Late to the freshman class of Android Honeycomb tablets, the Toshiba Thrive finally arrives to market after being the first Honeycomb tablet announced at CES this year. The Thrive's design certainly stands out from the pack—the back panel is textured, rubberized, and swappable for one with a flashier color, for instance. The primary difference, however, is its thickness. When the HP TouchPad ($499, 3.5 stars) debuted earlier this month, it was panned for being too bulky, but sitting next to the Thrive, the TouchPad looks supermodel-skinny. A late arrival coupled with being the bulkiest yet of the Honeycomb tablets does not bode well for the Toshiba Thrive's chances of, well, thriving. Nor does its pricing, which is on the higher side when compared with same-capacity competitors. On the other hand, USB and HDMI ports, an SD card slot, and a user-replaceable battery offer flexibility that most tablets lack, and help make the Thrive one of the best Android tablets currently available.

The Thrive is available in three Wi-Fi-only models—8GB ($429.99 direct), 16GB ($479.99), and 32GB ($579.99—this is the model we tested). These prices do not line up favorably with the most of the Honeycomb tablets we've seen so far. For instance, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 (3.5 stars) starts at $30 less, for twice the storage of the 8GB Thrive. And there's an $80 price difference between the Asus tablet and the Thrive when you compare 16GB models. Other Wi-Fi-only tablets are more expensive than the Eee Pad Transformer TF101, but still manage to best the Thrive. The Acer Iconia Tab A500 (3.5 stars), for instance, is roughly $20 more expensive than the 8GB Thrive—but you get 16GB for that price, and when comparing the 16GB models head-to-head, the Acer tablet is $30 less expensive. The Thrive does manage to undercut the price of the reigning tablet champion, the Apple iPad 2 (4.5 stars), in both the 16GB and 32GB sizes, but with less-expensive Honeycomb options, it's not really a standout deal.

There's no other way but to just say it: At 7 by 10.8 by 0.6 inches (HWD), the Thrive is the fattest tablet released by a major manufacturer this year. It's almost as thick as a laptop. In fact, an iPad 2 stacked atop a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 ($499.99, 3.5 stars) measures about the same thickness as the Thrive on its own. (See the slideshow for the visual.) For its size, the Thrive isn't extremely heavy, but it is bulky.

Perhaps girth is the trade-off for top-notch connectivity. Surrounding the 10.1-inch, 16:10, 1,280-by-800-pixel touch screen is an array of ports and outputs that makes the Thrive more useful than most tablets. The top panel (when in horizontal mode) houses an SDXC card slot, on the right side there's Mini USB port (for syncing), HDMI and USB ports, a headphone jack, a microphone, and the power adapter connector. The two USB ports and the HDMI port are protected by a snap-shut, hard rubber cover. Stereo speakers are on either side of the lower panel, which has a dock connection (also protected by a cover) in the center. Power, Volume, and Screen Lock controls, as well as a battery charge indicator, are located in the left-hand portion of the top panel. The front-facing 2-megapixel camera lens is on the left side of the screen, which makes for awkward video chat angles when holding the tablet horizontally. The back panel of the Thrive is a black, rubberized surface that makes the tablet easy to grip. It houses the rear-facing, 5-megapixel camera lens, as well as the Toshiba logo. You can spice up the look of your Thrive by swapping out the basic black back panel for one of five optional colored panels, which cost $20 apiece on Toshiba's website.

Under the hood, the Thrive runs on Nvidia's dual-core, 1GHz Tegra 2 processor, just like all the other current Honeycomb tablets. The tablet also integrates GPS, an accelerometer, and a gyroscope, and ships with a sync cable, a charging cable-and-power adapter, three Thrive logo stickers, and some Quick Start and product guides. The battery is removable, which means you can swap out batteries on long trips, and you can replace the battery yourself when it eventually dies (extra cells will run you about $80 each online). A cover lock on the left-hand panel, when unlocked, allows you to pry off the back panel, which is a little awkward but not difficult, in order to access the battery. It's a surprise that other manufacturers haven't offered this battery access, and it's a clear advantage for Toshiba.

Our speed tests put the Thrive in familiar territory—all of the Honeycomb tablets have tested with similar results, owing mostly to the Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU inside all of them. The thrive ran Benchmark Pi a hair slower than the Motorola Xoom ($599, 3.5 stars) and the Acer Iconia A500, but is basically in the same league. Our Softweg benchmark test suite, which applies scores to CPU, Memory, Graphics, and File System performance, ranked the Thrive higher than the Xoom and most other Honeycomb tablets for Graphics, and about the same for all other tests. The screen response time of the Thrive feels fast—there's no lag when scrolling through menus or opening apps. If all the Honeycomb tablets have one thing in common, it's that they work well and don't suffer from slow touch response like, say, the HP TouchPad sometimes does. Toshiba rates the battery life for the Thrive at "up to 11 hours." Our battery tests involved leaving the Wi-Fi on and playing video on a nonstop loop; we got 7 hours and 10 minutes of battery life.