BARCELONA—Toshiba is packing Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 processor into the slimmest tablet we've seen yet. The AT270 is the 7.7-inch sibling of Toshiba's very skinny 10-inch Excite X10, which we saw at CES, and it's able to play some serious console-style games yet still slip into a jacket pocket. I spent some time with the tablet here at Mobile World Congress.
The AT270 is just about as thick as its 3.5-mm headphone jack. The back is textured plastic, while the front—slightly unfortunately—is glossy glass. The 1280-by-800 AMOLED screen is sharp, though I'm a little worried about outdoor viewability. The tablet has a MicroSD memory card slot tucked into the side, and cameras on the front and back; I couldn't catch the megapixel number. The tablet will come in 16, 32, and 64GB capacities.
Nvidia wants to show off how this tablet games, and it plays well. Most Tegra 3 devices actually work pretty similarly, but the advantage here is the sweet-spot, seven-inch form factor; it's big enough for you to be able to dive into complex graphics (unlike on a tiny phone screen) but small enough (and slim enough!) to still be able to carry around easily.
Zen Pinball played very smoothly, with all of its lighting and sound effects intact. The puzzle game Sprinkle had the extra smoke and water effects that are exclusive to Tegra 3. I also briefly played a new Tegra 3-exclusive game called Golden Arrow, a third-person, hack-and-slash adventure game with very smooth action and great landscapes.
This isn't the only 7-to-8-inch, Tegra 3 tablet around at Mobile World Congress; ZTE has the T98, which the company also showed at CES. But Toshiba is clearly going for premium design here, with what is one of the slimmest tablets on the market.
There aren't many details on the AT270 in terms of pricing and release date, but when I handled an earlier prototype at CES, Toshiba said it would come out "in the second half of the year."
For more check out the MWC photo gallery below, and our complete Mobile World Congress coverage.