Hands-On With Toshiba's Excite X10 Tablet

LAS VEGAS – Toshiba announced the slim Excite X10 Android tablet today, an international version of the AT200 tablet shown back in September.

The Excite X10 is much slimmer and lighter than Toshiba's existing 10-inch tablet, the Thrive. It's a mere .3 inches thick, with a magnesium alloy back and a groove running around its brushed-metal side. It has a full complement of ports, but they're tiny ones: MicroUSB, MicroHDMI, and MicroSD. The tablet also has stereo speakers, a lock switch and hard volume buttons on the edge.

The tablet also has a 5-megapixel camera which captures 720p video, along with GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The advances here are in design: the tablet zips along with a 1.2Ghz dual-core TI OMAP4430 processor, but that isn't quite cutting edge in the era of Nvidia Tegra 3.

I got a little while with a pre-production Japanese version of the X10, and it's indeed a slim and handsome tablet. The model I was using ran a somewhat customized version of Android Honeycomb 3.2 with some Toshiba extensions. Those included a custom app store with tablet apps to supplement the Android Market, a custom e-book store, and a new media player that can play files from Wi-Fi servers.

The tablet didn't feel very heavy at 1.2 pounds, but it also felt considerably more hard-edged and industrial than Samsung's sleek, tapered Galaxy Tab line. The 10.1-inch, 1280-by-800 Gorilla Glass screen was pretty reflective.

The new version of Android, 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" is coming to the tablet this spring, Toshiba said, and the tablet will either be launched with it or it will be supplied shortly after launch as an upgrade.

The Excite X10 will be available for $529 this spring in the U.S., Toshiba said.

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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