.”
Though the Excite does not have full-sized SD, USB and HDMI ports, their mini
variety are a nice addition to the slim tablet. Being able to selectively mirror
HD content to your TV is a nice bonus, though the box does not come with the
necessary mini-to-full HDMI cable. And, like all Android tablets with USB input,
the Excite can function as a host, allowing you to access files on your from
portable hard drives, or to recognize and use a mouse and keyboard. Many of
these devices, however, require full-sized USB inputs, somewhat limiting the
tablet’s potential as a full-blown laptop replacement. Nevertheless the
abilities are there, and with a little creativity the Excite has a lot of
potential as a part-time laptop.
Conclusion:The Toshiba Excite 10 LE is unlikely to win
over the hearts of Android users, especially for the price. At $549.99 for 16GB
and $599.99 for the 32GB model, the tablet is wildly overpriced. Though there
are some very notable design improvements over its previous generation, and is
quite beautiful to look at, the Excite lacks the very quality that one requires
in a compelling Android tablet: differentiation. It runs last year’s software on
last year’s hardware at this year’s price. Being able to boast of being the
thinnest tablet is not reason enough to spend $150 more than the Samsung Galaxy
Tab 10.1, which competes with the Excite on every level despite being nearly a
year old.
While Toshiba is promising an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich, they have yet to
release a timeline. Even if it had been released with Android 4.0 it would be
difficult to recommend the Excite over the Asus Transformer Prime, but as it
stands it doesn’t even enter the picture.
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