They run the same operating system, and they’re pretty close when it comes to size, weight, processing power and price. So when all the big stuff is baked, it’s the little things that make a tablet stand out.
Toshiba’s Thrive tablet, a 10.1-inch slate that starts at $430 for the 8GB, Wi-Fi only model, is a stand-out, alright — it’s the biggest and heaviest of the tablets from the major manufacturers.
At 1.66 pounds, it’s much heftier than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (1.24 pounds) and the T-Mobile G-Slate (1.38 pounds) and just a hair heavier than the HP TouchPad and the Motorola Xoom. The Thrive is also 0.63 inches thick, where almost everyone else comes in at well under half an inch.
Being the fattest kid in class sounds like a silly way to differentiate. But the extra bulk allows for some attractive features absent in other tablets.
First, the battery is user-replaceable. You can pry off the plastic back using only your fingernails and swap out the battery, which looks like a flat, 5-inch square. Toshiba sells spare batteries for $80 each. The Thrive is efficient, lasting about eight hours between charges in my tests, so you’ll really only need to swap batteries after a few years of use, or if you’re away from a power socket for an entire weekend.
And if you don’t like the black plastic rear shell — or if you crack it while taking it on and off, which seems highly unlikely given its flexibility — that’s replaceable, too. Toshiba sells a variety of colored plastic backs for $20 each.
Finally, the Thrive boasts an array of ports closer to what you’d see on a laptop than a tablet. Behind a rubber panel on the bottom edge are an HDMI port, a full-size USB port and a mini USB port. Just around the corner from those sits an SD card slot.
Using these ports, you can attach all sorts of external storage to augment the tablet’s on-board memory. The Thrive ships with up to 32GB on-board, but the cheapest model only has 8GB. With such scant storage, all the expansion options are a huge plus.
I loaded some movies and MP3s onto a USB stick and an external Seagate drive, and the Thrive could play back the media stored on either. I also fed it some SD cards, which it handled with equal success.
