The good: The Toshiba Excite Pro features an incredibly sharp screen, includes expandable storage through microSD, and has a sharp 8-megapixel back camera.
The bad: The tablet sputters and freezes far too often and heats up far beyond comfort when playing games or streaming video. It also shuts down on occasion for no apparent reason. The price is far too high given the performance issues.
The bottom line: The Toshiba Excite Pro is far too expensive to justify its buggy user experience.
Despite its $500 price and the inclusion of a Tegra 4 CPU, the Toshiba Excite Pro isn't the performance monster one might expect. Gaming performance only matches that of the $229 Nexus 7, and the Pro gets thoroughly eclipsed by the $300 Nvidia Shield. The screen is as sharp as they come, but is saddled with washed-out color and a dim brightness. And while it includes 32GB of storage, there is unfortunately no lower-priced 16GB version.
If that were its only infractions, all could possibly be forgiven, but unfortunately there's more. The tablet gets uncomfortably hot after only a few minutes playing games or streaming video, and is sporadically riddled with sputtery performance, an unresponsive screen, and periodic unsolicited shutdowns. At this time I'd like to remind you of its $500 price.
Toshiba does its best to deliver a satisfying bang for your buck by including expandable storage, Micro-HDMI ports, dual cameras, and Harman Kardon speakers. Not to mention a few hit-and-miss software feature gambits.
As Android tablets go, the Nexus 10 is still your best choice thanks to a lower price option ($399 for 16GB; $499 for 32GB) and better stability. The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and Nook HD+ are both value-laden deals at $299 and $179 for the 32GB versions. It's difficult enough to justify spending $500 on a tablet, and with options such as these, you don't have to.
Design
The Toshiba Excite Pro follows the company's tablet house design for 2013 (already glimpsed on the Excite Pure): a black-bezeled tablet with a textured plastic gray backside. Corners are comfortably rounded, but the back texture actually does little to keep it from slipping out of your hands.
The Toshiba Excite Pro follows the company's tablet house design for 2013 (already glimpsed on the Excite Pure): a black-bezeled tablet with a textured plastic gray backside. Corners are comfortably rounded, but the back texture actually does little to keep it from slipping out of your hands.
When held in landscape, you'll find the power/sleep button on the top edge somewhat toward the left. The button is actually positioned a bit closer to the middle of the tablet's body than I'm used to, and as a result it was easy to miss it when attempting a no-look press. Thankfully, it protrudes just enough that most will find it with a simple finger slide across the top.
| Toshiba Excite Pro | Google Nexus 10 | Apple iPad (fourth gen) | Sony Xperia Tablet Z | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight in pounds | 1.39 | 1.33 | 1.44 | 1.06 |
| Width in inches (landscape) | 10.3 | 10.4 | 9.5 | 10.5 |
| Height in inches | 7 | 6.9 | 7.3 | 6.8 |
| Depth in inches | 0.4 | 0.35 | 0.37 | 0.27 |
| Side bezel width in inches (landscape) | n/a | 0.9 | 0.8 | 1 |
The Pro's bezels are wide and easily accommodate my rather large thumbs. There's a 1.2-megapixel in the top middle. On the left edge from the top are a headphone jack, volume rocker, microSD card slot, Micro-HDMI port, and a Micro-USB port. The latter three are tucked safely away behind a 2-inch-long door.
An 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash sits on the back in the top-right corner with dual Harman Kardon speakers on the far ends of the left and right side.
Not the thinnest tablet in the world, but not uncomfortably thick, either.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
At 1.39 pounds, the tablet is about the same weight as most 10-inchers, but is noticeably thicker than the Nexus 10 or iPad 4. And while it doesn't come off as a strictly durable tablet, the plastic back gives it this "rough 'n tumble" feel, where you'd expect it to be able to take a drop or two. Otherwise, it's an altogether unremarkable design.
Software features
The Excite Pro ships with Android 4.2.1 and includes a few exclusive Toshiba customizations.
The Excite Pro ships with Android 4.2.1 and includes a few exclusive Toshiba customizations.
Chief among them is Toshiba's custom camera app, Tru Capture. It's essentially an app geared toward business users and used to take improved pictures of items with white backgrounds like whiteboards, magazines, or notebooks.
Say you're in a meeting where the person running it is using a whiteboard to illustrate important items. Instead of actually paying attention, you simply wait until the end of the meeting when all the information is on the board and you snap a quick pic you can look at later. Unfortunately, you also capture a giant glare spot from one of the lights in the room and now part of the information in your pic is illegible.
Antiglare accomplished. Pretty much.
(Credit: Screenshot by Eric Franklin/CNET)
Toshiba attempts to address this with an antiglare option that requires you to take two pics: one head-on pic with the glare and another from an angled position, preferably without the glare. The app then attempts to combine the two pics into one head-on pic with no glare. It works fairly well and is kind of an interesting way to go about solving the issue, but I'm still having a difficult time deciding how useful this would be in an actual real-world situation. More useful is a feature that enhances the white in pics you've taken of magazines or printouts in order to make text more legible; however, there's still that inkling feeling of "Who's going to use this again?" I mean I'm sure some people will, but it doesn't feel like something worth sinking any significant amount of development time into.
Autocropping in action. Thankfully, you can change the crop region. But then, why even include autocropping?
(Credit: Screenshot by Eric Franklin/CNET)
Lastly, there's an autocropping feature that attempts to predict how you'd want your picture to be cropped and then zooms in the relevant info. Unfortunately, it's pretty bad at predicting, and you end up having to adjust the cropping area manually, anyway.
