I've been wanting to get a tablet since last year and have been holding out since they announced ICS and Quad-Core processors. I was going to get the Prime for christmas, but it was unavailable, so I decided to wait and see what came out in the spring. I've stayed away from the Prime due to the higher price and GPS issues, so it came down to 3 tablets while making my decision (Transformer Pad, Acer Iconia a510 and the Toshiba Excite 10). All 3 tablets are very similar and met my criteria for a tablet (ICS, Tegra 3, 1280x800 display, HDMI-out, etc.). I had originally ordered the Iconia a510, but it was back-ordered. Then I saw the Excite was available and in stock early on Amazon last week, so I cancelled my order for the Acer and immediately orderd the Toshiba. What ultimately sold me on the Toshiba model was the Gorilla Glass, the Stock ICS experience and the Full SD card slot. My wife takes a lot of pictures and will love being able to just pop the SD card out of the camera and into the tablet.I received the device yesterday and it is very fast and slim. I used it for a good 3 hours straight last night with music playing in the background and experienced no lag at all and still had 70% battery remaining after the 3 hours. The Excite 10 is very well built and feels sturdy in the hands. Not too heavy, but just enough that it doesn't feel like you are going to break it. The WiFi signal was very strong and didn't have any issues there. The speakers sound pretty good considering how small they are. The setup took no time at all and with the Google Restore function, I had all of my phone apps (about 100) on my tablet within 20 minutes.
So far I haven't come up with too many Cons for this device. If I had to list some they would be the following:
1. There is a good amount of pre-installed junk on the device. Not that big of a deal since apps can be disabled in ICS.
2. The Charger is proprietary. It would be nice to charge over microUSB, but with the size of tablet batteries, it would take forever to fully charge, so it is understandable why it doesn't.
Overall, I am very pleased with this product and would recommend it.
UPDATE 5/11/12:
1. I wanted to point out that I ran AnTuTu Benchmarking tool and it listed the Excite 10 as a 1.3 GHZ Tegra 3 processor and got a better average score than every other device listed.
2. Some of the pre-installed junk can be uninstalled, but some can only be disabled.
3. I was able to plug the charger into my Laptop and Car USB ports and it was able to charge. It was charging slower than the wall plug, but a nice feature if the battery is running low.
1. SPEED: 9/10
I've ran a few benchmarks on it and so far, only the acer a510 has got higher. Still slightly faster than the TF series from Asus (TF101, TF201, TF300) and definitely faster than the first generation tablets (Samsung Galaxy, Toshiba Thrive, Acer a series, BB Playbook). Haven't run into any problems with speed so far.
2. BATTERY LIFE: 9/10
Again, the Acer a510 tablet is the only one I have run into with a longer battery life. The Asus Prime comes close, but not quite there (I would recommend an app called JuiceDefender, which will greatly help your battery life).
3 SCREEN QUALITY: 10/10
One of the best. Most tablets that are android based and 10.1 inch screens have1280*800 resolutions, however the brightness and clarity is fantastic. A little warmer than the Prime or Galaxy tabs (works great for HD TV or movies)
4. COMFORTABLITY: 7/10
An often overlooked attribute is how comfortable the tablet is to hold. This tablet is one of the thinnest, lightest on the market right now, so it is understandably a little odd to hold in landscape, nut trust me, its not nearly as uncomfortable as the Prime or Iconia a200. Once again, the only other tablet that is more comfy to hold is the.
Acer a510.
5. BUILD QUALITY: 10/10
AMAZING! Honestly, the best all around built tablet I have ever experienced hands down. Gorilla Glass, aluminum build, solid.
6. OPERATING SYSTEM: 9/10
Stock ICS is nice to have, and Toshiba throws in some very cool features with its organization. The only reason it loses a point is for the stock programs that can't be taken off. However this will not slow down anything on the tablet.
7: WHY NOT THE ICONIA?
With all the comparisons to the Aer 510, why not it for the same price? Well, I've owned both, and this one is better in almost all regards. I have not run into a bug or hiccup yet. Quite a bit smoother experience of a tablet.
OVERALL SCORE: 54/60
Actually, this is the best score I have given a tablet. Nothing is perfect, but this is quite high up there. Thanks for the time,
Nate.
