Toshiba announces Excite 7.7, 10 and 13 inch Tablets

Thoshiba's Thrive tablets were widely panned for their short battery life and chunky, cheap-feeling design, the outfit decided to put those models out to pasture and start anew. So bid goodbye to the Thrives and say hello to the Excite 7.7, 10 and 13. These are the same tablets that we first saw in prototype form at CES (and again at Mobile World Congress), complete with their slim builds and textured aluminum backs. All three will pack NVIDIA's Tegra 3 SoC, and ship with unskinned Ice Cream Sandwich. The 7.7, in particular, sports the same AMOLED display inside the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, while the 13-incher steps up to 1600 x 900 resolution (as opposed to 1280 x 800). For those of you who think you'll miss the 10-inch Thrive's full-sized SD slot, that feature carries over to the Excite 10 and 13. 

Thoshiba has intoduced a 13-inch ARM-powered tablet. Not a 13-inch slate with Ultrabook specs; just a really big Android tablet. Well, Toshiba's banking on you using this indoors, particularly in the kitchen where you might want to glance at recipes or the weather forecast. Company reps emphasized about the tablet's tough Gorilla Glass display, though they seem oblivious to the fact that you could do all of the above with a $400 iPad 2, or any other mid-range tablet. It's an important thing to consider, given that the Excite 13 will set you back a princely $650 for 32GB.

In addition, the Excite 13 will be available with 64GB of storage for $750. The Excite 7.7 is also coming June 10th, at which point it'll cost $500 for the 16GB and $580 for the 32GB configuration. The 10-inch will beat them both to market, arriving May 6th starting at $500 for 16GB of built-in storage. There will also be a 32GB version for $530 and a 64GB number for $650.