Long before the Toshiba Excite 7.7 got its name, its prospects were cause for excitement. The tablet's beefy Nvidia Tegra 3-powered specs, its slim and lightweight design, its Android 4.02 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and its high-resolution AMOLED display all made it a front-runner challenger on paper.
Now
that it's here, I can report that this model fully lives up to its
potential. The only disappointment lies with its steep price: $500 for
the 16GB version--the same as the larger-screen third-generation iPad
costs--and $580 for the 32GB model.
Next to the iPad's pricing, the Toshiba Excite 7.7 (previously seen at Mobile World Congress as the Toshiba AT270)
feels astronomically expensive. That said, it comes in priced just 11
percent higher than the next closest competitor, the Verizon Samsung
Galaxy Tab 7.7, which is $450 with a two-year contract. Granted, the
Verizon model handles 4G LTE wireless communications, but that tablet is
also stuck on last year's Android 3.x Honeycomb operating system. And its dual-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 it's in keeping with the design
of the 10.1-inch and 13.0-inch models in the Excite lineup, sporting a
bronze-colored, textured aluminum back with matching plastic edges and
well-defined buttons for the volume rocker, power, and rotation-lock
slider.
The design is deceptive: Though the Excite 7.7 lacks the contour of
the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, the two models are of identical depth, 0.31
inch. The Excite 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 (or 0.2 pound).
Interestingly, the Toshiba tablet feels lighter in the hand, probably
due to the balance of the components inside.
The weight of the Excite 7.7 is actually one of the more enticing
features, as it indicates that LCD-based tablets are starting to
approach a weight that's conducive for one-handed operation. The Excite
7.7 is not as featherlight as current E Ink-based e-readers are (some
e-readers are half the Excite's weight), but it is notably light when
held one-handed--a critical distinction, and advantage, for a smaller
tablet like this. After all, many users like to hold their slate
one-handed when they're reading, and the Excite 7.7's high-resolution
display makes it ideal for that activity.
High-Res Display
The high-resolution AMOLED display is another major cause for
excitement here. Android tablets have been painfully slow to get on the
bandwagon of higher-pixel-density displays, and this model is one of the
few to do so. At 1280 by 800 pixels, the display has 196 pixels per
inch, not as dense as what the current 9.7-inch iPad has, but far better
than what the 1024-by-600 Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
delivers. In my hands-on trials, text looked lovely in ebooks and Web
pages, smooth and solidly rendered--and a welcome contrast to the
pixelation I've seen on the lower-res competition. The
16:10-aspect-ratio display uses Corning Gorilla Glass and supports
ten-finger multitouch, and it was highly responsive when I tried it.
Toshiba says the display is comparable to Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus
technology, and I'd have to agree after a side-by-side comparison.
Colors looked identical, with similarly high saturation but no
oversaturation. The Samsung display was slightly better at handling
blacks and whites; Toshiba's screen crushed the blacks and washed out
the brightest whites in our grayscale-image test. Beyond that, though,
the Toshiba tablet simply excelled at images, producing eye-popping
color and reasonably good skin tones. On one of our standard test
images, the Excite 7.7 provided one of the better representations we've
seen of the skin tones and clothing; it lacked the moiré pattern evident
on the Samsung model, though whether this result is due to the
difference in operating systems (with the Samsung tablet still on
Android 3.x) or 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 Gallery app had fuzzy thumbnails, and
needed a moment to render fully when opened.
The last piece of big news about the Excite 7.7 is its Nvidia Tegra 3
processor. Tegra 3 is terrific for gaming; on our GL Benchmark tests,
the Excite 7.7 performed in line with other Tegra 3 tablets. Games
looked great on the display as well.
Additional Features
The Excite 7.7 has a MicroSD card slot (which supports up to
MicroSDXC cards) and a Micro-USB On-The-Go port on the bottom, along
with a conveniently placed (for landscape use) headphone jack. It also
has a 2-megapixel front camera and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with
flash, plus a proprietary docking connector for charging. The connector
is larger and bulkier than most, as on previous Toshiba tablets;
however, the unit appeared to charge more quickly in my hands-on tests
(formal results and full battery life tests still to come).
Toshiba hasn't customized Android 4.0 much on the Excite 7.7, but the
company has preinstalled some handy widget icons on the home screen;
these widgets group related apps together for easy access. The company
also tosses in a slew of useful apps and a handful of games to get you
started.
The Toshiba Excite 7.7's zippy performance, light weight, and
terrific display make for great usability. Now, if only the price of
admission to this particular tablet ride weren't so high.
Specification Toshiba Excite 7.7
| General | 2G Network | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
| 3G Network | HSDPA | |
| SIM | Mini-SIM | |
| Announced | 2012, April | |
| Status | Available. Released 2012, July | |
| Body | Dimensions | 204.5 x 135.2 x 7.8 mm (8.05 x 5.32 x 0.31 in) |
| Weight | 332 g (11.71 oz) | |
| Display | Type | AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors |
| Size | 1280 x 800 pixels, 7.7 inches (~196 ppi pixel density) | |
| Multitouch | Yes, up to 10 fingers | |
| Protection | Corning Gorilla Glass | |
| Sound | Alert types | Vibration, MP3 ringtones |
| Loudspeaker | Yes, with stereo speakers | |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes | |
| - SRS sound enhancement | ||
| Memory | Card slot | microSD, up to 32 GB |
| Internal | 16/32/64 GB storage, 1 GB RAM | |
| Data | GPRS | Yes |
| EDGE | Yes | |
| Speed | HSDPA, HSUPA | |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot | |
| Bluetooth | Yes, v3.0 | |
| USB | Yes, miniUSB v2.0 | |
| Camera | Primary | 5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash |
| Features | Geo-tagging | |
| Video | Yes, 720p | |
| Secondary | Yes, 2 MP | |
| Features | OS | Android OS, v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) |
| Chipset | Nvidia Tegra 3 | |
| CPU | Quad-core 1.5 GHz | |
| GPU | ULP GeForce 2 | |
| Sensors | Accelerometer, gyro, compass | |
| Messaging | Email, Push Mail, IM, RSS | |
| Browser | HTML, Adobe Flash | |
| Radio | No | |
| GPS | Yes, with A-GPS support | |
| Java | Yes, via Java MIDP emulator | |
| Colors | Dark gray metallic | |
| - MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player | ||
| - MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV player | ||
| - Organizer | ||
| - Document viewer | ||
| - Photo editor | ||
| - Voice memo | ||
| - Predictive text input | ||
| Battery | Non-removable Li-Po battery (15 Wh) | |
| Stand-by | ||
| Talk time |
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