Toshiba Launches 13-Inch Excite 13 Tablet

Toshiba has officially launched its latest tablets, one of which stands out through its sheer size, as well as the quality of its liquid crystal display panel.

The NVIDIA Tegra 3 mobile platform has been used in so many tablets that it is no longer capable of getting one sold on its own, even with its new and shiny 4-PLUS-1 trademark.

Toshiba knew this when it put together its newest slate range, so it went a bit outside the norm.

That is to say, in addition to the expected 10-inch and 7.7-inch Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich models, it conjured up a larger one too.

To be more specific, Toshiba created the Excite 13, a tablet with a 13.3 inches screen diagonal.

What's more, the display features a native resolution of 1,600 x 900 pixels (a so-called HD plus display), making this one of the relatively few Android tablets with a panel better than 1,280 x 800.

Toshiba believes that Excite 13 is just right for the role of “sharing element” in a home, but some test runs will have to come and go before we believe that.

Not that we don't think the size goes a long way, because we do, but the price of $629 is a bit worrisome.

That's 479.60 Euro according to exchange rates, but European stores will probably list the thing for 500-600 Euro or so.

The rest of the specs are more or less common by now, starting with the aforementioned Tegra 3 quad-core CPU that has 32 GB or 64 GB of storage to work with.

Toshiba tossed in micro USB, a dull-size SD card slot and two cameras: 5 megapixels at the back and 2 megapixels on the front.

Everything somehow fits in a package whose thickness is of 0.4 inches (10.16 millimeters) and whose weight is of 2.2 pounds (just short of one kilogram). Sales will start on June 10 (2012).

Posted in: Preview, Tablet