You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
It’s a tricky thing to name your devices after a verb. And when we say “tricky,” we mean ill-advised. That Toshiba could willfully overlook Excite as a magnet for terrible (and terribly negative) puns speaks to its distance from the tablet category (remember the Thrive?). Yet, here we have another generation of Excite tablets and this, the Excite Write, is the line’s top-shelf offering. Its Wacom digitizer and included stylus mean this tablet can go toe to toe with the Note 10.1; both have the same screen size and 1,024 degrees of pressure sensitivity. But where Samsung’s outsized Note skimped on the HD resolution, Toshiba’s gone the opposite direction. Boasting a 2,560 x 1,600 display, a Wacom digitizer, a Tegra 4 heart, 2GB of RAM and Harman Kardon speakers, the Write is a welcome chord change in an otherwise uneventful 10-inch Android fugue. Of course, the catch to all of this premium goodness is a premium price: $600 in this case. You still there?
Gallery: Toshiba Excite Write review
Filed under: Tablets
Could three times be a charm for Toshiba? After striking out with its “Thrive” Android tablets and then coming up a bit short with the “Excite” line, the company is completely scrapping its tablet lineup and replacing it with three new models. These include the Excite Pure, Excite Pro and Excite Write, and while they share the same plastic design, 10-inch form factor, ports and Android 4.2 OS, they each offer something a little different on the inside. Starting with the Pure, it’s a $300 tablet running with last year’s specs — namely, a Tegra 3 SoC, a 1,280 x 800 screen with Gorilla Glass 1 and no rear camera whatsoever. Storage is capped at 16GB, but since all of these have a microSD slot, 16GB or 32GB isn’t really a hard limit. Moving up the line, the Excite Pro steps up to a Tegra 4 chip, 32GB of storage, an 8MP rear camera, Harman Kardon sound and a 2,560 x 1,600, 300-ppi Gorilla Glass 2 screen to match the Nexus 10.
As you can see in the shot above, it was meant to be used with an optional keyboard case, though you can technically use that dock with any of these tablets, since they all share the same hardware. That will arrive in early July for $500, putting it in line with the iPad and other premium tablets like the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity. Finally, the Excite Write is exactly what it sounds like: a tablet with pen support. Specifically, it has a Wacom digitizer with support for 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity. Accordingly, Toshiba is also pre-loading its own TruNote and TruCapture apps to assist with note-taking. That digitizer aside, the Write shares all the same specs as the Excite Pro: Tegra 4, 32GB of storage, an 8-megapixel camera and a 10.1-inch, 2,560 x 1,600 display. This, too, will be available next month, with an MSRP of $600. In the meantime, check out our hands-on photos after the break.
Filed under: Tablets
Toshiba has spent a surprising amount of time at the high-end of the tablet world this year with devices like the Excite 7.7 and Excite 13. It’s taking an opposite tack going into the all-important holiday season. The AT300SE spotted earlier this year (likely to be called the Excite 10SE in North America) has been made official for the UK, and it’s all about catering to the starter audience without tarnishing the core experience. The 10.1-inch slate is slightly thicker and heavier than its regular AT300 (Excite 10) cousin and scales back the cameras to 3 megapixels at the back and 1.2 at the front, but it preserves the quad-core Tegra 3 and 1,280 x 800 IPS-based display that we know so well. There’s even a slight advantage to having held out for the frugal model: the AT300SE ships with Jelly Bean from the outset, which could leave it feeling faster than its Ice Cream Sandwich-toting predecessors. At £300 ($476), the lone 16GB model due this fall isn’t officially as cheap as the AT300 on the street, although we wouldn’t be surprised to see the real-world cost drop lower. We’re mostly left wondering if the as yet unconfirmed Excite 10SE could beat the slimmer original’s $400 price in the US.
Filed under: Tablets
Toshiba AT300SE tablet launches for the budget British crowd with Jelly Bean, Tegra 3 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
If you’re Toshiba, what do you do when you’re looking to goose interest in the Excite 10 tablet? Roll out a quick follow up, of course. Accordingly, the FCC has just recently cleared a refreshed tablet, the AT300SE, that the Bluetooth SIG suggests will be called the Excite 10SE in North America. As shown, it’s a European-spec WiFi model that gives away little by itself. It’s when we combine this with the Bluetooth listing and speed tests that a clearer picture of the upgrade emerges — there’s been an AT300SE in GLBenchmark’s performance charts that we’ve seen running Jelly Bean (unavailable to current Excites) on top of what looks to be the familiar 1,280 x 800 display and 1.3GHz Tegra 3. While there may be other surprises lurking in areas the tests can’t reach, the documents point to a quick nip-and-tuck from Toshiba to keep tablet sales afloat rather than a full overhaul.
Filed under: Tablets
Toshiba Excite 10SE / AT300SE gets caught visiting the FCC, may tout Jelly Bean originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Oct 2012 23:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Toshiba is one of the few Japanese tech giants to be riding high from a cash standpoint, but the company is still looking for ways to trim the fat — not to mention get some fresh design in the process. The firm is merging the design team for its Regza TVs into the same western Tokyo facility that houses its PC and tablet groups. While there’s a certain amount of cost-cutting involved, the shift will help “fusion products,” Toshiba says, where TV influences PCs and tablets (or vice versa) like so much chocolate getting into peanut butter. The only amount of discord left might be in Toshiba’s TV production, where quality and production controls are being outsourced and more of the production itself is leaving Japan. As much as we’d argue that the Excite 13 is almost too much like a TV to begin with, we’ll only find out whether or not there’s merit to Toshiba’s design nirvana after the groups get cozy with each other later this year.
Continue reading Toshiba unites PC, tablet and TV design groups, aims for hub of digital harmony
Filed under: Desktops, Home Entertainment, Laptops, Tablet PCs
Toshiba unites PC, tablet and TV design groups, aims for hub of digital harmony originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Well, this lede pretty much wrote itself. A 13-inch tablet, seriously? Toshiba is pushing the form factor limits with the Excite 13, and while its dimensions make it stand out in a sea of 7- and 10-inch devices, that isn’t necessarily what tablet buyers are looking for.
There’s no shortage of skepticism about such a large slate — “slab” seems appropriate here — so the Toshiba Excite 13 needs to provide an exceptional experience, with a brilliant display and smooth graphics, to make 2.2 pounds seem more palatable. On paper, its specs are promising: there’s a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU under the hood, a 1600 x 900 display at 138 ppi and a clean build of Android 4.0. The company already has the Excite 7.7 and Excite 10 in its arsenal, and their good performance and bright displays make for compelling tablets. But how does a 13-inch tablet that starts at $650 round out that trio? Read on for our full impressions.
Gallery: Toshiba Excite 13 review
Continue reading Toshiba Excite 13 review: a big-screened tablet with a price to match
Toshiba Excite 13 review: a big-screened tablet with a price to match originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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