Toshiba is certainly no stranger to manufacturing Android tablets as we got to review their Excite 10 LE a few months ago. We were impressed with the Excite 10 LE’s light and thin body, although its overall experience was just average when compared to competing Android tablets. Toshiba is hoping to make their Android tablets stand out a little bit more with upcoming line of Excite tablets that range from an entry-level tablet up to a more decked out Android tablet which uses a stylus.
During a showcase event held in New York City last week, Toshiba unveiled three new Android tablets which will slowly replace their current line of tablets: the Excite Pure, Excite Pro and Excite Write. All three Android tablets feature a 10-inch screen, the same form factor, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and all include micro-HDMI, micro-USB and micro-SD ports, but their internal specs differ from one another. The first tablet, the Excite Pure, is Toshiba’s entry-level tablet which features a Tegra 3 processor, a 1280 x 800 resolution, 16GB of storage, front-facing 1.2MP camera, DTS tuning and is being priced at $299. There aren’t many 10-inch entry-level tablets on the market, especially priced for less than $300, so we’re sure this will be a tablet you’ll want to keep an eye on if you don’t want to just make due with an 8-inch or lower sized tablet.
The next step up in Toshiba’s new Android tablet offerings is the Excite Pro, which is being priced at $499 and comes in 16GB or 32GB storage options. The Excite Pro features an improved resolution over the Pure with its 2560 x 1600 display with 300 ppi, a Tegra 4 CPU, 8MP rear-facing camera, 1.2MP front-facing camera and the inclusion of harman / kardon speakers, which Toshiba makes note is a first for the company to include its partner’s speakers inside of its Android tablet. The $200 bump in price gets you a much improved Android tablet over the Excite Pure, but if you’re a consumer who wants a tablet that you can write on, the Excite Write may be exactly what you’re looking for.
Toshiba’s Excite Write is pretty much the same as the Excite Pure, except it comes with digitizer pen that allows you to write on the tablet, similar to what we’ve seen Samsung deliver with their line of Galaxy Note tablets. The difference between the Galaxy Note and the Excite Write is the fact the digitizer pen looks and feels like an actual pen, rather than a slightly thicker stylus. The pen also is capable of up to 1024 different pressure points and allows you to change your pen point through buttons located on the pen.
Toshiba is also including a number of unique applications on the Excite Write, one of which is a notebook application that gives you a number of different notebooks to write in, such as notebooks that feature college-ruled pages, graph paper, etc. ThinkOffice is also being included with the Excite Write, which we’re sure many students or office workers will be happy to hear as they can work on their Word documents on the go.
Seeing how all of Toshiba’s new Android tablets have the same form factor, the company is also introducing a new optional bluetooth keyboard that will allow any one of them to be used. The bluetooth keyboard also doubles as a case, making it possible to fold up your Android tablet when you’re on the go, to then unfold it in order to make use of both the tablet and keyboard. At the time of this writing, Toshiba didn’t announce the price or availability for its bluetooth keyboard, but we’re sure it’ll at least be made available once their new tablets start rolling out.
Toshiba showed off a nice variety of Android tablets which we can certainly see its customers take advantage of, especially its Excite Pure, which offers an entry-level tablet within a 10-inch frame. Keep on a lookout for the Excite Pure, Excite Pro and Excite Write when they become available later this month.
