Toshiba’s 7 inch AT270 reviewed: sure to impress

Toshiba was one of the first out with an iPad competitor, and late last year the company tried to shake things up with a 7 inch tablet that used the same formula.

Now, Toshiba is trying it again, sticking the slate on a diet and upping the specs.

Features

The second seven inch tablet we’ve seen from Toshiba, the latest model cuts out the black thick plastic body we saw last time and replaces it with a svelte metal chassis.

While it’s technically classed as a seven inch tablet, the AT270 is closer to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 and features a 7.67 inch screen with the HD-ready resolution of 1280×800, with Corning’s scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass covering it.

Under the hood, it’s a set of specifications which is beginning to become the norm for tablet manufacturers this year, with Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 1GB RAM, Google Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”, and 16GB storage with a microSD slot for expanding the memory further.

Connectivity comes in the form of 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, and support for DLNA, while multimedia is catered for with a 3.5mm headset jack, two speakers at the bottom, a 5 megapixel rear camera with LED flash, and 2 megapixel front-facing camera.

A microUSB port is also offered for data transfer, as is the proprietary charge port Toshiba uses, which looks a little like an elongated iPod dock port.

Google’s latest version of Android doesn’t require buttons on the front of the tablet, so Toshiba has unsurprisingly ignored them, but you can still find a power button, rotation lock switch, and volume rocker on the top of the tablet.

The textured surface on the aluminium back of the AT270.