Toshiba AT200 Excite
The world's thinnest tablet, apparently
Review At only 7.7mm thick, Toshiba boasts that its new tablet is the slimmest yet and it’s a claim I can’t argue with either. Dubbed the Excite in the US and the rather less exciting AT200 elsewhere, Tosh's slim slab is 0.9mm thinner than the previous title holder, the Samsung Galaxy 10.1. While the Apple iPad 2 seems positively portly measuring up at 1.1mm thicker.
Thin as a rake, light as a feather: Toshiba's AT200
It’s also the lightest full-sized tablet I know of, weighing only 535g compared to the Samsung’s 565g and the iPad’s seemingly back-breaking, 601g.
At this point I’d usually have a quick rant about the perils of making things thinner at the expense of physical connectivity but Toshiba seems to have squared the circle by finding room for a microSD card slot as well as micro USB and mini HDMI ports.
Micro USB and Mini HDMI on-board
I can’t bring myself wail too loudly about the USB and HDMI ports not being full-sized and Toshiba certainly deserves a pat on the back for including a screen orientation lock next to the power and volume controls.
The slender dimensions have had an impact on rigidity, however. Give the AT200 a good twist and there is definitely some flex in the chassis. It doesn’t creek or groan nor does the screen ripple but it's not as solid a bit of kit as the Galaxy 10.1.
There's a dock connector too but no accessories for it
Regarding the AT200’s design, Toshiba has come over a bit square. The front and back are completely flat and the edges return at 90 degrees. Only the corners show a bit of curve, a design feature that's either wholly obvious or a patent blatant iPad rip-off, depending on your point of view.
Next page: Honeycomb centre
COMMENTS
ASUS + ICS = <3
Judging a technology company by it's support is like judging a restaurant by it's service. Both will vary immensely depending on who you're dealing with and what kind of day they've had. It's the device and software (or food) that you're after. As a one-man IT department in the SMB space I've had good and bad experiences with any manufacturer you'd like to come up with. In our office with have about a dozen Transformer TF101s and 2 Primes (for the execs). ICS runs flawlessly on all of them, built in VPN is transparent to the user, and I get to apply chrome group policy to every device and desktop at once. I was impressed enough with the TF101 I bought one myself. My non-techie wife liked it so much she went out and got an ASUS laptop. That too works great.
At work we also have a few iPads and one iPad2, but they pretty much just sit in the cabinet. They can't run our custom in-house apps and are basically only useful as toys in the break room. You are right to suggest that Honeycomb is an immature OS, even Google has admitted as much, but don't lump ASUS in with Toshiba's clearly colossal failure.
Spec is fine
We don't need crazy quad cores just to browse the web.
That said, the cost is too high.. and Honeycomb? Oh dear.
Slash £150 off and toss ICS on it and you have a nice piece of kit.
Re: Thinner...
You're making the assumption he's a fanboi, because he did a downer on Android?
Maybe he's just an Anti-fandroid?
Exactly right
I bought a 32GB Xoom from CPW last week for £250. Pretty good value I reckon, was a toss up between that and a PlayBook but wanted a 10 incher. Yes the Tosh is thinner and lighter but so what? Like the review says, too much, too late.
So a 2011 speced tablet launched in 2012?
See title, seems to be a bit pointless.
It's not fast enough for a current model, and is overpriced for budget one!?
