Toshiba Thrive 7"
 

The Toshiba Thrive 7” Tablet is the latest in a recent deluge of 7-inch contenders. Its biggest distinguishing factors are its crisp, high-resolution 1280-by-800-pixel display and its strong complement of ports. But disappointments lurk as well--the tablet's disappointing audio performance foremost among them.

Not unexpectedly, the Thrive 7” (model number AT1S5-T16) comes in at a significantly higher price than this season's budget 7-inch models, the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. But the 7-inch Thrive is, at least, a full-blown Android tablet running Google's Android 3.2.1 Honeycomb operating system (Toshiba has yet to confirm whether it will offer an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich next year). And you get a lot more versatility for that amount of money. At $380 (price as of December 8, 2011) for a 16GB model, the Thrive 7” is competitively priced with the Acer Iconia Tab A100 and costs less than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus ($400) and T-Mobile SpringBoard ($430, including monthly device payments over a two-year mobile broadband contract). A 32GB version will sell for a modest $50 more, at $430.

Read more: http://www.pcworld.com/article/24587...cre_audio.html