Buy Toshiba Excite AT305T64 10.1-Inch 64 GB Tablet Computer - Wi-Fi - NVIDIA Tegra 3 1.20 GHz Now
So far I've owned the ASUS Transformer Prime (TF201), Acer Iconia Tab A510, and now the Toshiba AT305. The TF201 had build quality and wireless/GPS issues and the A510 had a "grid effect" to the LCD and some bad heat issues (106+ degrees). And now the AT305, which has light bleed issues. The sad part is that despite this annoying "issue," it's still the best Tegra 3 tablet out there.As with the Acer and Asus, I've already gone through two AT305's just to make sure these issues were consistent. But let's go into a bit more of a detailed review first on the AT305 that I've been using for a few days now.
DESIGN:
Out of the box, initial impressions are very good. The tablet has a great solid feel to it, it's comfortable to hold, thin, and yes, even light weight. The back has a hard, smooth, plastic feel to it although I hear its aluminum. If so, it probably has some type of coating on it. Basically, it's one nice looking tablet.
I won't go into details regarding where everything is or what feature it has, as you can easily see this from the pictures. Although the one item I must point out is the SD Card Slot, which is on the right side. There is a blank filler card that must be removed when you want to use your own SD card. While the addition of a full-size SD slot is very welcome, there is nothing to cover the slot once your card is in there.
So your hand will frequently rub against the sharp inside edges of the plastic casing. I'm normally not a big fan of plastic covers, but in this instance, it would have been very nice to have. If you're planning on getting a case, this won't likely be an issue.
WIRELESS:
I've tested both wireless and GPS extensively and found them to both perform very well. I'm able to maintain a solid WiFi connection even at the furthest reaches of my Access Point. And GPS can actually pick up a few satellite in-doors, which is always impressive. Outside I can get accuracy down to less than 18ft, within 1-2 minutes. This of course was verified with the GPS Test application.
PERFORMANCE:
Overall the device is very snappy and I haven't had any issues that I didn't run into with the other Tegra3 devices on Android 4.0.3. There are still a few occasional bugs or glitches with ICS, which I hope they'll resolve soon. Otherwise, nothing specific to the AT305.
Antutu scored a 10,313 and Quadrant is right at 4,000. I've seen slightly higher Antutu scores on the A510, which was closer to 11k. Although as I recall, this is the highest Quadrant score I've seen to date. Keeping in mind that both devices I had scored nearly identical. And in either case, the scores are subjective and personally don't put a whole lot of faith in them.
Until they have some new benchmarks that really take advange of the quad core CPU and Tegra3, they're just something to give you interesting numbers to look at. :) Real world tests are where it's at. Speaking of which, playing Tegra 3 games is smooth and they all run expectedly nice. Surfing the web, running apps, and other such tasks are all as expected. Quite good.
After watching movies and playing games, I got temps as high as 93 degrees on the back, right side. This was determined by my infrared thermometer. It's not as cool as the 85 degree TF201 but also nowhere near the 106+ degree A510. So I consider that to be on the warm side, but not uncomfortably so. I think the material on the back Toshiba uses helps to dissipate the heat so it doesn't "feel" hot or uncomfortable.
While surfing or running normal apps, the temps were staying in the 80's where it should be.
DISPLAY:
Starting positive here, the LCD does look very nice. In fact, of the TF201 and A510, it's the nicest I've seen. Even though it's not IPS (it's TFT as I recall), it looks great. The images are very crisp, colors are vibrant, and it has surprisingly good contrast ratio. The best part is that they've found a very nice color temperature balance.
While the A510 was very cool and the TF201 was on the warm side, I found the AT305 to quite neutral. This makes it very pleasing to use whether you are reading, surfing, playing games, or watching a movie.
But of course we can't ignore the negative part of this. There is light bleed, and it just makes me very sad. You won't notice this on any normal colorful image. But if you're watching a movie or looking at a picture that has a black background at the edges, you'll see a very uneven amount of light emitting from the sides. And the more you turn up the brightness, the worse it is.
In fact, just powering on the tablet, you'll see this on the Toshiba logo as it has a black background. It was exactly the same with both AT305's I got. And it's not something I ever experienced with any other tablet I've owned or used. Normally, this is considered a defect and swapping it out would resolve the issue. But based on my experience and countless other reviews/posts on-line, this is quite common with the AT305.
Whether you call it a defect, poor build quality, or a cheap display, it's not desirable.
BATTERY:
Just in general, when you make something smaller, you tend to make some sacrifices. In this case, it was the battery life. To test it out, I started with a fully charged battery. Then basically used it non-stop until I got down to 20% remaining, at which point we were right at 6 hours of usage. This isn't very good. Although keeping mind this is "heavy" usage. I was downloading a bunch of apps, playing games, watching movies, and even ran a benchmark or two during that time.
