Toshiba AT300 16GB 10.1-inch Tablet (nVIDIA Tegra T30SL 1.3GHz, 1GB RAM, Micro HDMI, Micro USB, Card Reader, Android 4.0)

Toshiba AT300

I make this review as someone who is very comfortable with computers and windows but who has not owned a smart phone or tablet before and therefore I have gone through something of a learning curve to get to this point.

I originally just wanted a colour e-reader (to supplement my Kindle) for art books etc but discovered that as soon as I went to an LCD (away from e-ink) that the world changed to reflective bright glass and poor battery performance. If I was to endure those things, then I thought I may as well go the whole hog and get a tablet that could at least perform well for the other things that a tablet will do.

I initially bought the Samsung Galaxy 2 7 (7" tablet) for £200. It had the latest Android version, duel core processor, 8 GB of memory and could take a micro SD card to expand the memory. Anyway, I then discovered that the SD card could only store data type stuff (movie, music and docs) and not apps and since the system hogged half the memory, it only left 4GB on the machine.

I changed the device to the Toshiba AT300 costing £330 and the step - up was noticeable. Quad processor (4+1) and 16GB of memory but with the higher screen resolution spread over a bigger screen (10.1") so lower actual resolution per square inch. The machine also had better connectivity with more ports and could take a full sized SD card. It also runs on Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

Unfortunately, like the Samsung tablet, Apps do not want to seem to move to the SD card, I even downloaded the APS 2 SD app without success (Comments online now lead me to believe that this is a problem with Android 4 rather than the machines) however on this 16GB machine it matters less, the system takes up the same 4GB as it did on the Samsung but the difference is,you are left with 12 GB spare, so although 16MB is double the memory of 8MB tablet, in practical terms you actually get triple the capacity (12GB not 4GB remaining) to play around with, so I can't see app storage being a problem for me. The Toshiba also takes a full sized SD card rather than the micro SD card that some machines are limited to, so it might make a useful camera companion. The Samsung by the way does come in a 16GB version and had I got that version, I might have stuck with it, though I like the bigger screen, extra processing power and USB port on the Toshiba.

I had to fully charge the machine as it was flat from new, which I did as an overnight job, as it takes around 8 hours. The charging cable is almost 1.5 metres long, which is handy when accessing plugs, though not convenient to carry around

On start-up I noticed on the black screen that there was quite a bit of light bleed around the outside edge of the screen. A quick internet search broadly put my mind at rest. It seems bleed is fairly common on LCDs but can be more pronounced on some machines, the Toshiba AT300 might be one such example. The forum comments generally took the view that providing it is not too intrusive, it is just one of those things to live with. In real world use, I only see the bleed on the black start-up screen and never in anything else that I do, though I have not run any movie yet with dark scenes such as night shots etc.

The machine uses Gorilla Glass, I wasn't sure what that was, but the clue is in the name. Anyway, I was not surprised, it just adds to the sense of this being a nice machine that has not fallen prey to short cuts for cost cutting .

I don't have much use for the micro HDMI connection at the moment but the macro USB is useful. Once tethered to my Desktop, the Toshiba shows up on the windows screen and is treated just like another hard drive, so that it as easy for the user to add and remove files from the Toshiba, such as my music files by just dragging on the PC's window environment.

I really enjoy the bigger screen, in particular it feels much better than the 7" model when viewing websites in landscape. The tablet is very slim and light for it's size and has a nice aluminium effect rear plate, it feels really nice and sleek in the hands - though, after 30 - 40 minutes of hand holding, it can feel heavy on the wrists when reading, so I bought one of the generic flip out cases, so that the screen could stand upright unaided by me, making things easier for longer sessions.

The bigger screen means you get a nice sized (soft) keyboard, which has nicely spaced letters that suits my big hands. You can shift the keypad into two other modes that allow either numerals or the directional keys (for editing) to be used.The text system works well, especially from a mobile perspective, but this is probably not a replacement to a laptop for people who type a lot of text as despite the `office' apps being very good, editing on a long article will require flipping back and forth between keyboard modes for text, directional arrows and numerals and this is much less convenient than a traditional keyboard. However, the tablet has a microphone that can be activated from the soft keyboard and you can just speak and the computer prints your speech as text into the document with incredible accuracy.

