Toshiba Thrive review

This is not the primary time Toshiba has showed up fashionably to a celebration. Back in 2009, long after most any other consumer electronics maker big and small had jumped at the netbook bandwagon, the corporate belatedly released its first mini, the NB205 . And it was fantastic. So we were optimistic when the outfit finally got around to releasing the Thrive , its first Android tablet for the usa market. Surely, we thought, it’s learned a specific thing or two from everybody else’s mistakes.

And in that regard, at the very least, this 10-inch tablet doesn’t disappoint. It has full-sized USB and HDMI ports, an SD card slot, and a removable battery — all features you’d sooner find on a laptop. It comes with a raft of practical apps already installed, so you shouldn’t have to move attempting to find them in Android Market. It’s one of the most first out of the gate with Android 3.1, an undeniably improved version of Honeycomb. Oh, and it starts at $429, undercutting lots of its competitors. Right there, in lower than a paragraph, we’ve laid out why you may want this over any of the alternative umpteen tabs crowding the market. But if you happen to get one? Well, folks, we’ll need greater than a paragraph to tackle that. Join us after the break, won’t you?

Hardware

If the Thrive were somebody, it might be weeping at the couch with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s right about now. Even before it went on sale earlier this month, it was fielding taunts for being something of a fatso. It is a shame, really, for the reason that a number of the bullies haven’t seen it in person. That isn’t to claim the Thrive is skinny — at .62 inches thick it’s, indeed, chunkier than other slates available on the market. Why, that’s nearly double the thickness of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 , which measures 0.33 inches deep. And at 1.66 pounds, it is a touch heavier than the primary-generation iPad, which has since gone on a diet.

The item is, it is not a significant deal. In general, you can even find it feels lighter than you’d expect. Now it’s true, upon getting some 0 hands-on time 0 with Sony’s forthcoming S2 slate, we were reminded that the Thrive is heavier than most. Still, it doesn’t feel as dense because the Motorola Xoom, although the Xoom weighs an entire tenth of a pound less. All told, it’s still light enough that we didn’t think carefully about tossing it in our tote bag and walking around with all of it day. And relating to web surfing in your couch with it propped up against your leg — a probable scenario with a WiFi only tablet — the Thrive’s plump derriere makes zero difference. If anything, we take issue with the Thrive’s dimensions. At 10.97 x 6.97 inches, it’s about as narrow as other 10-inchers such the Galaxy Tab 10.1, but longer. That does not make a difference in portrait mode, but it surely does make holding it in landscape that rather more unwieldy.

Even after every week of testing, we had a tough time coming to terms with the Thrive’s decidedly inelegant design. The back side is decked out in a rubberized finish that makes it look somewhat cheap (the flimsy port covers don’t help). To its credit, though, that soft material makes it near-impossible on your fingers to slide off. The lid’s textured pattern reminds us of Toshiba’s netbooks, except the lines cross the back side at symmetrical diagonal angles. That lid, too, is removable, as is the battery — something we’ll touch on more in just a little. Although the Thrive is available in black, you should purchase swappable, colorful covers in “Blue Moon, “Raspberry Fusion,” “Lavender Bliss,” “Silvery Sky,” and “Green Apple” for $20 a pop.

Unlike most tablets, which require you to carry them in landscape mode to take photos, the Thrive placed both cameras along among the many shorter edges, to be able to hold it comfortably in portrait mode when you shoot. As you’ll find, Toshiba framed them with a metal piece that drapes over the sting of the tablet. At the outward-facing side, you will find some prominent “With Google” branding, at the side of the rear camera’s 5 megapixel resolution, spelled out. Once we previewed the Thrive last month, we noticed a range of commenters say this metal flourish alone could be a deal-breaker. We disagree, though we expect the branding is principally unfortunate-looking. It calls to mind something you’d pick up at a ironmongery store — a strange, faux-industrial flourish for a tablet that otherwise seems like a toy.

Normally, we do not have much to assert about ports after we review tablets, but thus, they’re the star of the show. Starting at the side with the cameras, you will find a lock switch for the locking down the removable lid. Moving clockwise to the correct side, there is a power button, volume rocker, and lever to fasten the screen orientation, with the entire-sized SDXC slot sitting on the other end. At the bottom of the tablet (this will likely be the sting opposite the cameras), there are open headphone and mic ports, along side a covered door behind which you may find full-sized USB and HDMI ports and a mini-USB socket. Finally, on that last long edge you can find a covered 30-pin docking connector flanked by small speakers. So, simply to re-orient you, in case you were holding the tablet in portrait mode with the cameras sitting up top, the docking connector will be at the left side. Considering we 1 occasionally 1 see USB ports on tablets, it is the combination of these kind of sockets and slots that’s really bowling us over.