So I'd say heavy usage, you're looking at 7+ hours. Personally I don't like allowing the battery get much lower than 20%, so that's normally about the time I'm looking for a power cord. And yes, the power adapter is straight out of the 90's. There's no reason it needs to be that big; but it is, and I got over it.
For me, with "normal usage," I'm easily lasting the entire day on a single charge. This is mostly because I don't use it non-stop and spend most of the time checking e-mail or surfing the web. And overall, it's a fair compromise for its light weight and thinness.
SPEAKERS:
As with the A510, the AT305 has down-firing speakers at the bottom, and there are in fact two of them (unlike the TF201). They are backed by Toshiba and SRS enhancements, which are definitely needed. If these sound enhancements are turned off, the sound is horrible. But with them on, the speakers actually sound pretty descent.
I do suggest turning on the "boost" function if it's not loud enough. Surprisingly even with that turned on and volume maxed out, there is no distortion. The A510's speakers still sound noticeably better as there is most detail and they have a fuller sound. The TF305 has a tendency to sound a bit muffled at times, depending on how you're holding it.
I still wish they'd put them forward facing. Otherwise, I find them perfectly acceptable and wouldn't mind watching a few shows or demoing the device to friends.
So let's wrap this one up.
Pros:
+ Looks very nice
+ Light weight and thin
+ Tegra 3 Performance
+ Full-size SD Card Slot
+ USB functionality
+ Descent stereo speakers
+ Gorilla Glass
Cons:
LCD Light Bleed
Only "OK" battery life
No SD Card Slot Cover (when in use)
Considering specs (16GB model), could be a bit cheaper
CONCLUSION:
So how bad is the light bleed? It's annoying enough that this is getting returned. I've been in the IT field for nearly 2 decades and have repaired so many computers and electronics (including many LCD's), I wouldn't even want to guess as to how many. In other words, I know a defect when I see one. :) However, my lovely wife did play with this for a while and she did "volunteer" to take it off my hands even after showing her the light bleed. It didn't bother her one bit, which I'm sure will be the case for many other folks out there.
So my search for a solid Android tablet continues. On the plus side, I think we're getting closer! Just give me all of the good features from Asus, Acer, and Toshiba, and we'll have one killer tablet on our hands. Come on folks, it can't be that hard to spend $400-$500 on a tablet without making compromises.I received this tablet (the 32GB version) on Tuesday and after a couple days to get used to it here's what I found;
Overall I really like the tablet. It's fast, very fast, very thin & light, runs most apps without any issues (some apps won't work with it but this is only because the developers haven't put it on the list of compatible devices. i.e. Lets Golf 3 won't run on it, I'm sure it will be updated to work though. This tablet definitely has enough power to run it). There's no way I've found to root it yet though. I'll keep it as I'm sure someone will come up with a way sooner than later.
Some other reviewers have said the sound is too low. This is fixable by going into the audio enhancement settings and click on SRS sound boost. With this on the volume is just fine. The stereo separation is very good too (two speakers located on the bottom side of the device)
This tablet has a pretty big proprietary connector on the supplied USB cable. It should last a while, it better be tough for the size of it. This brings up an interesting point. When you plug in the tablet with this cable to your computer, nothing happens other than it will charge the tablet. On all of our computers (5 of them) windows wouldn't recognize the tablet was attached. When you plug in the tablet with a micro USB cable the computer will recognize it. It's a bummer they use a huge connector on a cable that only charges the tablet and then only at 5v. Takes a long time to charge. On the upside you can use external battery pack chargers (you can get 10000+mAh batteries for around $60 on Amazon that will provide a lot of spare power.
Toshiba tech support from my limited experience with them is awful. I called about transferring files via the supplied cable and they were no help.
I also had an issue using the USB host functionality trying to use an external hard drive and found via their tech support it will only support drives formatted to exFAT, FAT or FAT32. DOES NOT support drives formatted to NTFS. This is very odd... I had to back up a 750GB Oyen Digital hard drive, reformat it and then transfer the files (mostly movies and TV shows) back to it. Took forever. Now that the drive is formatted to exFAT it works perfectly. Just plug it in using a micro USB host cable (purchased separately) and viola, it shows up on the file explorer (both the stock file explorer and ES file explorer).
PROS:
* It's very light and thin
* It's super-fast. I scored a little over 10300 on AnTuTu benchmark, and this is with the tablet loaded up with apps (my xoom would only do 6700 or so). Once I can root it and overclock it a bit I'm sure it'll be one of the fastest tablets around.
