Last week Toshiba revealed some more details on its long unnamed 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet, including its $429 starting price, but this morning we got the real deal — some solid time with what’s now officially called the Thrive. Hit the break for impressions and a hands-on video.
Hardware
The tablet has an extremely comfortable rubberish back with raised diagonal lines. (Yep, that’s the iPad
and the Tab 10.1 stacked on top of the Thrive up there!) That ultimately comes down to personal preference and if you’re into sacrificing thinness for the Thrive’s full-sized ports.
It also has a SD card reader, 3.5mm headphone jack, and a docking port for its video / audio accessories. Speaking of sound, the speakers actually sounded decent in the short demo.
Software
Software-wise, Toshiba’s keeping things pretty true to the stock experience. Additionally, there’s the expected e-reader and RSS apps. Oh, and while you have full access to the Market, Toshiba’s got its own App Place, which is really a secondary store of handpicked apps. Overall, performance seemed in line with the Xoom with 3.1 — transitions between screens was smooth, scrolling was snappy, and apps launched quickly.
At the end of the day the Thrive
is just another Honeycomb tablet with some slight modifications, including full-sized ports, a swappable back / battery, and some extra apps.
Nowadays tablets become more and more popular. The tablet is unbelievably fast, and entertainment ensures the unbelievable sharpness and color of the screen. Toshiba Thrive is powered by NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor and operates on the latest Android 3.1 platform optimized for tablets.
On the pro side, the Thrive features a full-size USB port that can read a thumb drive; a full-size HDMI port; a Mini-USB computer port that’s separate from charging port; and a full-size SD-card slot. TheDell Streak 7 has a full-size SD-card slot, and the Archos 101 has a full-size USB port. Some older Windows 7 tablets also had full-size USB ports. The Thrive, however, is not a 64-bit storage model.
The Toshiba Thrive starts at $429 for an 8GB model, which is relatively inexpensive for a 10-inch tablet--it's some $70 less than the least expensive iPad. The Thrive also come with 16GB ($479.99) and 32GB ($579.99) of storage.
Toshiba Thrives in the Tablet Market
If you’re at all used to Windows 7’s file manager, Toshiba’s will be an easy transition. Finally, coupled with their playback software is their “Resolution Plus” software which dynamically upscales video to high definition, tweaking color balance and contrast.
There’s a combination microphone/headphone jack, but Toshiba made it a point to go full-sized wherever possible with ports to ease the transition to tablet computing, and as a result they include a full-sized SD card reader, USB 2.0 port, and HDMI port. There’s also a mini-USB port. Finally, the face of the Thrive features a 2-megapixel camera while the back has a 5-megapixel camera.
Toshiba expects retail availability in the next few weeks. MSRP is $429 for the 8GB version, $479 for the 16GB model, and $579 for the 32GB. Toshiba will also be offering docking stations, including one with USB and HDMI connectivity for external keyboard, mouse, and display use.
