The tablet world is seeing a shake-up from Toshiba right now with some interesting products bringing together one of the best small screens around and an insanely fast processor, but there’s one question: will these see release in Australia?
Not yet announced officially in Australia, Toshiba’s new range of devices form the new products of its “Excite” range, the name Toshiba has given to its tablets overseas.
In Australia, we don’t usually see that name, with locally available tablets from Toshiba being branded with an initialism that suggests what operating system is runs, including AT for “Android Tablet” and WT for “Windows Tablet.”
If that naming scheme continues, we might see a few new AT models coming our way, each sporting new internals likely to intrigue anyone keen to see Android tablets move beyond the high definition only devices we’ve seen of late.
Announced in America a month ago and now hitting stores, two models are grabbing attention there, with the Excite Pro and Excite Write offering other tablet manufacturers a run for their money.
The devices in question have similar specs, but slightly different features and reasons for existing.
First, there’s the Excite Pro (AT15-LE-A32) which packs in the Android 4.2.1 “Jelly Bean” and runs it on an Nvidia Tegra 4 quad-core processor with a GeForce graphics chip, which Toshiba says relies on 72 cores.
Memory is set to the Android sweet spot of 2GB, while 32GB of on-board storage will mean plenty of files can be kept here, with a microSD slot available for upgrading this significantly.
While the specs grab our attention, it’s the screen that will keep it, as Toshiba introduces a 10.1 inch display that shoots beyond Full HD with a 2560×1600 resolution.
That’s not only a higher resolution than the screen found in Apple’s iPad with Retina display, but also packs in more pixels per inch, beating the iPad 3 and 4 with 299ppi, compared to Apple’s 264ppi.
Toshiba is certainly no stranger when it comes to using high-resolution displays, and was even the first company to announce a Windows-based laptop featuring a Retina-grade screen in its Kirabook computer.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen the 2560×1600 tablet display, as we first saw a screen of this resolution used in the Samsung-built Google Nexus 10 that has yet to be released locally.
Other features include wireless networking over 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, microHDMI, 3.5mm headset port, GPS, and Harman Kardon speakers, with an expected battery life of around 11 hours.
Next is the Excite Write (AT15PE-A32), which is essentially the same tablet as the Pro, but with a Wacom-engineered digitiser stylus, similar to what Samsung uses in the Galaxy Note range of devices.
On specification alone, we’re intrigued by the technology being used here, but it doesn’t look like Australians will see these products in store as quickly as their American counterparts.
Rather, a representative for Toshiba would only tell us that the company would “be making an announcement but unfortunately not in the near future.”
We’ll keep you up to date as and when more develops on a local release.
