Toshiba AT200 review

First announced back in September at IFA, the AT200 claims to be the thinnest tablet available – and at just 7.7mm wide it’s hard to argue with that statement even at its release six months down the line. The headline figure is correct but the AT200 doesn’t feel or look as slender as some other tablet we’ve reviewed. This is because it doesn’t taper towards the edge at all, and its silver edges have a black central strip which makes them look chunkier than they are.

Despite being slim, those flat edges mean there’s plenty of space for ports and slots. The headphone jack plus micro USB, HDMI and SD card slot are all flush with surface – with no recessed ports or covers to get in the way of plugging stuff in – on the left-hand side. There’s no SIM card slot, and no 3G enabled version is available at present. On the right is a power button, volume rocker and a handy slide switch for locking the tablet’s orientation.

The bottom of the tablet has a large proprietary connector. This could be used for a docking station we suppose though none is available at present. The supplied cable terminates in a USB connector, and can be used with the supplied 2 amp charger for fast charging, or connected to a PC for data transfer and basic USB charging. The micro USB connector can also be used for charging, which is handy if you carry a micro USB lead for your phone anyway.

Speaking of charging, we tested the battery using our constant video playback test, where it scored an impressive eight hours and forty minutes – which is comparable to the best 10in Android tablets. Toshiba hasn’t disclosed the capacity of the battery in its specifications, but it’s impressive to have squeezed what must be a decent-sized battery into the AT200’s slender design.

The tablet is pretty good looking in a very plain way from the front. The rear’s brushed metal panel looks good, but we wish Toshiba hadn’t felt the need to write so much stuff on it. Incidentally, the AT200 has some of the strongest haptic feedback we’ve felt from a tablet, with every key press on the screen bringing a very tangible rumble in response.

Inside the dual-core TI OMAP 4430 chipset isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, it’s the same chipset used on the competing Motorola Xoom 2, and even had the same respectable 1.2GHz clock speed. In the Sunspider Javascript benchmark it scored 1,941ms, which is almost exactly the same as the Xoom 2. Unsurprisingly, but still disappointingly, this tablet has been launched with Android 3.2.1 (Honeycomb) and there’s no date at present for an upgrade to Android 4.0 – despite some other tablets now receiving such updates.

Toshiba has done little to mess with the default Android installation. There are a few odd apps added, but nothing worthy of mention. We really like the app tray though, which has a My Apps tab, so you only see the apps you installed yourself (and for us these are usually the only ones we use). It defaults back to this tab whenever you select the app tray too.

The 10.1in widescreen display is crisp and the reflective coating helps, but it’s not quite up with the best examples in terms of contrast and colour vibrancy. On the Android home screen it’s hard to notice, but after studying our test photos for a while, devices like the Sony Tablet S and Motorola Xoom 2 have the edge in image quality. It’s actually a surprisingly narrow difference, as the AT200 doesn’t use a high-quality IPS panel like its competitors. Speaking of image quality the 5-megapixel camera is nothing to get excited about and certainly isn’t a patch on the new iPad’s example.

There’s little wrong with the AT200, but conversely there’s little to get excited about too. It’s a perfectly decent tablet, with a practical design, and it’s a little cheaper than the immediate competition. If you’re set on Android, then the Xoom 2 offers a slightly better screen, IR-emitter for AV control and a water-resistant coating for around £40 more. But unless you have a raft of Android apps you can’t live without, most will be better off paying the extra £70 for the mighty iPad.