Thursday 19 January 2012

Toshiba Thrive 7

There are a lot of similar 7-inch Android tablets out there. Toshiba's Thrive 7 ($379.99 direct) ramps up the screen resolution from competing models, but ultimately doesn't provide a richer experience. The Thrive 7 is a fine tablet, it's just not the most of anything: neither the slimmest, lightest, fastest, or cheapest, and its short battery life is a real bummer. 
Design, Screen, and Connectivity
The Thrive 7 tablet is, for the most part, a scale model of the original 10-inch Thrive ($429.99, 3.5 stars), with the same ridged-texture backing, camera placement, and black plastic frame. Toshiba did a nice job slimming down its new smaller tablet. At 7.44 by 5.04 by 0.48 inches and 13.3 ounces, the Thrive 7 is on par with
the T-Mobile Springboard 4G ($429.99, 3.5 stars) and slightly thicker than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 ($399, 3.5 stars). The plastic frame feels cheaper than that of the Galaxy Tab 7, and downright chintzy next to the Springboard's aluminum body.
The original Thrive had some great features not found on other tablets, including its full-sized ports and removable battery. Those are missing here. The Thrive 7 has a familiar port flap, but behind it are a micro HDMI port, mini USB port, and a micro SD slot, all of which are pretty common on a lot of tablets these days. Along the left side you will find a Power button, volume rocker, orientation-lock switch, and the aforementioned plastic flap. On the top of the tablet there's a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as the 2-megapixel front-facing camera and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera on the reverse side. The rear camera is too easy to cover with your hand in landscape mode. The bottom houses a comically-large charging port. Two speaker grilles flank the oversized port and, in casual listening, go very loud for such a small tablet.
The display on the Thrive 7 is truly a beauty. It features the same resolution, 1280-by-800 pixels, as its larger 10-inch sibling, but packed more densely into a 7-inch TFT LCD, making for really sharp images and text. Both the brightness and viewing angle are also very good.
That high-res screen comes with one caveat, though: it makes many links and buttons small and hard to press accurately. But it wasn't just that links were small—sometimes I would press one area and the touch would register relatively far off. This was particularly inconvenient while browsing full websites, as the inaccuracy made for frustrating mistaken clicks. I also noticed occasional dead spots on the screen, where no touches would register until I closed out of an app or, in some cases, rebooted the tablet.

The Thrive 7 is a Wi-Fi-only tablet, connecting to 802.11b/g/n networks. There is also Bluetooth, which made it easy to pair with headphones without any noticeable lag in audio while watching movies.
The 7-inch device comes in two models, a 16GB for $379.99 and a 32GB for $429.99. It's less expensive than the Galaxy Tab 7, but still far more expensive than the stripped-down Amazon Kindle Fire ($199, 4 stars) and Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet ($249, 4 stars). I was able to easily expand the memory using a 32GB microSD card.
Performance, OS and Apps
Toshiba went with the same dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and Android Honeycomb 3.2 found on most other Android tablets. Benchmark performance was pretty much the same as every other Nvidia Tegra 2 based tablet we've tested thus far.
This tablet runs stock Android. Most Android geeks prefer this basic version of the OS, but personally, I prefer Samsung's TouchWiz extensions and skinning. There are a few preloaded apps and widgets, all of which can be easily removed. One link takes you to Toshiba's App Place in the browser, a pretty useless collection of Web services. For apps, it's back to the Android Market; as on all Honeycomb tablets, it's still sorely lacking a proper collection of easy to find, tablet-optimized apps. The included apps were far more useful, with Quickoffice HD, PrinterShare, and Toshiba's File Manager, which made file management quick, easy and convenient.
Toshiba curiously hides the stock music and video player, opting instead for a Toshiba branded media player. The Thrive 7 was able to play 3GP, DivX, H.264, M4V, MP4, and WMV video at resolutions up to 1080p. Tablet-optimized apps work well and, like on most 7 inchers, phone apps look pretty good too.
Camera performance on the Thrive 7 was decent, as far as tablets go, with sharp images and relatively low noise, though I could only take pictures and video using the rear-facing camera. The front-facing camera works with video chat, but the results are less than stellar and video chatting via tablets still has a long way to go. The Thrive 7 is capable of recording 720p30 video, but recorded video was extremely jittery and even the slightest movement caused a lot of blur.
In our battery test, which loops a video on max brightness with Wi-Fi on, the Thrive 7 lasted just 3 hours, 50 minutes. This was pretty disappointing compared with the thinner and lighter Galaxy Tab 7, which delivered 6 hours, 33 minutes in the same test.
Conclusions
Although the Toshiba Thrive 7 eliminates a lot of its bigger sibling's bulk, it also eliminates some features that made the original Thrive stand out, like the full-sized ports and removable battery. The screen on the Thrive 7 is superb and most things work smoothly, but the difficulty navigating full-sized websites and the poor battery life are disappointing. If a high-resolution screen is a must, the Springboard has longer battery life, a more accurate touch screen, a cellular data option, and also sports a far superior all-aluminum construction, but all that comes at a higher price tag. This is a good tablet at a decent price, but it just doesn't do enough to beat some of its more-polished competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7, or more budget-friendly tablets like the Kindle Fire.


Spec Data
CPU: nVidia Tegra 2 Dual-Core
Processor Speed: 1 GHz
Operating System: Google Android 3.0 or higher
Screen Resolution: 1280 x 800 pixels
Screen Size: 7 inches
Battery Life: 3 hours 50 minutes
Battery Type Supported: Rechargeable
Storage Capacity (as Tested): 16 GB
Dimensions: 7.44 x 5.04 x 0.48 inches
Weight: 13.3 oz
Networking Options: 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n
Email Access: Dedicated email app
Web Browser: Yes
Flash support: Yes
GPS: Yes
Camera(s): 1 front-facing and 1 rear-facing
Video Chat: Yes
Music Playback Formats: AAC, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, WMA
Photo Formats: BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PSD, PNG, GIF, RAW
Video Formats AVI, DivX, MPEG4, WMV, QuickTime, H.264, XVid
PRICE:$379.99

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