The Thrive is comparable to a laptop in a single other, more unfortunate way. It has three LED lights built into the bezel which will see white-and-orange sparkles when the battery is low, when Bluetooth is on, and, a minimum of, when the ability is on. Even on our laptops, we adore our LED lights hidden, and we feel much more strongly about it with tablets, where we’ve just come to expect a cleaner design.

Display and Sound

The ten.1-inch display crams in 1280 x 800 pixels, matching the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and other identically sized slates. Though it’s plenty bright, the viewing angles aren’t particularly wide. We had a simple time watching a film with the tablet placed face-up on a table in front folks, and we were also ready to make out the screen while watching from an off-center position. But as we moved further to the side and tried watching from more oblique angles, the contrast ratio started looking more severe. As an advantage, Toshiba threw within the same Resolution+ technology it uses to scrub up and upscale video on its laptops, but you will be hard-pressed to note the adaptation on any such small display. In the event you like, you are able to disable this option, though we didn’t feel the necessity to.

The small stereo speakers are loud, but never too loud. While watching a film alone indoors with a loud air conditioner whirring within the background, we kept the quantity cranked to the max, and didn’t feel the necessity to turn it down. In some unspecified time in the future during our testing, a pal joined us while we ran the benchmarks Nenamark 1 and a couple of inside the background. Ultimately, the sounds emanating from the tests were just loud enough to be distracting, but not so deafening that we couldn’t stick with it a talk over them.

Apart from volume, Toshiba also included software designed to counterpoint audio quality — a feature that does not come enabled out of the box. Back once we previewed the Thrive, we said regardless of this enhancement, lets still detect some tinniness popping out of the small speakers. After every week of testing, we stand by that — the sound quality doesn’t stick out as terrible; it’s just not extraordinary.

Removable battery

We have to have looked pretty silly the primary time we tried to take away the back cover. The item is, it’s much easier to pry the lid off a phone, whilst you can cradle it, and bear down at the back cover together with your thumbs for leverage. Try doing that with a ten-inch tablet and spot how far you get. After much fumbling, we discovered the right way to go about this is often to first open the door covering all those full-sized ports. Then wedge your fingernail into the crack underneath that compartment, and pull the lid toward you until the whole lot falls away with a discomfitting snap. (Digging your fingers into the openings near the speakers also works.) After we got past that learning curve, removing the lid was a cinch. Hopefully, we just spared a number of you slightly frustration.

Battery life and tool management

	Battery Life
Toshiba Thrive	6:25
Apple iPad 2	10:26
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	9:55
Apple iPad	9:33
HP Touchpad	8:33
Motorola Xoom	8:20
T-Mobile G-Slate	8:18
Archos 101	7:20
RIM BlackBerry PlayBook	7:01
Samsung Galaxy Tab	6:09

The Thrive has a 23Wh, 2,030 mAh battery that’s rated for a max of 11 hours. In case you wish to carry around a fresh one to swap in, Toshiba sells spares for $80 each.

And counting on your lifestyle, it’s essential to take into consideration getting one. When compared with other products, the Thrive’s small battery craps out pretty quickly. It lasted six hours and twenty-five minutes in our test (movie looping, WiFi on, and Bluetooth off), trailing far behind the 2 iPad 2 2 ‘s nearly ten-and-a-half-hour run and the ten.1′s roughly ten-hour spin. Even tablets whose battery live we’d call mediocre largely be ready to land somewhere within the seven to 8-hour range.

That said, with lighter usage patterns we found shall we break out with not charging it every night. After an hour of checking email, watching an HD YouTube trailer, tweaking the tablet’s settings, glancing intermittently at Engadget and Google Calendar, and downloading three apps, we still had 87 percent charge left. We did notice that web surfing (including some Flash sites), drained the battery life faster than any of these other activities we mentioned earlier. After just ten minutes of browsing, our battery life rating fell five percent. At the bright side, the Thrive sips little power when it’s sitting idle: after two hours and forty minutes, its battery life rating fell just two percent.

