First Impressions of Toshiba $119 Windows Tablet

Sep 18, 2014, Updated Sept 23

Per my earlier post, I ordered the Toshiba $119 Windows tablet two days ago. The unit arrived today (in 2 days) from Microsoft store, with free shipping—that’s fast.

Read on for my initial thoughts:

• The device is sized right and is lightweight. Maybe a tad on the thick side, but not bad.
• Black front looks good and professional, but the white plastic backside definitely feels inexpensive. However it seems rugged and is nicely textured for easy hold.
• Biggest issue: the screen is not very sharp, it reminds me of older color monitors with a bit of haloing and color fringing on or around some text. That said, contrary to what some reviewers have said, the screen is definitely readable and usable. I’ve used it for hours surfing the web, reading e-mail, etc. I quickly stopped noticing the poor screen quality.
• Screen is plenty bright enough for indoors, but a bit dim outdoors even in the shade.
• Speaker-based sound is okay, but lacking for a tablet. It’s comparable to my iPhone, about same volume and not stereo. With headphones of course it is stereo and as loud and as good as any other device.
• I never thought 16GB storage would be enough, but after linking to my Microsoft account and downloading the standard set of apps automatically (during setup), I still had 5 GB available, which is pretty amazing. Did not add an SD card (though I might later).
• All the Windows Store apps run fine and I like the 7 inch form factor for using them—the size seems natural for most of those apps. However it is clear that some text labeling is a bit small on a 7 inch screen—I did need to put my reading glasses on for many apps (I don’t need to do that with larger tablets).
• IE works fine, scrolls fast. But it has the usual lag on reloading pages when navigating back–something I notice on all the Bay Trail Atom devices using the IE Windows store app.
• The Mail app works great. I especially like thumb-typing in portrait mode; the on-screen is keyboard just right for that. It’s like the app was designed for this sized device.
• The TaskTask app for Windows works great. Fast and sized well for this screen. Using TaskTask, the Calendar app, and the Mail app, I have most of my day-to-day business work covered.
• I haven’t installed yet or tried running Outlook desktop, or Word, or Excel. The unit comes with a 1-yr subscription to Office. While I am in no rush to do that, I am curious to see if using Outlook desktop is at all practical given the small screen and small RAM. I’d never use it as my main mail or tasks software on a screen this small. But, per my short-burst-real-work philosophy for Windows tablets, it would be nice to have it available as a backup if a request came in that required it and if this unit was all I had handy.
• The standard Windows tablet navigation gestures work well on this sized device. I’ve often said I like those much better than iPad or Android navigation, and feel that even more here.
• I did notice things slow down if I had too many apps open at once, probably due to the low 1 GB of RAM, so I am closing apps a lot now as I open other ones. But having three or four open at a time is fine.

Update Sep. 23:

Been using it on and off over the last few days, some more thoughts.

• I don’t think the battery life is near the 7.5 hours they advertised.Haven’t measured it but I had to recharger pretty quickly.
• Occasionally the Windows 8 navigation edge gestures freeze up–just don’t work–for seconds at a time. And then start working again.

Conclusion

Overall, for about $100 bucks this is not a bad Windows mini-tablet to use on the fly, especially for checking and writing email, web browsing, and other apps. Beats an iPad mini by several hundred dollars (but definitely not same quality screen). Certainly it will not be my main Windows computer since the screen is too small, but for apps work, pretty darn okay.

Michael