Toshiba Excite 7.7 Tablet Review: AMOLED in a Fun Size
by Dustin Sklavos on August 29, 2012 2:01 PM ESTConclusion: If You're In the Market, It's Worth a Look
Without even playing with them you could probably easily argue that the Excite 10 and Excite 13.3 tablets just don't have much to offer an already saturated Android tablet market, but the Toshiba Excite 7.7 is another story entirely. With the Excite 7.7, Toshiba has produced a relatively speedy Android tablet with a knockout screen and an impressively light form factor. Tablet size is bound to be a matter of taste for individual users; some may prefer the increased screen size and real estate of a 10" tablet (Big Buddha knows my eyesight is going and I'll probably be one of those in a decade or so) while others will likely fall over themselves over the Excite 7.7's small-but-still-useful dimensions.
If you're looking for a smaller tablet and price is a primary concern, odds are you've either already clicked "Add to Cart" on the Kindle Fire and are anxiously awaiting its shipment or you're planning on ordering a Google Nexus 7. Google's (and ASUS's) entrant is liable to basically just knock the Kindle Fire right out of competition, but in the process it does take a lot of the shine off of Toshiba's Excite 7.7. It has similar dimensions and weight, and even benefits from a newer version of Android as well as NFC capability.
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With those things in mind, though, the existence of the Nexus 7 may wound the Excite 7.7, but it doesn't kill it. Toshiba's tablet sports both superior battery life and a much nicer display, and for some users these factors may very well be enough to warrant the extra money. The dynamic brightness can be on the irritating side, especially with no way to disable it, but it's not quite as bad as it sounds. Personally it was far more frustrating for objective testing than it was for actual use, where it was easy enough to ignore.
I think the Toshiba Excite 7.7 is probably going to wind up being lost in the shuffle, and that's a shame because it's worthy of attention. Toshiba learned a lot from the Thrive and they're clearly willing to experiment a bit with the technology if the AMOLED display is any indication. That display alone may be worth the price of admission; either way, the Excite 7.7 is at least worth considering.
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fmcjw - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
I think constructive feedback is more helpful than your "just don't read it" attitude.The thing is, anything not written by Brian or Anand is pretty low standard stuff.
Disclaimers in a review are just verbose excuses for laziness or substandard content. If Brian did this review, in the comparison table in the "Storage" row, it won't just have 16GB or 8GB, but 16GB, 16GB+µSD, 16GB+µSDXC, etc.
solinear - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Honestly, there are too many reviews for some of these devices. As for the review quality - I don't think it's a bad review, but it's definitely not enthusiastic either way. They're not going "OMG, this is a bad device" or "OMG, this rocks"... the review is going "Um... I had to do this review, but I hate the OS and really just want to go back to using my Windows Phone and wait for Win8 tablets to come out". I might as well go to MacAddict expecting a fair review of Win8 and Android tablets as reading this one.For tablets and phones, I'd rather see a page long "highlights" review unless it's a review of an item that is seriously cool. Then once a quarter, see a more thorough review. Seeing the stats for all those devices in every single darned review for a tablet gets really old fast.
A nice quarterly spreadsheet that summarizes up the performance, memory, etc... of all the devices with their prices would be nice. Then I can come in here, look at the device, read the review of the various features and see if there are any deal breakers and make an informed purchase.
jiffylube1024 - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
I think the AMOLED (not SAMOLED+?) display alone makes this tablet interesting. It would be interesting to see this thing in person and compare it to the Nexus 7.At 349g, it's basically the same weight as the N7 (340g) and you get a 20.7% screen area increase, which is not too shabby.
This tablet's got a 5mp rear camera and 2mp front camera - better than the N7's single 0.3 mp front camera (although cameras on tablets, aside from their usage in Skype and other video chatting programs, have always seemed unnecessary to me).
It's interesting (and unfortunate) to note that there's a proprietary charger for this device; HP, Blackberry and Google had no problems making micro USB chargers; why can't everyone else?
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The pricing for this Toshiba tablet does leave something to be desired; even in the $399-429 price range, clearly the 16GB Nexus 7 at $249 is a better buy.
Does this Toshiba tablet even come with Android 4.1? The Nexus, as a Google flagship, will be one of the first devices to get subsequent Android updates in a timely fashion. Bit players like these are not at all guaranteed to be updated.
nafhan - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
"although cameras on tablets, aside from their usage in Skype and other video chatting programs, have always seemed unnecessary to me"I completely agree with this statement.... which is why I was somewhat shocked when I went to an aquarium a few weeks ago and saw quite a few people walking around taking pictures with iPads. To me, this makes no sense, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Origin64 - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Tablets in general are about as interesting as a funeral for someone I didn't know. Everybody's getting all emotional and I can't seem to care.But seriously, there just isn't much innovation in tablet-land right now. We can expect something new when win8 hits in a few months, and significant android price-drops after that. The focus will shift from being as fast as possible to being as cheap as possible while remaining competitive performance-wise. ARM just can't keep up to an i5, so why even bother to try?
The reviewer also raises an interesting point in that he thinks Android isn't perfect for tablets. Too few people have commented on what I also see as careless GUI design in some tablets. On phones it's simple, you've got notifications at the top and buttons down below. Same for the Nexus 7 (at least in portrait) The way the buttons and notifications are placed on this tablet just seems less intuitive to me.
The icons also appear too small, especially on this one. A 6x6 grid on 7"?
pandemonium - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Because reviews should be full of sparkly vampires, pop-tart rainbow fliers, and lots of campy one-liners?medi01 - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
This reads as a funeral because of, cough, level of "journalizm" at anand, cough...AMOLED screen doesn't even get color gamut benchmarks eh? GL benchmark is all we care about? Seriously?
Article image is showing GREY screen, seriously?
You suck guys...
Jenaii - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
that is right, the tablet market is targeting high performance tablet but that doesn't mean this tablet is out you may check the further review @ http://toshiba-tablet.com/Jenaii - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
that is right, the tablet market is targeting high performance tablet but that doesn't mean this tablet is out you may check the further review @ http://toshiba-tablet.com/guidryp - Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - link
OLED screens are good on power until they display bright screen colors, especially white, when they draw more than LCDs.I suspect the dynamic control is really about keeping power usage down. They brighter the screen colors, the more power it draws and the more dimming that kicks in to curtail that power draw.
If it was just about aesthetics, it would probably be easy to disable.
I wonder if the Samsung OLED tablet with this screen does the same thing?