Nonetheless, the Thrive is way from perfect within the power management department. While testing it, we saw 3 reports 3 that the tablet doesn’t always wake from sleep mode — not unless you perform a chilly boot, that’s. At the beginning, we said to ourselves, “Sweet! We should be one of many lucky ones.” Not so fast. Soon after, we tried to wake up our sleeping tablet, but were left pressing the power / lock button in vain. This always happened once we recharged the Thrive using the bundled AC adapter; it hasn’t been a question when we’ve left it sitting around unplugged.

As of this writing, Toshiba has as a minimum 4 acknowledged 4 the problem and said it’ll push out a fix in the course of the Toshiba Service Station app that comes pre-loaded at the tablet. Alas, though, it’s unclear after we can expect Toshiba to tug through. Suffice it to claim, we see this not as an excuse to disregard the Thrive, but more of a reason to hang off on buying one directly.

Performance

Like such a lot of other tablets in the marketplace, the Thrive runs on NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 SoC. a chilly boot took about 20 seconds, matching the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which packs the identical 1GHz chip. After we swiped during the lock screen, the tablet took below two seconds to increase Honeycomb.

For essentially the most part, the Thrive responded snappily to our taps and swipes, in addition to multi-touch gestures like pinching and zooming. Occasionally, though, we noticed a slight pause after we pressed the house button to abruptly minimize applications. All told, we saw the most important performance drops while browsing websites built on Flash — a place where we have seen other Honeycomb tablets stumble. The recent York restaurant Lattanzi, as an example, only displays four items on its menu instantly, forcing you to press a “Next” button to look more. The Thrive struggled with that, leaving us jabbing blankly on the screen before our taps finally took. In another instance, we were perusing Uniqlo.com, and located that after we pulled up an item of clothing to get more details, scrolling suddenly became choppy. At the least the Thrive loaded those Flash sites quickly, despite the fact that its performance suffered after we started poking around. After all, we’re more inclined to mention that Google — not Toshiba — could still stand to improve the Flash experience.

At the bright side, typing at the stock Android keyboard felt consistently breezy, with few spelling errors to report after per week of testing. Really, the rate is proscribed only by your ability to peck out letters. Incidentally, the tablet is narrow enough that typing in portrait mode is simple, although you do have dainty hands (like a number of us). Incidentally, the tablet also comes with 5 Swype 5 installed, in the event you think dragging a line between letters will be a more ergonomic experience than tapping away with two fingers. Personally, we remain dubious — finally, is not the great thing about Swype which you can hold a tool with one hand and use those self same fingers to type? Still, it’s nice that oldsters have the opportunity of using it.

In case you are in the hunt for some hard numbers, we ran the Android-compatible benchmarks Linpack, Quadrant, and Nenamark 1 and a pair of. As you will discover, its Quadrant score of one,584 matches the 1,546 the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 notched after an update to Android 3.1. But Quadrant, needless to say, is only one piece of the benchmarking puzzle, though we expect it’s meaningful that the 2 tablets share an identical chip and likewise happen to be well-matched in real-world tests, comparable to cold boots. If you are a benchmark junkie, though, you will find a handful of alternative scores inside the handy chart below.

Benchmark	Score
Quadrant	1,584
Linpack	2.79 MFLOPS (single thread) / 2.93 MFLOPS (multi-thread)
Nenamark 1	43.8 fps
Nenamark 2	18.3 fps
Vellamo	968
Neocore	Wouldn’t run

Cameras

Inside the grand tradition of tablet cameras, the Thrive’s 5 megapixel rear-facing one struggles in low light and in situations where your subject is moving. The Thrive does other tablets one worse, though, by casting a bluish tint over pictures. We also found grainy bits in lots of of our photos, although we took them with ample lighting, or even after we viewed them of their shrunken, resized form.

In addition, this is not the smoothest picture-taking experience you’re going to get on a tablet. Remember how we said Toshiba stuck the cameras on among the many shorter edges, in order that they’ll be on top in the event you shoot in portrait mode? That’s all well and good a good way to frame shots vertically, but when you begin snapping pics in landscape, you would possibly find that your mitts accidentally obscure the lens. Not exactly a controversy we’ve had with other slates whose cameras sit on among the two longer sides.

With regards to unwanted tints, we had better luck with the two megapixel front-facing camera, though as you possibly can imagine, the sharpness and level of detail aren’t ok for actual, you recognize, photography. But for video chatting the intense image quality should just do fine.

