Toshiba gives 7-inch Android tablets another shot with the $170 Excite 7 (hands-on)

Back over the summer when Toshiba refreshed its tablet lineup, it appeared that the company was pulling out all the stops: two of its new models had super-sharp 2,560 x 1,600 screens and made use of NVIDIA's new Tegra 4 chip. At the high end, one even allowed for pen input, thanks to a pressure-sensitive Wacom digitizer. There was, however, at least one glaring omission: there were no smaller-screened tablets in the lineup, and none of them cost less than $300. Well, lest you think Toshiba was giving up on the budget space, it just started selling the Excite 7, a 7-inch Android slate priced at $170.

This is something of a full-circle moment for Toshiba. If you recall, the company's first 7-inch tablet suffered from cheap build quality and short battery life. Then, Toshiba overcompensated by coming out with the Excite 7.7, which rocked a vibrant AMOLED screen and featured what was then a top-of-the-line Tegra 3 processor. It cost $500, the same as nice 10-inch tablet, and not many people bought it. Now, the company's back with the Excite 7, and it clearly falls in that first category, if only because the price is so low. Heck, who are we kidding? The specs are low-end, too. For the money, you get 8GB of built-in storage (expandable via microSD), along with a quad-core 1.6GHz Rockchip processor, 1GB of RAM, dual 3MP/0.3MP cameras and a 1,024 x 600 display.

Filed under: Tablets

Comments

Source: Toshiba