The microphone can also be activated from the home page with commands such as `find maps' or find `google' and the computer then delivers you an internet link that you can tap onto.

The screen is nicely responsive to touch and things can be moved around the screen and managed effortlessly, no doubt with thanks to that quad processor. I have not come across any lag.

The speakers are on the bottom of the gadget and their reproduction is reasonable for their size, providing the volume is not pushed to full. Earphones and external powered speakers are the better option and on my portable external battery powered speaker, the sound is very good.

The screen is quite bright and fairly sharp, good enough for games, text and photographs for most people. I tend to be a bit critical about photo images and when I compare the pad photograph with the same photograph (being read from the pad via USB) on my monitor,there is a clear difference in very fine detail , vibrancy and contrast, though I am probably being quite unfair on the tablet here and would like to see the same image on other higher resolution tablets for a comparison. I like the program that uses an art filter to change the photographs into a more `painterly' look, it just gives your photo collection a different and generally satisfactory feel.

The screen brightness is set to auto by default, I have switched to manual and lowered the brightness, which especially for text based pages on a white background makes for a more comfortable read and hopefully it will save me some battery juice as well.

There is a rumbler / buzzer in the tablet, which you can feel through the back plate, it heralds the machine being turned on, but can also be `alive' for every time something is activated on the screen. At first I was puzzled as to how I could turn it off and even sweated that it might be a permanent feature, but eventually I found that the control was located under the Haptics section. I am now happily vibration free!

Being keen on photography, I was interested to see how the back plate camera would perform and I was disappointed with both inside and outside shots, though I gather that tablet cameras in general are not the best devices, so it's not just a thing with this model, which does have flash by the way. The camera does auto focus and you can tap on the focus screen for the point of focus. The camera has easily accessible controls for EV, white balance and scene mode. The capture will certainly show the details of the scene but I am rather spoiled by my dedicated cameras - which again probably causes me to make an unfair judgement on tablet cameras. It serves fine as a point and shoot recording device and I can see it being useful for taking record type shots.

On it's first charge, the battery ran down to 3% after 6 hours 40 mins and 6 hours 38 mins the second time. I was quite careful to turn the Wi-Fi off while game playing. I am hoping that this will improve a little after the battery has been discharged and re-charged a few times, as it seems a tad on the poor side, though I doubt any of the `advertised' battery capacities are attained on a regular real world basis.

I have sold a handheld console and a laptop computer to help pay for this tablet, as the tablet seems to render those two items unnecessary (I still have a desktop computer and a netbook), particularly as the type of games that I enjoy are puzzle games, word games, chess, platform games and some adventure type games, all of which seem ideally suited to the tablet. I do quite a bit of heavy work on the computer, so even though the tablet is competent, for me, it doesn't make a computer replacement device yet, though for net browsing, video, game play and checking e-mails on a very portable platform it is superb. I can even see myself doing a bit of word processing when in places like cafes etc - although talking into the microphone might be best avoided in such places (a new take of "I'm on the train" being broadcast to the annoyance of others).

Google Shop content for Android seems fine for my needs. I have put the kindle app on the tablet and my books on watercolour paintings look nice as do some military illustrations. When it comes to a coloured picture in the books, you can just tap on the picture and it expands to full screen size, very nice. I will still use my kindle for my black and white text based books as it is kinder on the eyes for long reading sessions.

I have downloaded the Avast app for my anti-virus needs and I am hooked on the word game `Dropwords' at the moment - good fun. Read more ›

First impression. This is nicely designed tablet. There is nothing "flashy" about it. It's simplicity of a full glass front and an uniform textured aluminum back, does give this tablet a rather attractive and premium look and feel. It's weight of just under 590g, makes this one of the lighter 10" quad-core tablet out there in the market (if not the lightest). Despite some competitor product being just several tens of gram heavier, I do find this tablet to more comfortable to hold than others. The casing is well made, no creaking sound or flexing of the casing. All the corners are very smooth and no sharp edges (except for one, which I will come to later).