The Thrive also records 720p video, though, any movies you’re making may be just as prone to that faint, blue overcast. You’ll also see that motion in these videos isn’t smooth. The clips we shot with the HTC Flyer were much fluid, though to be fair, that camera presented a wholly different set of problems (read: roaring background noise).

File storage and transfers

Far be it for us to inform you ways you need to use that full-sized USB port and accompanying SD slot, but suffice to assert it’ll come in useful for moving files off and on the tablet. Happily, Toshiba made this almost foolproof by bundling its own file manager app dubbed — watch for it — Toshiba File Manager. Believe us after we say it’s one among our favourite of the Thrive’s features, and some of the clearest reasons you need to consider this alongside the scads of different Android tablets in the marketplace. Using the app’s tabbed interface, decide that will poke across the tablet’s 8GB to 32GB of internal memory, an SD card, or a USB harddrive. After you try this, you will see all of the files displayed in a grid, as you may in case you were looking to locate something in Windows Explorer or Finder in OS X.

Selecting a file to replicate, cut, paste, or delete is likewise idiot-proof. In case you just would like to work with one file, that you can tap and hold it along with your finger to work out a catalogue of options. Or, with a purpose to handle a batch of ‘em, tap the “Select File” button on the bottom of the screen, at which point each file could be overlaid with an empty box that you could “check off” by tapping it along with your finger. In case you go that route, options like cut and paste won’t pop up onscreen, but will rather appear as boxes in that lower pane. We just walked you thru it but really, the app’s intuitive enough that any one can figure it out in about five seconds.

As for speed, here is hardly the fastest drive you’ll encounter, but it surely shouldn’t keep you waiting too long either. Transferring a batch of photos totaling 951MB in size took about ten seconds. That is not exactly lightning-fast, but given how seldom we take some time to take away clumps of photos from our handset, we do not expect we’d do it that usually with a tablet either. Although you accomplish that more often, you may agree that’s fast enough for a $429 plaything.

Software

Right off the bat, there are two reasons to get enthusiastic about the software in this thing. One, Toshiba didn’t muck around with Honeycomb’s standard UI, so in case you are the type of one who always chooses vanilla Android over, say, 8 Sense 8 , the Thrive can be a slate after your individual heart.

Secondly, this is not only a Honeycomb tablet, but one of several first to ship with 9 Android 3.1 9 , the most recent tablet-friendly version of Android that brings goodies like resizeable widgets, a brand new host mode, and Google’s new Movies app. In case you haven’t yet handled a tablet running the OS, you will discover that those resizeable windows are a joy, and make the stock Gmail and calendar apps, among others, plenty more useful, even at a look. The object is, it’s as much as developers to bring their apps up to the mark, so at this still-early stage you will discover plenty that do not resize. Still, even with the ability to enlarge the traditional Google-made ones is beneficial.

Apps

Oh, and we’ve not even scratched the outside on third-party apps. Firstly, you may download ‘em from “unknown sources” (read: places apart from Android Market). And, Toshiba pre-installed tons of of popular ones — a few of which might be simply too useful to be dismissed as bloatware. These include some you’d normally must pay for, including LogMeIn Ignition ($29.99), Quickoffice ($24.99), and Kaspersky Tablet Security ($19.95 per year). The outfit also tossed in a handful of free favorites reminiscent of Angry Birds, and The recent York Times. Missing, however, are any Facebook and Twitter clients. Some, meanwhile, do indeed smell like crapware. These mostly include a raft of games, together with NES Shift, Backgammon, Euchre, Hearts, Spades, and Solitare. Then there’s Toshiba’s bland Start Place for news headlines. We’re happy never to open it again, and just stick to standalone apps from The hot York Times and other favorites.

The corporate also threw in its own e-reader app, dubbed Bookstore. It’s actually the second one reader application that comes bundled at the Thrive, with the second one being Google Books. We get what Toshiba is after — giving low-tech folks like our parents enough apps so they need not download anything or (heaven forbid) ask for help. But we’re guessing most of you’re a teensy bit more independent than that, and we expect you’ll enjoy a far better selection in case you just download Amazon or Barnes & Noble’s apps, since they’re backed by enormous libraries with a great number of current, popular titles..

Perhaps our favourite app — second only, perhaps, to File Manager — is PrinterShare, an app as a way to find nearby printers and print documents, photos, and webpages over WiFi. We fell in love as much with its ease of use as its utility. Just open the app, select an application from that you will need to print something, after which discover a list of printable documents (or, with regards to the Gmail app, messages). We would like every tab came with something like this out of the box.

