Hands On With the Toshiba Excite 7.7 Android 4.0 Tablet - gilmorepeentwer

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Our Verdict

This stylish, serried tab has a bonded, high-result display and wholesome performance plus a microSD card time slot, but it is pricey compared with the competition.

Long before the Toshiba Sex 7.7 got its name, its prospects were cause for excitement. The tab's robust Nvidia Tegra 3-steam-powered spectacles, its slim and lightweight design, its Android 4.02 Ice Thrash Sandwich operating system, and its high-resolution AMOLED showing all made it a front-runner challenger connected paper.

Now that it's here, I can describe that this model in full lives up to its possible. The simply letdown lies with its steep terms: $500 for the 16GB version–the same as the larger-screen tertiary-generation iPad costs–and $580 for the 32GB poser.

Next to the iPad's pricing, the Toshiba Excite 7.7 (previously seen at Moveable World Coitus as the Toshiba AT270) feels astronomically expensive. That said, it comes in priced just 11 per centum higher than the next closest contender, the Verizon Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, which is $450 with a biennial contract. Granted, the Verizon model handles 4G LTE wireless communications, but that tablet is also perplexed happening last class's Android 3.x Honeycomb operating system. And its three-fold-core CPU performance is notably slower than that of the Tegra 3-based Excite 7.7.

At least the design of the Excite 7.7 matches its premium Price. Aesthetically, IT pleases the eye, and information technology's in keeping with the design of the 10.1-inch and 13.0-column inch models in the Excite batting order, adventuresome a bronze-colored, textured Al back with matching plastic edges and well-defined buttons for the loudness rocker, exponent, and rotation-lock luger.

The design is deceptive: Though the Rouse 7.7 lacks the contour of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, the two models are of identical depth, 0.31 edge. The Arouse 7.7 is slightly larger than the Tab, standing 8.1 inches tall to the Tab's 7.7 inches; and at 12.3 ounces (or 0.77 pound), it's a bit heavier than the Tab, by 3.2 ounces (Beaver State 0.2 pound). Interestingly, the Toshiba pad of paper feels lighter in the script, probably due to the residue of the components inside.

The weight of the Arouse 7.7 is actually one of the more enticing features, as it indicates that LCD-based tablets are starting to approach path a weight that's conducive for indefinite-handed surgery. The Commove 7.7 is non as featherlight as up-to-date E Ink-supported e-readers are (extraordinary e-readers are half the Excite's weight), but it is notably illuminate when held one-handed–a captious distinction, and advantage, for a smaller tab like this. Afterwards totally, many users like to hold their slate peerless-handed when they're meter reading, and the Excite 7.7's high-settlement display makes it ideal for that activity.

Unpeasant-smelling-Reticuloendothelial system Expose

The high-firmness of purpose AMOLED display is another major cause for excitement here. Mechanical man tablets have been painfully slow to get on the bandwagon of higher-pel-tightness displays, and this modeling is nonpareil of the few to do so. At 1280 by 800 pixels, the display has 196 pixels per edge, not as dense as what the current 9.7-edge iPad has, just FAR wagerer than what the 1024-by-600 Samsung Coltsfoot Lozenge 2 7.0 delivers. In my work force-on trials, text looked lovely in ebooks and Network pages, fine and solidly rendered–and a welcome contrast to the pixelation I've seen on the let down-res rivalry. The 16:10-aspect-ratio display uses Corning Gorilla Glass and supports ten-finger multitouch, and IT was highly responsive when I proven it.

Toshiba says the display is comparable to Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus technology, and I'd have to tall after a side-by-side comparison. Colors looked identical, with likewise high saturation but no oversaturation. The Samsung display was slenderly better at handling blacks and whites; Toshiba's screen humiliated the blacks and wet out the brightest whites in our grayscale-image test. Beyond that, though, the Toshiba tablet simply excelled at images, producing eye-popping vividness and within reason pleasing skin tones. On one of our standard test images, the Energise 7.7 provided one of the better representations we've seen of the skin tones and wear; it lacked the moiré pattern evident on the Samsung model, though whether this resultant is callable to the remainder in operating systems (with the Samsung pill still on Android 3.x) Beaver State something else is unclear. The Excite 7.7 also rendered images sharply, although–as with the other current Android tablets we've seen–images in the Verandah app had foggy thumbnails, and necessary a here and now to render fully when opened.

The worst piece of big news about the Excite 7.7 is its Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. Tegra 3 is fantastic for gaming; on our GL Benchmark tests, the Excite 7.7 performed in line with other Tegra 3 tablets. Games looked expectant on the display too.

Extra Features

The Arouse 7.7 has a MicroSD notice slot (which supports up to MicroSDXC card game) and a Micro-USB Connected-The-Move port happening the bottom, along with a conveniently placed (for landscape use) headphone Jack-tar. It also has a 2-megapixel front camera and a 5-megapixel rear-veneer television camera with flash, plus a proprietary docking connector for charging. The connector is bigger and bulkier than most, as on previous Toshiba tablets; however, the unit appeared to charge more apace in my work force-on tests (formal results and high battery life tests tranquillise to get).

Toshiba hasn't customized Android 4.0 much along the Excite 7.7, but the company has preinstalled roughly handy widget icons on the home screen; these widgets group accompanying apps together for easy access. The company also tosses in a slew of useful apps and a smattering of games to get you started.

The Toshiba Excite 7.7's merry carrying into action, light weight, and terrific display make for bang-up usability. In real time, if sole the price of admission to this particular tablet ride weren't indeed high.

Check adjusted for PCWorld's amply rated Excite 7.7 review, with our updated tablet testing entourage.