Honestly, the whole app feels cobbled together, and unless you have very specific needs, is pretty useless.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Hardware features
The 10.1-inch Excite Pro houses a 1.8GHz Nvidia Tegra 4 quad-core processor with a 72-core GPU. It has 2GB of RAM and includes support for 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a GPS. A gyroscope, accelerometer, and a digital compass are included as well.
The 10.1-inch Excite Pro houses a 1.8GHz Nvidia Tegra 4 quad-core processor with a 72-core GPU. It has 2GB of RAM and includes support for 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a GPS. A gyroscope, accelerometer, and a digital compass are included as well.
The tablet starts at $500 for 32GB of storage, and there's unfortunately no cheaper 16GB version. Its microSD card slot supports up to 64GB cards, and its Micro-USB can only be used for file transfers, not charging. It instead features a small power-brick-style AC adapter for charging the battery.
The holy trinity of physical tablet features.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Enhancing sound and video
The Excite Pro's Harman Kardon speakers are loud, but still fairly tinny when playing bass-heavy music at high volumes. Toshiba's audio enhancement feature allows you to control certain aspects of the sound like surround quality and voice clarity, but to my nonaudiophile ears, it simply makes music sound a lot less muffled when switched on.
The Excite Pro's Harman Kardon speakers are loud, but still fairly tinny when playing bass-heavy music at high volumes. Toshiba's audio enhancement feature allows you to control certain aspects of the sound like surround quality and voice clarity, but to my nonaudiophile ears, it simply makes music sound a lot less muffled when switched on.
Toshiba's audio enhancement options.
(Credit: Screenshot by Eric Franklin/CNET)
Resolution Plus, which is designed to enhance standard-definition videos, didn't seem to enhance them all that much, other than making the colors a bit more saturated.
You'd think the Excite Pro's textured backside would make it easier to hold. It doesn't.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Performance
Twice during my time with the Excite Pro, it shut down completely on its own for no apparent reason. This may be because of the tablet overheating -- each time it shut down, it had just been either playing a game or streaming a movie. Both of which cause the tablet to get uncomfortably hot.
Twice during my time with the Excite Pro, it shut down completely on its own for no apparent reason. This may be because of the tablet overheating -- each time it shut down, it had just been either playing a game or streaming a movie. Both of which cause the tablet to get uncomfortably hot.
Also, when navigating the interface, opening and closing apps, there's a definite sluggishness to its flow. There were also a few instances when the screen became completely unresponsive or seconds late in reacting to my swipes. That's disappointing given how smooth Tegra 4 performance was on the Nvidia Shield.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
The 2,560x1,600-pixel screen delivers text virtually as sharp as any tablet; however, screen colors have a hollow washed-out quality that gives everything a sort of pastel-like look. Maximum brightness is noticeably lower than other tablets at this high price range.
| Tested spec | Toshiba Excite Pro | Google Nexus 10 | Apple iPad (4th gen) | Sony Xperia Tablet Z |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maximum brightness | 301 cd/m2 | 368 cd/m2 | 398 cd/m2 | 411 cd/m2 |
| Maximum black level | 0.28 cd/m2 | 0.44 cd/m2 | 0.49 cd/m2 | 0.43 cd/m2 |
| Contrast ratio | 1,075:1 | 836:1 | 812:1 | 955:1 |
Gaming performance is up there with the new Nexus 7 with smooth frame rates in even some of the more-demanding games; however, as previously mentioned, playing games is a surefire way to heat the tablet up beyond acceptable comfort levels.
| Device | CPU | GPU | RAM | OS tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Nexus 7 (Summer 2013) | 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro | Adreno 320 (single-core) | 2GB | Android 4.3 |
| Sony Xperia Tablet Z | 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro | Andreno 320 (single-core) | 2GB | Android 4.1.2 |
| Google Nexus 10 | 1.7GHz dual-core Samsung Exynos 5 Dual (5250) | Mali-T604 (quad-core) | 2GB | Android 4.2.2 |
| Apple iPad 4 | 1.4GHz dual-core Apple A6X | PowerVR SGX554MP4 (quad-core) | 1GB | iOS 6.1.3 |
| Nvidia Shield | 1.9GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra 4 | 72-core GPU | 2GB | Android 4.2.1 |
| Toshiba Excite Pro | 1.9GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra 4 | 72-core GPU | 2GB | Android 4.2.1 |
3DMark (normal)(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Graphics test 1, 720p (GPU)(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Graphics test 2, 720p (GPU)(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Physics test, 720p (CPU)(Longer bars indicate better performance)
N.O.V.A. 3 Level 1 load time (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
The 1.3-megapixel front camera is easily one of the grainiest cameras I've ever seen on a $500 tablet, but the 8-megapixel back camera is actually really good. It takes sharp pics, video, handles colors pretty well, and has an LED flash.
Here are our official CNET Labs-tested battery life results. More tablet testing results can be found here.
| Video Battery life (in hours) | |
|---|---|
| Toshiba Excite Pro | 7.9 |
Conclusion
The Excite Pro has plenty of features -- some more useful than others -- and it also features a sharp screen and really good gaming performance. The washed-out colors, dim brightness, and sometimes sluggish performance could be more forgivable if it didn't cost $500. Sure, you're getting 32GB of storage, but users shouldn't have to pay so much for a tablet with so many problems.
The Excite Pro has plenty of features -- some more useful than others -- and it also features a sharp screen and really good gaming performance. The washed-out colors, dim brightness, and sometimes sluggish performance could be more forgivable if it didn't cost $500. Sure, you're getting 32GB of storage, but users shouldn't have to pay so much for a tablet with so many problems.
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