Toshiba AT300 review

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean has since succeeded Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as Google's latest must-have Android flavour, but it would be harsh to criticise Toshiba for the lack of an 0.1 increment, given that Android 4.1 only appears on Google's own Nexus 7 tablet at the moment.

What you get on the Toshiba AT300 is Android 4.0 in an untouched form, save for a few extra app inclusions and some Toshiba-chosen wallpapers. While Samsung has done great work with its TouchWiz UI and HTC has improved its Sense platform recently, we're still delighted when we pick up an Android tablet and everything is just as Google intended.

Ice Cream Sandwich improved upon Honeycomb dramatically, and we say - "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Although it looks as if Google doesn't care what we say, since it did fix it - Jelly Bean is like ICS on steroids, and it will be great if the Toshiba AT300 gets an upgrade soon.

For now, though, it's plain old Ice Cream Sandwich - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it's a slick operating system, designed with the tablet format in mind.

Combined with the quad-core grunt of the Nvidia-powered processor, the Toshiba AT300 has no issues when it comes to playing back some of the more graphically demanding games available in Google Play, such as Temple Run or Dead Trigger, and your HD movie watching will be stutter-free. Load times between apps are also incredibly quick, and you'll have no troubles with multitasking.

Five home screens are on offer, which you can decorate with widgets and shortcuts and, as mentioned, Toshiba has provided a handful of colourful wallpapers to liven up the backdrop. There's no hold and place option on the home screens, though, as per the new Android way, so you'll need to access your widget choices through the app menu.

Android being Android, it's easy for you to customise your tablet in pretty much every respect, even the default keyboard. Toshiba has pre-installed Swype as the default QWERTY keyboard, which is an incredibly intuitive platform that enables you to type by 'Swyping' - ie without taking your finger off the display, and dragging around between letters.

It's incredibly clever at guessing which word you wanted and what punctuation and spacing is needed, and it will even remember non-dictionary words that you use a lot, such as names and naughty words.

On the big screen of the Toshiba AT300, Swype works incredibly well, and we weren't tempted to switch back to the standard Android keyboard at any point.

The boot up sequence originates with a reassuring buzz and takes around 25 seconds, which is pretty nippy for a 10-inch Android tablet.

Browser

Browsing the web is a key task of any tab and, thankfully, the Toshiba performs amicably on this front, with quick page load times and nice text rendering on the screen.

The default browser does automatically visit mobile sites out of the box, however - an annoying feature that can be disabled by checking a box in the browser settings.

The standard Android browser is onboard, complete with text reflow, inverted rendering and pinch to zoom with Flash support (you'll need to visit Google Play to grab the latest version). The artist formerly known as the Android Market has a wealth of browser alternatives such as Opera and Dolphin HD, should you not be keen on the standard choice.

The most tempting alternative now surely comes from the search giant itself, with the Android version of Chrome now available. Installed by default on Jelly Bean devices, it won't be long before we see the Android blue-icon browser disappearing as a result of its colourful, high-profile brethren.

Whatever browser you choose, zoomed pages look great on the Toshiba AT300, and navigation was smooth without any noticeable delay or stutter.

The 1GB of RAM along with the quad-core CPU means that seamless multi-tab browsing is also no bother, and you shouldn't see too many annoying page refreshes when switching between tabs.