New tablet has
13.3-in. display and weighs 2.2 lbs.; goes on sale in June
The tablet market is already populated with
dozens of models of various sizes, many close in size to Apple's highly popular
iPad, with its 9.7-in. screen.
The Toshiba Excite 13 tablet has a 13.3-in. screen, the largest for a tablet computer. (Image: Toshiba)
So
how does a vendor distinguish its tablets from the competition? One way could
be introduce a model with a radically different screen size, like Toshiba this
week.
Toshiba
expanded its Excite family of Android tablets with three new models, but the
one getting all the attention, and already some scorn, is the Excite 13, which
features a 13.3-in. display that offers 1600-x-900-pixel resolution and more
than 75 square inches of viewing area.
The
other tablets that Toshiba announced are the Excite 10, with a 10.1-in. screen
and more than 43 square inches of viewing area, and the Excite 7.7, with a
7.7-in. display and more than 25 inches of viewing area. All three tablets run
Android 4.0 and use Nvidia Tegra 3 quadcore processors.
The
Excite 13 boasts the largest screen of any tablet on the market. But at 0.4-in.
thick and weighing 2.2 lbs., it's not as bulky and heavy as you might expect it
to be.
Toshiba emphasized that it's not just trying
to stand out by offering a jumbo tablet; its goal is to provide a range of
sizes to meet a range of user needs. "One size does not fit all, so we are
carefully considering how and where people are using tablets and [will] design
form factors to best suit various needs," said Carl Pinto, Toshiba's vice
president of product development, in a statement.
Jack Gold, an analyst at J.Gold Associates,
defended Toshiba's approach with the 13-in. model. "There is no ideal tablet size, just like there
is not one size of car, TV, refrigerator, mattress or even PC screen," he
said.
"At
13.3 inches, it is probably not terribly portable in the sense of putting it in
your pocket, like you might with a 7-in. or smaller size, but it is probably
great for uses like looking at X-ray images in a medical setting or detailed
schematics and diagrams in certain work situations, " Gold said.
The
display is the most expensive element in any tablet, and the larger the
display, the higher the price tag, Gold said.
The
Excite 13 will go on sale June 10 at prices of $650 for the 32GB model and $750
for the 64GB model. Toshiba will start selling the 10.1-in. Excite 10 on May 6,
charging $450 for the 16GB version, $530 for the 32GB model and $650 for the
64GB device. Toshiba's smallest tablet, the Excite 7.7, will also go on sale
June 10 at prices of $500 for the 16GB version and $580 for the 32GB version.
While
Gold suggested the Excite 13 could be used in the workplace, Toshiba described
it as "ideally suited for the home" for tasks such as sharing photos,
surfing the Web, playing games and watching movies with a group. It is powered
by a quadcore Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, has 1GB of memory, and is marketed as a
gaming and multitasking device.
Despite
such qualities, a few experts said the Excite 13 will be seen as being too big.
"The problem with big tablets is that the bigger they are, the harder they
fall," noted Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner. "There's a direct
correlation between size and the frequency of being dropped."
Toshiba
said the three new tablets all have sturdy aluminum shells and
scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass displays to make them durable, although
the analysts noted that "durable" doesn't mean the devices are
drop-resistant like some ruggedized tablets that cost hundreds of dollars more.
Dulaney said Toshiba is probably trying out
different tablet sizes to see how well they do in the market, just as Samsung
has done with its tablets, including the Galaxy Tab 2 (10.1),
which has a 10.1-in. screen, and the Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0),
which has a 7-in. display. Still, Samsung has resisted building a table with
anything larger than a 10.1-in. screen, and that makes the Excite 13 all the
more unusual.
Ultimately,
Dulaney argued that tablet manufacturers "will conclude that the 10-in.
tablet is the best size, just like we have concluded that 8.5 by 11 is the best
size for a sheet of paper."
Steven
Buehler, an analyst at IDC, called the Excite 13 "intriguing," but he
also said it is "among the experiments that manufacturers are trying as
they attempt to stay in front of the market."
Buehler
said tablets, even models as large as the Excite 13, are not ideal for fine
detail work, because they require people to use a finger on a touchscreen. And
even if a tablet is paired with a keyboard and mouse, the result is still not
as effective as using a PC, he added.
"Only time will tell
whether users adopt the [Excite 13] form factor, but to me it seems too big to
be a good tablet and too tablet-like to be a good PC," Buehler said.
সম্প্রতি জানা গেছে, জুলাইয়ের ৯ তারিখে বিশ্বব্যাপী হাজার হাজার কম্পিউটারের ইন্টারনেট সংযোগ বিচ্ছিন্ন হয়ে যেতে পারে। পিসি ওয়ার্ল্ডের বরাত দিয়ে ম্যাশএবল এই খবর জানিয়েছে।
