Toshiba Excite 10 LE: The World's Thinnest 10" Tablet


Design

Toshiba's Excite 10 LE tablet uses a boxy design with rounded corners. This is in contrast to some of the other tablets on the market today, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 which features rounded edges all the way around the tablet.

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The Excite 10 LE tablet features a magnesium alloy surface that gives the tablet a nice finish and has no issues with fingerprints. While holding the tablet, one thing we noticed was some (not all) of the edges on the rear of the tablet weren't perfectly flush with the sides. In other words, there is a slight lip in some corners but not in others. It's a minor thing and not a big issue when holding the tablet, but it's something we definitely noticed.

You'll find a 10.1-inch LED backlit display on the Excite 10 LE. This display supports a resolution of 1280 x 800 and supports 10-finger multi-touch. One interesting thing about the display is the fact that you can see a grid-like pattern when the screen is off. The Excite 10 LE's display will collect some fingerprints over time, but generally speaking the tablet did a good job at hiding fingerprints. 

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Viewing angles on the Excite 10 LE's display are excellent. When looking at the tablet outside under direct sunlight, the display was on-par with other devices we've seen: not the greatest, but definitely still readable. While outside, we did notice the grid-pattern on the display was more visible than it was indoors.

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Toshiba includes a handful of ports with the Excite 10 LE including microUSB and micro HDMI connectors as well as a microSD card slot and 3.5mm headphone jack. All of these ports are located on the left side of the tablet when held in landscape mode.

At the base of the tablet, you'll find a dock connector which also acts as the charging port using the Toshiba-supplied cable. Speakers are located on both ends of the base.

On the right edge of the tablet, you'll find the power button, power indicator light, volume controls, and a screen rotation lock/unlock switch.

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Above the display on the front of the Excite 10 LE, you'll see the front-facing 2MP webcam. The 5MP rear-facing camera is centered on the tablet near the top with the camera light just to the left of the camera.

One of the things Toshiba touts about the Excite 10 LE is the fact that it is the "world's thinnest" 10-inch tablet. Although the Excite 10 LE is definitely thin at about 7.62mm, it wins this title by a relatively small margin. For example, the Apple iPad 2 measures about 9.4mm (0.37 inches) thick.


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