Toshiba Excite X10

“The AT200 is a beautiful tablet. With some great build materials and almost unbelievable lightness in the hand, it embarrasses Toshiba's previous attempts at Android tablets. However, it feels unfinished. Those rough edges, the uneven spacing along the seam, it all adds to a growing dissatisfaction with this final retail model. This is exacerbated by last year's tablet software -- especially when (much cheaper) tablets are arriving with Ice Cream Sandwich right out of the box. Toshiba's severely misguided pricing not only puts it above the market-leading tablet -- which very recently undertook a substantial hardware refresh -- but also above technically superior Android rivals, like the quad-core, higher resolution Transformer Prime. Are you willing to pay $30 more for a lesser product with some performance issues? No matter how good it looks, we're not.”

“It's tough to stand out in the world of Android tablets. With a new slate running the same Android software with more or less the same specs being pitched to consumers every few weeks, only the unique survive. Some manage to get noticed with a low price tag. Some will contort for your attention. Some are fast. And some, like the Toshiba Excite 10 LE, will try to entice you with a slender supermodel physique. Does thin matter? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“I can't help but imagine the meeting at Toshiba where an executive demanded the world's thinnest tablet, no matter what. Toshiba hit the mark with the Excite 10 LE, but the costs are staggering: it feels poorly built despite its excellent materials, performs as poorly as any high-end tablet I've tested recently, and does it all in a package that's more expensive than much of its competition. I can't think of a single reason to recommend the Excite 10 LE over the Transformer Prime or the Galaxy Tab 10.1, not to mention the new iPad — you're even far better off saving $130 and buying an iPad 2.”

“The AT-200 is a much better tablet than its predecessor the 100. We actually felt impressed when we lifted it out of the box and held it for the first time. Its slim design, unusual flat back - most tablets have curves, the AT-200 does not - make it nice to look at and pleasant to hold. Connectivity-wise, there's plenty here too with USB and HDMI. The screen is improved too, and the battery life is quoted at an hour more, although we have no real way to test one battery against another as each day's use is different to the next. Overall, this is a much better tablet than any Toshiba has released previously. It's still not perfect though, and we question the logic of paying so much money for a tablet that's just okay when you could have one that's brilliant for the same price.”