* Full sized SD card support. I'm using a 64GB card and it works great. I'm sure it'll handle a 128GB card. If I spring for one I'll update this review if it doesn't.
* Some of the bloatware is un-installable (the demo app, games etc.). You don't need to unable them, but that is an option if you want to keep them on the device.
* Screen image is sharp (although there is a fair amount of light bleed see the cons)
* Gorilla Glass
* Handles 1080p video well, although the native video players doesn't handle many video formats. Use "MX Player", free on the market and will play anything.
* Screen is very responsive. Almost too responsive, when you go to touch an icon if your finger is moving at all left or right it will start to scroll the page and you'll need to touch the icon again to open the app.
* Very good wifi and GPS reception.
* Stock browser works great. Haven't had a force close yet (this would happen all the time on my Xoom, even after I upgraded it to ICS).
* USB host functionality is great (many devices need to be rooted to get this to work).
* Charging off of a standard USB port is nice, but it takes a long time to fully charge.
* Battery life is pretty good. I've been getting around 8 hours of actual use (mix of streaming vids, checking email, etc).
* Boot time is fast. I clocked 55 seconds from off to the lock screen showing up and then another 10-15 seconds for widgets to load.
CONS:
* Lots of light bleed. Not very noticeable if you're watching something with a lot of light but during dark scenes it's a little annoying.
* Proprietary charging cable that only seems to charge the tablet.
* Charging takes a looong time
* No way to root yet. After some digging around it looks like it might be awhile before a rooting method is released... This is a real bummer.
* Can only handle FAT formats if you use an external hard drive.
* Some apps aren't compatible with it, yet.
* You have to click the notification area a few times sometimes to get it to open up.
That's about it. Overall I really like this tablet and can't wait for a rooting method to be released. If I notice anything else that needs to be addressed I'll update this review. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll help if I can!Update to this review 06/04/12:
I have had one of those 180 moments where I leaned to the A510, but now prefer the T305 (I have both at the moment):
1. The right side heat of the A510 is getting annoying. Even viewing PDF files results in very warm to hot on the right side. The Excite barely gets warm even when playing 3D games.
2. The USB location on the A510 makes having the nice feature not practical. Having it on the bottom is pure stupid and flipping the tablet upside down still makes using it awkward.
3. After having the 305 a few days I really ntocie the vertical lcd array lines on the A510. The Excite does not have these.
4. Touch response is better on the Excite
5. Having a 128GB sd card formatted to exFAT works well and better than expected.
I am returning the A510 and will keep the Excite. Very ironic.
End
I appreciate the Asus 300 and Prime are also good tablets, but the 300's build is flimsy and needs a special cable for data transfer. The Prime has weak wifi due to the panel design, so IMO it is a current match between the Excite 10 and the Acer A510 (I am putting the Excite first, since this IS the product page for it):
Build = Excite. I thought the A510 was built well, but the Excite is a work of art and design and has Gorilla glass.
Comfort to hold = Tie. The Acer feels better to hold and grip, but the Excite is lighter and does not get hot on the right like the A510 can.
Performance/Speed = Excite, but barely. Benchmarks are a tad higher and seems to have a little better response.
Display = A510 (but subjective). The contrast is better and no light bleed around the edges that the Excite has. Some may prefer the slightly warmer color though. Still, both are 1280X800 and neither in the same league the iPad 3, but no others are.
Sound = A510. Fuller sound and better stereo effect, plus output to TV sounds better for surround sound. Both tablets have sound features that need activation for better sound.
File system = A510. My 1TB NTSF drive works great and can play 1080p MKV movies from it. The catch is can not charge at same time, so good the battery is so huge. I also had a Toshiba Thrive before and like the Excite, third party apps did not work well with files. Comic apps would not delete files either, so had to use the stock file manager. A510 works with everything thrown at it, but constrained to the file manager on the Excite.
Ports = Tie. Excite has full SD slot (nice), but the special connector is needed for charging. No special connector needed for the A510, so easier to find other charging options IF you forget or lose the charger. You are SOL if you misplace the Excite charger connector.
Battery life = A510. No contest here. About three hours longer with similar medium and heavy use (Web browsing, stream Netflix, Amazon on demand, local video, gaming and comic reading).
Though both are nice tablets, I give the win to the A510 due to better battery life and file management. That said, the Excite is a nice tablet.
Added: I wish Toshiba (and other OEMs) used the file system same drivers as Acer. Mobiletech review mentions this too, so not just me going crazy.
Added 2: Both have real good wifi and another plus for the A510 is 16gb more internal storage for the same price as the Excite.
No comments:
Post a Comment