Along with all this, Toshiba threw in its own app store, though it’s pretty useless. Although the kinds are comprehensive, we counted a max of six apps per section (often, there has been only one), and we noticed certain titles appeared in multiple sections — say, Office and Productivity.

Configurations and the contest

Do not be scared off by that $579 price listed on the top of this review. That’s only for the 32GB version, the very best-end that Toshiba has to give. The Thrive actually starts at $429 for 8GB and is likewise offered in a 16GB flavor for $479. For now, it is a plain-Jane WiFi-only tablet, but Toshiba has said it plans to release a 3G version later this year.

However you slice it, that’s some aggressive pricing. Both the 16GB and 32GB versions undercut the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 by $20. We use these as comparisons because they’re our two favorite tabs in the meanwhile. The ten.1, principally, has exactly the same screen size, packs the identical Tegra 2 chip, and is additionally probably the most first tablets to ship with Android 3.1. Both are slim and sexy — something the Thrive simply isn’t. To weigh the Thrive against these is to judge your priorities: how much are you willing to pay for beauty? And in the event you needed to choose, would you rather opt for full-sized ports or a featherweight design?

But let’s not count out the 0 ASUS Eee Pad Transformer 0 . In a market filled with lookalike slabs, the Transformer and the Thrive both try their darndest to be different. When it comes to the Thrive, the total-sized ports are the hook. For the Transformer, it is the docking station replete with an entire keyboard. It’s an engaging comparison, because if you purchase the Thrive, you are involved in plugging in a USB keyboard.

We need to say, we’d be pretty tempted to have a more integrated keyboard solution, especially while we’re traveling. The issue is, convenience doesn’t come cheap. To start with glance, the Transformer is cheaper, for the reason that 16GB and 32GB models cost just $399 and $499, respectively. But, on the way to, you realize, transform it, you will have to spring for a $150 dock, rendering any price-saving delusions moot. The purpose is, the postulate of plugging a keyboard into the Thrive may still attract people who’d rather not invest that much money inside the Transformer. Let alone — the Thrive’s USB port is sweet for things aside from keyboards, akin to connecting external hard drives.

For the needs of this review, we are not going to head on a protracted tangent about our favourite 7-inch tablets, although some, including the Flyer, count the various better ones we’ve tested. We figure, if you’ve decided 7 inches offers the ideal compromise between portability and huge-screen goodness, the Thrive simply isn’t best for you.

Wrap-up

Inevitably, whenever a brand new tablet comes out, we discover ourselves asking, “Why would you select this over everything else?” And to be honest, in a marketplace with such a lot of forgettable options it is not always a simple question to reply. With regards to the Thrive, in any case, you’ve potentially got enough built-in reasons to expect both hands. It has got full-sized USB and HDMI ports, let alone an SDXC slot allowing you to make good use of 1 of the memory cards you’ve indisputably accumulated through the years. It comes with a variety of useful apps — a number of which cost money — that means if you can be up and running immediately (and so will any low-tech person you give this to as a present). It runs Android 3.1 at a time when most tabs don’t. Oh, and it’s priced to sell. It starts at $429 for 8GB, making it stand out in a market that completely doesn’t need another $500 or $600 slate. We are saying, get the 8GB version, pair it with an old SD card, and feature yourself a celebration.

That does not mean it’s for everybody. A few of you made a decision when this thing came out that it was too fat, too ugly. We’re sure a number of you (no, not you) skipped this review and jumped straight to the comments to reiterate how oogly this thing is. And if that’s a deal-breaker, we wouldn’t blame you — it’s true, the Thrive does a greater job making up for its heft than other tabs (we’re taking a look at you, 1 Touchpad 1 ). But why accept a corpulent tablet should you don’t give a hoot concerning the USB port and SD card slot? It is a fair point, and we might agree that anybody who buys this has to be enamored with either the associated fee or the port selection. Or even then, it’s best for those that want the USB socket for storage, especially; finally, the great and ever-popular Eee Pad Transformer renders USB keyboards moot — assuming you’re down with spending $150 on a docking station, needless to say. All told, there are many thinner, sexier, longer-lasting (and yes, pricier) tablets on hand, with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and iPad 2 coming to mind first. Still, we suspect there are some folks accessible who’ve been looking ahead to something similar to this.

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