Toshiba Excite X10 vs Toshiba Thrive | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

When the outcome of a certain design is considered as a failure by the majority, the manufacturer has to do their level best to avert the image caused by that. One of the particular ways they would pursue is to come up with a new design to replace the old one and promote it well. But when the predecessor is not an utter failure yet unpopular, then the choice they have to make is hard. The key is to adjust the time between two releases to maximize the predecessor throughput without entirely tarnishing the brand and releasing the successor at the recession. But then, sometimes you have no option but to release it with the pressure from the events in the market. The counter argument is also true, sometimes; you have to wait for events in the market to unleash your product. In the case of what we are going to discuss today, the latter has happened.

When Toshiba released Toshiba Thrive to the market, it was a good device, yet it was not so popular. It was apparently released in July, and the market share it has acquired has been relatively low. So in the light of these events, Toshiba announced the release of Toshiba Excite, which comes as a successor for Toshiba Thrive. Unfortunately, we think that they were actually waiting for the CES 2012 to release the Excite X10 for optimum impact, but then that has caused some damage to Toshiba’s reputation in the tablet market. That is why keeping them in balance is so important. We will talk about why Toshiba Thrive wasn’t a deal magnet, while how Toshiba has improved their design in Toshiba Excite X10 with this comparison.

Toshiba Excite X10

We’ve seen some pretty impressive tablets at the CES 2012, and Toshiba Excite X10 is one of them, of course it isn’t on the elite lineup, but nonetheless, we are impressed. The 10.1 inch tablet has a LED backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels at 149ppi pixel density. The screen is of good quality, and we like the color reproduction of the panel. The resolution is top notch too, although with Asus and Acer hitting the 1920 x 1200 pixels, this one seems history. Nonetheless, we have to admit it’s a great resolution. It has 1.2GHz dual core processor on top of TI OMAP 4430 chipset with PowerVR SGX540 GPU. The setup is boosted by 1GB of RAM. Excite X10 runs on Android OS v3.2 Honeycomb while Toshiba promises an upgrade. We find that Honeycomb commands the resources well, but ICS must be the ideal choice. The UI looks clean, and there are some upgrades to the layout too, especially the media player has been upgraded with their own design and it’s rather neat and beautiful.

On the optics department, Toshiba Excite X10 comes with 5MP camera with autofocus and LED flash with geo tagging and the camera can capture 720p HD videos at 30 frames per second. The front facing camera can be used for video conferencing along with Bluetooth v2.1. Toshiba Excite is one of those tablets that defines it’s connectivity through wi-fi. The Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n adapter enables it to connect to any hotspot that is available. It also has DLNA to enable wireless streaming of rich media content. It has two storage options, 16GB and 32GB, and since it has the microSD slot that can be used to expand the memory, we won’t complain. We have been talking about the core functions of the tablet, but let’s get back to what’s special in Toshiba Excite X10 as Toshiba promotes it. The Toshiba Excite is the thinnest tablet in the market as per their claim, and we have to go with that for the moment. It counts for really a light tablet as well scoring a thickness of 7.7mm and weight of 535g. The device comes in black, and the black plate has an expensive look since they have textured it with Magnesium Alloy. We were told that the battery can drive the tablet for a duration of 8 hours straight from a charge.

Toshiba Thrive

After you’ve read the introduction, if you’re in the assumption that Thrive is of bad breed, that’s not the case. It’s a decent tablet but just not as friendly as the rest of the tablets and thus unpopular among the audience. It has a 10.1 inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors featuring a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels at 149ppi pixel density. It was released in July, and at that time, this resolution was the best in the market. We have no issues with the screen at all; the panel is simply awesome and reproduces natural colors while giving the ability to be used in broad daylight. One of the main complaints from the consumers is that Thrive is too bulky. This is indeed true for it is 272mm long, 175mm wide and 15mm thick. You can forget the length and the width, but the thickness is just too much for a modern tablet. This might be because it featured a USB v2.0 port, but the tradeoff just isn’t correct. It is also unnecessarily hefty with a weight of 771g. This is actually where it didn’t appeal to customers. Despite been a tablet with good performance, it lacked the necessary ergonomics to keep the consumer satisfaction.

Toshiba has included 1GHz cortex A9 dual core processor on top of Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset along with ULP Geforce GPU and 1GB of RAM. The system runs on Android OS v3.2 Honeycomb, and it is unlikely that Toshiba would give an upgrade to ICS. This is an issue, but not a major one since Gingerbread indeed manages to control the resources just as effectively in this setup. It has 5MP came with autofocus and a 2MP front camera for video conferencing bundled with Bluetooth v2.1. As the successor, Thrive also defines it’s connectivity through Wi-Fi, having a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n adapter. It comes in three storage options, 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB with the option to expand the storage using a microSD card. There are no substantiated reports on the battery performance of Toshiba Thrive, but we reckon it will be somewhere around 7 to 8 hours. 

Conclusion

We have given a wrap at the introduction itself, so there’s no doubt that you would have understood what’s coming. Toshiba Excite X10 is obviously better than Toshiba Thrive, and that is the reason why they have pushed Excite X10 into the market. Let us discuss how exactly Excite X10 is better than Toshiba Thrive. To start with, as we have been saying, the general complaint was that Thrive was hefty and bulky. Toshiba has not only addressed that issue in Excite, but they have made it the thinnest and one of the lightest tablets in the market. This itself is a great leap for Toshiba. They have also redesigned the ergonomics to fit easily in hand for extended amounts of times. That is about the major differences between Excite and Thrive. There’s a slight improvement in the processor overclocked at 1.2GHz and a change of chipset to TI OMAP 4430 from Nvidia Tegra 2. There are also some improvements in the UI, and the Magnesium Alloy back plate is an eye catcher. Finally, comes the price factor where we tend to see a problem. The 16GB version is priced at $529, which is very steep, whereas the other tablets leading the industry are well below that marker, even the Apple iPad 2. So this may not be appealing to a larger audience, nonetheless, if you’re in for it, go for it, because Toshiba Excite X10 sure is an impressive tablet.

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