Toshiba AT100 review

Fast Android 3.1 tablet has full-size USB and HDMI ports and Tegra 2, but also extra bulk

Toshiba Thrive
A 1GHz Tegra 2 processor plus Nvidia GeForce graphics card make this a fast tablet

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Toshiba thrive review

The Toshiba AT100 offers a 5MP rear-facing camera for taking photos and video, and a front-facing 2MP camera that you can use with Google Talk or other video chat apps.

Shots with the rear-facing camera looked clear, as long as we were in a brightly lit location.

Toshiba thrive review

As is true with every other Android tablet, it's often difficult to position the 10-inch screen in a way that makes photography anything more than just a point-and-shoot exercise. When you're also dealing with screen glare and can hardly see what's on the screen, photos tend to turn out poorly.

Camera settings aren't that impressive: there are just a few settings for shooting in sepia or controlling exposure, but no cool effects a la the Instagram app for the Apple iPhone. Still, the final results when we could see the screen turned out clear, colourful and worth the effort.

Toshiba thrive review

GLARE: Shooting into direct sunlight produces some light spots

See the full-res version here

Toshiba thrive review

NORMAL: Images from the 5MP rear camera are crisp and clear

See the full-res version here

Toshiba thrive

CLOSE: Getting close to subjects isn't a problem, with no focus issues here

See the full-res version here

Toshiba thrive

COLOURFUL: Our best shot – colours are vibrant and true to life

See the full-res version here

Toshiba thrive

TOO SUNNY: Our worst shot – whereas before there were a few sun spots, here the bright sunlight takes over and causes the tree to darken so much it's almost a silhouette

See the full-res version here

Toshiba thrive

BLACK-AND-WHITE: Sepia and black-and-white shooting worked well

See the full-res version here

For shooting movies, the Toshiba AT100 records in 720p definition, and we found the capture and playback to work smoothly, as long as we dealt with movies we shot on our own. With some Hollywood films we loaded onto the tablet, playback sometimes paused.

Like the camera, video capturing doesn't afford any extra features such as adding a cartoon effect. There's little sense that the Toshiba AT100 adds any extra features or apps to turn the tablet into an adequate camera or camcorder.

toshiba thrive

Android 3.1 includes a simple movie editing app for dropping clips into a timeline – adding photos and splicing the whole affair together into one long feature. We're not talking about Adobe Premiere, but at least there's an app you can use for making your own movie.



John Brandon
Contributor

John Brandon has covered gadgets and cars for the past 12 years having published over 12,000 articles and tested nearly 8,000 products. He's nothing if not prolific. Before starting his writing career, he led an Information Design practice at a large consumer electronics retailer in the US. His hobbies include deep sea exploration, complaining about the weather, and engineering a vast multiverse conspiracy.