The Toshiba AT270

The skinny on the AT270

Weighing only 350g, the Toshiba model is said to be the world's thinnest 7.7-inch tablet

by Peter Yeo

04:45 AM Oct 04, 2012

 

SINGAPORE - I have been using a 10-inch tablet for about a year now. It is great for reading, Web surfing and for watching videos on YouTube (Psy, anyone?), but carrying a behemoth of a tablet for hours on end can be murder on your wrists. And that is the argument many manufacturers of 7-inch tablets have been making: That a smaller screen works just as well with less strain.

The AT270 is said to be the world's thinnest 7.7-inch tablet. PHOTO COURTESY TOSHIBA

The Toshiba Regza AT270 is the latest Android 4.0.3 powered tablet from the Japanese electronics giant. At a svelte 7.85mm, the AT270 is said to be the world's thinnest 7.7-inch tablet and weighing only 350g, it is definitely gentle on my wrists.

Its high definition AMOLED display did plenty of justice to the videos I tried on it - especially the YouTube ones - and colours of photographs are vibrant and true-to-life. What I really like was that text was crisp and sharp and not painful on my eyes, even after I spent a few hours staring at it.

It was pretty fast while operating multiple apps (I tried up to eight), a feat I chalked up to its Nvidia Tegra 3.4-Plus-1 Mobile Quad-Core processor - a world's first according to the Toshiba press release.

The tablet comes with 1GB RAM memory and a 32GB eMMC hard dish drive onboard, which can be expanded up to 64GB via its microSD card slot. It also boasts a microUSB port, 3.5G connectivity, Bluetooth v3.0 and wireless 802.11bgn to meet all your connectivity needs.

However, like most tablets I have tried, the speakers were not the most impressive even though it uses the Toshiba Audio Enhancement with SRS PremiumVoice Pro. But with a tablet of this size, it fell within expectations.

I was unable to try hardcore action RPG games in the limited time I had with the set but simple bubble games worked well, even in low light conditions.

The battery life of the tablet was not exceptional but it was not something that I would complain about. It lasted about six hours - and this was at full brightness setting with a couple of hours spent watching videos - which was not far off its specified mark of seven hours in the bundled manual.

In a nutshell, the Toshiba AT270 is a well-designed, powerful tablet that will satisfy geeks and fashionistas alike.

Source:  www.todayonline.com