To the left side, you have the power button, the orientation lock switch, and the volume rocker. The volume rocker is very tactile, it has a positive click to it each time you press it. And it is fitted very well, no wobble. The power button is not as good. It feel slightly "spongy". Sometimes, when I pressed it, I've to check the screen to find out if it has registered the press. As for the orientation lock switch, well it is also very well fitted, and you can customize this switch to other functions, eg mute sound or lock hardware buttons, nice :). On the right side, you'll find the headphone jack, micro hdmi, micro usb and sdcard. There are two cameras; one in front, smack in the middle on top of the screen and another behind, on the top-left corner of the tablet. The front camera is low-res, but it will prove to be useful and sufficient if you are planning to use the tablet video call, eg skype. On the rear, you have a 5mp camera. Is it any good? Hell no. It is rubbish. Even my £100 pay-as-u-go smartphone takes better picture than this tablet. The focus is bad and the color is washed out, I've nothing positive to say about the picture quality. The only upside here is, I absolutely didn't buy this tablet for its photo taking prowess (or the lack of it in this case). On the top edge, you will find the built-in mic, which again will be useful for video call. And finally, on the bottom, you will find two speakers (left and right) and in the middle is a ridiculously huge (I do mean huge) proprietary slot for charging the tablet.

One of the main attraction of this tablet is connectivity. Toshiba have literally stuff every conceivable wired and wireless standards on this tablet. On the wired side, you have; micro usb (OTG), micro hdmi & full sdcard slot. And on the wireless front, you get the WIFI, bluetooth & gps. No built-in 3G modem though, since I intend to use this tablet at home, this is not a problem. I've tried connecting, keyboard, mouse, usb flash, external drive (exFAT format) and digital camera to the micro usb, and they all work perfectly. As for the full sdcard, I am using a lowly class 4, 32GB sd-card, FAT32 format and this tablet have no problem reading or writing to the sdcard (even with 3rd party file manager). I found the WIFI signal to be very good and strong. The GPS works very well to, even getting a lock when I am sitting indoor, fairly near a window. But I see little use for the GPS, am I really going to put this 10" tablet into my car and drive around? Definitely not!

And now, the screen. Got to be honest, it is not great. There are better screen out there, eg samsung tab2 10.1, asus tf300 and even the ipad2 beats this one. The color reproduction is actually very good (probably b'cos toshiba makes TVs), but the contrast and the brightness is lacking compared to other equally priced competitors. Also the viewing angle is lacking compared to other. I am not saying it is a terrible screen. On its own, looking at the screen it is a perfectly pleasant experience. Just when you put it side-by-side with other tablets, you quickly realized that Toshiba have definitely cut-cost here. On the upside, the screen is gorilla glass and it give you that added "security".

How about the sound? I am happy to report that it is good. Some says that it sounded a little soft. But I didn't think so. I mean, of course, if you are in a busy retail center or in a train you might find it pretty hard to hear it, but at home, the loudness is pretty acceptable. I almost never turn the volume above the mid point. Also worth mentioning, that toshiba have included some of their own software that allows your to tweak the sound. It is under the "audio enhancement" menu. I found the enhancement help a lot with the loudness and give the sound a bit more clarity.

As for the software, the tablet runs Android 4.0 Ice cream sandwich (ICS). I personally thinks that Android is a fantastic platform. No saying that Android is the best mobile OS, and it not perfect either, but the flexibility and the openness of the OS appeals to me. So if you don't want or don't like Android, go buy some other device. The OS runs very smoothly on this tablet, the transition in and out of apps are very quick. This tablet doesn't miss a beat. There are rumor out on the web that Toshiba will be rolling out the Jelly Bean upgrade in the future, but since ICS runs so well, I don't think I will be too bother if Jelly Bean comes or not.

