Toshiba Excite Pro Review

Last Updated on March 29, 2020

The Toshiba tablet range has been a bit of a mixed bag thus far. The manufacturer certainly seems to have a knack for designing stylish, good-on-paper devices, but the promise often goes at least partially unfulfilled thanks to missing features, inconsistent quality and other flaws.

With the Toshiba Excite Pro, the company hopes a beefy new processor and impressive display will be enough to finally knock one out of the park.

Hands-On Impressions

On first blush, the Excite Pro looks the part of a premium device. It’s very well-made, and it feels solid and sturdy to hold. Unfortunately, the 10.3-by-7.0-by-0.4 inch, 1.4-pound device is also substantially thicker and heavier compared to tablets like the 2014 Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 or Google’s Nexus 10.

The body is constructed from plastic, but the textured back feels pleasant.

Tablet Tour

The Toshiba Excite Pro’s layout is a little bit unorthodox. The top is reserved for a power button and dual microphones, while the right features only a lanyard connector. The bottom is entirely unused. The left edge, however, is packed to the brim.

There’s a standard 3.5-millimeter headphone jack, volume rocker and a power socket, along with a small hatch that conceals a microSD card slot, micro-HDMI port and a microUSB port.

Resolving the Details

One of Toshiba’s more impressive inclusions is that of a Retina-like, 2,560-by-1,600 display. The 10.1-inch panel is as sharp as you’d expect, and the picture is clean and vivid. Unfortunately, the mediocre 323-lux maximum brightness is a bit of a disappointment.

The Excite Pro is just the second tablet to include a Retina-like display, following in the footsteps of the Nexus 10, but it can’t quite match up to the Nexus’ brilliant panel in a head-to-head tablet comparison.

Under the Hood

As the very first tablet to include Nvidia’s Tegra 4 quad-core ARM Cortex A15 chip, you’d expect some seriously impressive performance. You’d be right, sort of. Comparing tablets, the Excite Pro generally outpaces the 2014 Galaxy Note 10.1 and the Nexus 10, delivering snappy performance and loading apps very quickly.

Unfortunately, much like the Galaxy, the Excite Pro seems to sputter unexpectedly on occasion. It also seems to be buggier than you’d expect from a premium device, which makes the steep price tag harder to swallow.

Tablet Roundup

The Toshiba Excite Pro is a fantastic tablet on paper. Unfortunately for Toshiba, that fantastic device didn’t quite manifest in reality. The performance hardware is a clear advantage compared to tablets in its class, but that advantage is undermined by the sheer bugginess of the device.

The display benefits from the ultra-high resolution, but both the Galaxy Note 10.1 and the Nexus 10 offer superior picture quality. Both are significantly lighter and thinner as well, and all three offer excellent build quality.

The Excite Pro ought to be tempting for hardcore gamers, but most other consumers can probably find better value and more consistent performance elsewhere.