Toshiba Thrive Review- A Honeycomb tablet with rechargeable battery and USB port
Meet the Toshiba Tablet
While we've praised tablets like the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 for their sleekness, Toshiba took the wraps off its first Android tablet- the 10.1-inch Toshiba Thrive. The tablet has 1280 by 800 display and an NVidia Tegra 2 processor. Apart from the usual goodies for a nice Android slate, like a 10.1" display with 1280x800 pixels, Android 3.1 Honeycomb, a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 chipset, 5MP rear camera and 2MP front one. At first glance, you’ll notice the screen and design. It looks much similar to but bulky than most other tablets. However, the 8GB Thrive tablet is sold at $429, undercutting iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1. Besides, Toshiba Thrive sports an unorthodox ports collection and removable battery, making it more than just another Android tablet.
Distinguished Features- full-size USB 2.0 port and rechargeable battery
What distinguishes the Toshiba model from some of the other tablets shown so far is it’s sense of design and integration into the Toshiba family. Just because this tablet is small doesn’t mean it can’t reach mighty far, thanks to an array of the kinds of full-size ports. Yes, it still looks like a glass slab with curved corners. But the way Toshiba has integrated the ports, and designed the chassis, makes this device feel like more than just not another slab.
Thrive sports a miniUSB port for hooking up peripherals like your video camera, an HDMI-out port to see multimedia on a HDTV, a dock connector, and, get this - a full-size USB 2.0 port to share content with your other devices. And there is a full-size SD card slot, which accepts cards of up to 128GB in capacity. With the integrated ports the Toshiba Thrive performs as good as a decent portable HD media player. You can easily access HD movies from SD card or external hard drive and watch the movies on HDTV screen.
Unlike other tablets, the Toshiba tablet battery is user-replaceable - no need to send it back to the manufacturer to be replaced. Simply remove the back cover and switch it out in seconds. While plugged in, the tablet can charge the rechargeable Lithium Ion battery up to 90% capacity in as little as an hour and a half. The removable battery rates up to seven hours of continuous HD video playback. All these features make Toshiba Thrive a better movie player than any other tablets.
Applications that enhance movie experience on Toshiba Thrive
- Moboplayer. This is a best free video player on Android tablets and phones. The stock media player on Toshiba Thrive supports limited video formats, but Moboplayer plays almost anything you throw at it, so you can watch any of your videos on the tab without conversion. It even supports subtitles.
- Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper. This is an exclusive Blu-ray ripper app that handles both protected Blu-ray Discs and DVDs. It lets you rip movies off disc to optimized formats for Toshiba Thrive(GUIDE). Blu-ray movies can be compressed to 2-4GB while staying at 1920*1080/1280*720 resolutions. Note that the app runs on PC rather than Toshiba Thrive.
- Skifta. Skifta for Android is a DLNA certified app that enables any Android-based smartphone or tablet to stream onboard media to any DLNA source, including TVs, stereos, PCs and Sony's PS3. With Skifta installed you can stream movies from Toshiba Thrive to HDTV without HDMI connection.
 |
 |
 |
