Toshiba Thrive: 10 inch tablet with a rugged body

In a very crowded and competitive tablet world, where there are so many elegant and powerful gadgets fighting for supremacy, it is almost impossible to survive if you don’t come up with something original or innovative.

Toshiba is one of the companies which has understood that and has come up with the 10-inch Thrive, which is probably the sturdiest slate on the market at the moment. With a rugged and robust body, the Thrive has sacrificed a bit in terms of portability and elegance, but impresses when it comes to reliability and functionality.

Weighing in at 1.6 pounds, Toshiba’s 10-incher is considerably bulkier than some of its strongest competitors, but is also very nicely built, offering grip and comfort. There is another element of originality, which comes from the tablet’s body, but doesn’t have anything to do with the actual design.

We are talking about the full-sized USB and HDMI ports, two features that are nowhere to be found on most of the other 10-inch slates, which barely cram micro and mini versions of these connectors. On top of that, you also have an SD card slot, a mini-USB port and a dock connector port on the Thrive.

In terms of hardware, the Thrive is as powerful as it could be, with a 1 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor and 1 GB of RAM. The 10.1-inch LED-backlit capacitive multi-touch display is itself pretty impressive, featuring crisp colors, great viewing angles and a 1280 x 800 pixels resolution.

As for the software, the 10-incher runs the extremely popular Android 3.1 Honeycomb OS with a couple of pre-loaded apps and loads of others you get access to through Google’s Android Market. Other features include a 5 MPx rear-facing camera with autofocus, a 2 MPx front-facing webcam, Bluetooth, Wireless, GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, light sensor and digital compass or in short everything you might need today from a tablet and more.

Another feature worthy of mentioning regards the sound, which is clearer, crisper and louder than on all other tablets available on the market right now, due to the fact that the Thrive features great stereo speakers with Toshiba sound enhancements.

The sturdy, but fashionable gadget is currently available in three different versions, starting at $368.98 (the 8 GB model). The 16 GB version goes for 398 dollars, while the higher-end 32 GB model is up for grabs for $449.99.

See some other good Black Friday deals on Tablets and Touchscreen devices.