The apps installed on this tablet are pretty much standard stuff. I use this tablet mainly for browsing, watching videos and some casual gaming. The stock browser is excellent. Loading of web pages are very fast (this is a relative concept of course), the zooming in and out is smooth (not that you need to do much with a 10" screen) and embedded videos (flash and html5) all play perfectly. As for video, I've thrown a few formats at it, and the stock player cope very well with divx, xvid, mkv & mp4 (mixture of SD and HD resolution). But stock player fail to play flv, not a real problem because most 3rd party video player would do it. Gaming, well this is where this tablet shines. I've tested some of the more cpu/gpu intensive games from tegra zone, and this table eat games for lunch. The effect were fantastic and the games runs silky smooth. I've got about 20 games installed so far, and all of them runs beautifully.

Toshiba has thrown in a few bloatware, some of them good and useful (eg, the file manager is not bad and the office suite is good too), and there are others that are not so good (eg, toshiba places). There is also the audio enhancer (which I mentioned earlier) and there is also a video enhancement feature. I've enabled this once and it simply crashed the video I was watching a reboot the tablet. So avoid the video enhancement feature.

There are a few things that I do not like about this tablet. One is the proprietary charging connector and slot. Why can't we just use the standard usb for charging? I know other tablet manufacturer (eg asus, samsung) does it as well, doesn't mean I have to like it. Another issue is the sdcard slot. To insert a sdcard, you will have to remove a plastic cover. Once the cover is removed and the sdcard inserted in its place, you now have a big gap along the right side of the tablet. And the corners/edges on this gap is fairly sharp. So, if you are gripping the side of this tablet, you find the edges digging into your hand, very very uncomfortable. I find myself consciously, avoiding the sd card gap when holding the tablet. This is just a sign of bad design by Toshiba.

Now, the bits that are not so good. The built quality is a bit of a let down. I like to point out that I am now on my second AT300 tablet (returned the first one). On the 1st At300, on the top edge left side, I found that the screen is "lifting/separating" away from the casing. Then if I run my finger along the edges of the screen, I can feel some bits are lower or higher than the rest. It is as if, the screen have not been secured evenly/properly onto casing. And also, as many have mentioned, there are backlight bleed all around the edges of the screen. So, is my second AT300 any better? Unfortunately NOT! Bits of the screen is still lifting off the casing, though less severe, and the backlight bleed is still there. I know, I know, at under £300, this is not a "premium" product, but bits of the screen sticking out of the casing, that's just a sign of very very bad manufacturing and no quality control! Shame on you, Toshiba.

So, despite the bad build quality and the minor problems, why am I still holding on to this tablet? Because right now, in the UK, for under £300, I feel this tablet have the best combination of features versus drawbacks. The nearest contender is the galaxy tab2 10.1 (£300), but this one uses a out-of-date dual core TI OMAP chip. The next one up is the old ipad2 (£330), and this one has no ports at all, useless! Next is the acer a510 (£330), which I've to admit is pretty tempting, but down to personal experience with acer laptops, I've sworn never to buy acer ever again (too bad for me?). And finally we have the asus tf300, this one tick all the right boxes, but the package and pricing of this product represents everything that is wrong with how the UK consumers are being rip-off when it comes to consumer electronic products (compared to the ppl in the USA). I mean you can go to US today, walk into Best Buy and get a basic model of tf300 (16GB, no keyboard) for a mere £260 (yes pounds, not dollar). And what do we get in the UK? We get a bloated, pre-packaged, asus tf300 32GB + keyboard dock for £399! That's £140 more for the extra things that I do not even want or need.

Rant over. And that's it. Thanks for reading :)

I have had this tablet for over a month now and I am very pleased with it. However it did take me a bit to get used to using as I owned a very fast laptop before this. There is some screen bleed but is only seen on start up and is not noticeable when watching BBCi player or videos as far as I can see. It's great for surfing the net (once you have played around with it for a bit) and customized it. I do use a basic PC as well to store music, pics, videos and files etc. And to run the printer off too. All in all this is a very fast very sleek tablet which I would highly recommend.