Toshiba Tegra 3 tablets offer extras we've seen before

Toshiba announces Tegra 3-based tablets in the 10- and 7.7-inch varieties.

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Eric Franklin

April 10, 2012 5:00 a.m. PT

2 min read

The Excite 7.7's AMOLED screen is, quite likely, the same fantastic screen used in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. Donald Bell/CNET

With its Excite 10 LE, Toshiba offered a well-designed tablet with disappointing performance, and (in my opinion) too high a price tag for what was offered. With the company's announcement of new 10-, 7.7-, and 13-inch tablets today, it doesn't seem as if much has changed on the pricing front, but at least now it's offering Tegra 3-based devices.

Excite 10
The Excite 10 is yet another 10-inch tablet from Toshiba. I believe this makes it three in about a year? Not that it matters really, but if anyone asked, I'm counting. Anyway, the Excite 10 takes closer design cues from the Excite 10 LE than the Thrive as it sports a thin 0.35-inch depth and weighs just 1.32 pounds. That's 0.05 inch thicker and 0.18 pound heavier than the 10 LE.

The 10.1-inch screen runs at a typical 1,280x800-pixel resolution. Like the Excite 13, it houses 1GB of RAM and feature Micro-USB, Micro-HDMI, and a full-size SD card slot.

Rounding out features is a 2-megapixel front camera and a 5-megapixel back camera.

Excite 7.7
Extremely thin and incredibly light, the 7.7 boasts a 0.3-inch thickness and weighs only 13.4 ounces. The tablet includes a Micro-USB port, no HDMI support, but does feature a microSD card slot and 1GB of RAM.

The 7.7 also becomes only the second tablet to boast an AMOLED screen after Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.7. Like its larger brother, the 7.7 features a 2-megapixel front camera and a 5-megapixel back camera.

Watch this: Toshiba unveils Tegra 3 tablets

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So, how about these prices?
The Excite 10 tablet will be available in early May at $450 for 16GB, $530 for 32GB, and $650 for the 64GB model. The Excite 7.7 comes out in early June at $500 for 16GB and $580 for the 32GB model.

It's encouraging that the Excite 10 at $450 with Tegra 3 is (on paper at least) a better deal than the Tegra 2-based Excite 10 LE at $530 for the same amount of storage. Also, the Excite 7.7 at $500 with an AMOLED screen is, again, on paper, a better deal that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 at its non-contract price of $700.

This of course, doesn't take into account things like build quality, comfort, potential bugs, performance issues, and other extras.

Also, with Google's rumored $200 Nexus Tablet supposed coming this summer and the $250 Asus Memo 370T still scheduled for release, getting consumers to pay these fairly reasonable prices will only get more and more difficult.

Still, I'll have to wait and see before I can fairly judge each tablet's true strengths and weaknesses. As such, look for full reviews over the next couple of months.