Difference Between Apple New iPad 3 and Toshiba Excite 10 LE

Apple New iPad 3 vs Toshiba Excite 10 LE | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

As the distinction between laptops and tablets faded away, more and more laptop manufacturers diversified towards manufacturing tablets. Among them, Toshiba, Acer and Lenovo are three of all-time favorites in the laptop industry. When you move in to the tablet industry from the laptop industry, there is a huge change in the way you see things. Laptops are mobile, but the consideration on their power consumption is less than what it is for the tablets. This is because a laptop is basically a mobile workstation while a tablet PC is intended to be purposes like surfing, rich media content and light gaming. One of the main differences you would notice is the processor that is used in the laptops and tablets. Laptops mostly use Intel or AMD based processors while mobile processors are basically dominated by ARM and RISC architectures. This is what makes them consume less power and thus have more juice in the battery to last more than 6-7 hours, unlike typical laptops. However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing these laptop manufacturers can adopt from their home industries. For instance, they can adopt the touchscreens and various other expertise they have on laptops, to make better tablet PCs. That is why we have seen great tablet PCs from them although their smartphones are somewhat disappointing. Furthermore, with the introduction of Windows 8 to the tablets, they would have a similar OS to cope with which is used in laptops other than Android which used to dominate the world of tablets other than iOS.

For this reason, we thought of comparing the iPad 3(new iPad) released a couple of days back against a tablet PC from one of the above manufacturers. Although this tablet doesn’t run on Windows, it’s a great tablet to be compared against iPad 3(new iPad). So let’s talk about Toshiba Excite 10 LE and Apple iPad 3(new iPad).

Apple The new iPad (iPad 3)

There have been many speculations about Apple’s new iPad because it had such a pull from customer’s end. In fact, the Giant is trying to revolutionize the market again. Many of those features in the new iPad seem to add up to a consistent and revolutionary device that is going to blow your mind. As rumored, Apple iPad 3 comes with a 9.7 inches HD IPS retina display that features a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels at a pixel density of 264ppi. This is a huge barrier that Apple has broken, and they have introduced 1 million more pixels to the generic 1920 x 1080 pixels display which used to be the best resolution a mobile device provides. The total number of pixel adds up to 3.1 million, which is actually a monster resolution that hasn’t been matched by any tablet currently available in the market. Apple guarantees that iPad 3 has 44% more color saturation compared to previous models, and they have shown us some amazing photos and texts which looked wonderful on the big screen. They even cracked a joke about the difficulty of displaying the screens from iPad 3 because it has more resolution than the backdrop they were using at the auditorium.

That’s not all about it, the new iPad has a dual core Apple A5X processor at an unknown clock rate with quad core GPU. Apple claims A5X to offer four-times the performance of a Tegra 3; however, it has to be tested to confirm their statement but, needless to say, that this processor will make everything work smooth and seamlessly. It has three variations for internal storage, which is enough to stuff all of your favorite TV shows. The new iPad runs on Apple iOS 5.1, which seems like a great operating system with a very intuitive user interface.

There is a physical home button available at the bottom of the device, as usual. The next big feature Apple introduces is iSight camera, which is 5MP with autofocus and auto-exposure using a backside illuminated sensor. It has an IR filter built into it which is really great. The camera can also capture 1080p HD videos, and they have smart video stabilization software integrated with the camera which is a good move. This slate also supports the best digital assistant in the world, Siri, which was supported by iPhone 4S only.

Here comes another stabilization for the wave of rumors. iPad 3 does come with 4G LTE connectivity apart from EV-DO, HSDPA, HSPA+21Mbps, DC-HSDPA+42Mbps. LTE supports speed up to 73Mbps. However, currently 4G LTE is supported only on AT&T network (700/2100MHz) and Verizon network (700MHz) in the U.S. and Bell, Rogers, and Telus networks in Canada. During launch, the demo was on AT&T’s LTE network, and the device loaded everything super-fast and handled the load very well. Apple claims the new iPad is the device that supports most number of bands ever, but they didn’t say what bands exactly. It is said to have Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n for continuous connectivity, which was expected by default. Fortunately, you can let your new iPad share your internet connection with your friends by making it a wi-fi hotspot. It is 9.4mm thick and has a weight of 1.44-1.46lbs, which is rather comforting, though it is slightly thicker and heftier than iPad 2. The new iPad promises a battery life of 10 hours on normal usage and 9 hours on 3G/4G usage, which is another game changer for the new iPad.

The new iPad is available in either Black or White, and the 16GB variant is offered at $499 which is rather low. The 4G version of the same storage capacity is offered at $629 which is still a good deal. There are two other variants, 32GB and 64GB which comes at $599 / $729 and $699 / $829 respectively without 4G and with 4G. The preorders started on 7 March 2012, and the slate will be released to the market on the 16th of March 2012. Surprisingly the giant has decided to roll out the device in US, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan at the same time which makes it the biggest rollout ever.

Toshiba Excite 10 LE

This slate comes as a successor to the Toshiba Excite tablet range that was released some time back. It doesn’t seem they were all that successful in terms of sales, but the tablets were great, and I think it has something to do with the way Toshiba does their marketing. Excite 10 LE has 10.1 inches LED backlit capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels enabling wide viewing angles. It is powered by 1.2GHz dual core processor on TI OMAP 4430 chipset and 1GB of DDR2 RAM. The GPU seems to host 4 cores as well, but Toshiba hasn’t confirmed this. Excite 10 LE runs on Android OS v3.2 Honeycomb and they are promising an upgrade for v4.0 ICS soon. As you can see, it’s the typical layout of the modern tablet with a dual core processor and an Android OS which would utilize the hardware in an effective way. This slate has two storage options that consist of 16GB and 32GB with the option to expand the storage using microSD card. It also hosts a micro USB port and micro HDMI port as well in terms of wired connectivity.

Toshiba Excite 10 LE doesn’t come with any means of Mobile Broadband connectivity which is somewhat disappointing. To compensate that, they have included Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity that acts as the only means of connecting you and the outside world. It has a 5MP rear camera with autofocus and LED flash that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. A 2MP front camera is also included for the purpose of video conferencing. Toshiba is rather proud about this tablet claiming it’s the thinnest and the lightest 10 inches slate which may well be true. It looks elegant and expensive with the Magnesium Alloy surface in medium silver and Toshiba guarantees a battery life of 8.5 hours, which seems like a fair bargain. A dock is also available to use this tablet as a laptop and expand the battery life, as well.

Conclusion

To be fair on all accounts, we can’t make the conclusion since we have to run the benchmarking tests in order to understand how these two tablets perform under stress, but the problem is both of them are new in the market, and we couldn’t get our hands on them yet. However, if any of the past records are any indication, Apple is going to sell tons of these new iPad devices in the coming months while Toshiba will have trouble in selling much of Excite 10 LE devices. This has something to do with the customer loyalty Apple has because, in terms of performance, both of these tablets can be seen in a common league. Both have dual core processors and presumably quad core graphics. Excite 10 LE lacks the most recent version of the Android OS, but since Toshiba promises an upgrade, it’s rather ok. What differentiates the new iPad from Excite 10 LE is the monster screen resolution it offers. The 2048 x 1536 pixels resolution is not available in any of the devices in the market which gives the iPad 3 a good edge. In any case, the Apple iPad seems like a better choice because the Wi-Fi only version is offered at $499 whereas the 16GB version of Excite 10 LE will cost you $529.