VideoGamingPros Reports : When you first look at the box at the Toshiba Thrive, you might be a little put off by its 1.6 pound weight. However, once you hold this device you will soon realize that numbers don’t count for everything and the device actually feels lighter than the first gen iPad, which weighed about the same. And that’s not the only pleasantly surprising element of the Toshiba Thrive tablet. The Thrive’s price tag starts at an affordable $429, its speedy Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core 1 GHz processor puts on an exquisite performance, and the Android Honeycomb operating system runs the show perfectly.
Hardware
The Thrive is very ergonomically designed and has a very well structured back which makes it very comfortable to hold. The whole device looks a lot like the netbooks manufactured by Toshiba thanks to the rubberized finish on the back which makes sure that it is close to impossible for your hands to slip from the device while being very soft to touch at the same time.
The sides of the device look relatively clean thanks to the fact that the rather bulky USB, mini USB and the HDMI ports are deftly tucked away underneath a door. A chrome piece surrounding the rear and front cameras and a matching metal logo imprinted on the back doesn’t really exude build quality which Toshiba was aiming for but can be easily overlooked thanks to the highly ergonomic design. The device comes with an expandable memory slot which allows for a further increase in the memory to up to 64 GB.
Performance
The Thrive tablet comes with a unique provision of having an easily replaceable battery which costs around $80. The battery life lasts a little over seven hours of HD video playback on a full charge and takes about half an hour to recharge fully again. The overall battery life of this device is just a little over a day and a half when used heavily which actually makes the provision for the replaceable battery redundant unless you have plans for prolonged HD viewing.
Though the display seems to be something that supports most video formats, it seems to lack gyro sensors and proximity sensors which reduce battery life. All major audio formats like Mp3, AAC, WMA, eAAC+, Ogg Vorbis, WAV formats are supported.
Multimedia
The camera support on the Toshiba Thrive tablet is a shade above average, taking decent pictures with its 5MP camera. However the major downside of the device is the placement of the rear camera which is automatically blocked by the fingers when holding the tablet in landscape mode. Though the fingers can easily be moved to avoid this, it really isn’t a very comfortable position to hold this device.
The replaceable battery and the full port capability make this a favorite amongst users looking for greater device support and longer battery life. However, the design of the device could do with a few minor changes starting with the position of the camera though the overall design of the tablet is very ergonomic.
The Toshiba Thrive is very aggressively priced, starting at only $429. Buy the Toshiba Thrive starting at $429.99 at Amazon.
