The latest bearer of new Android tablets is none other than Toshiba, who has announced three new Android based devices, and which includes one of the largest tablet offerings to date, in the form of a 13.3” device.

 

The two other new Excite tablets adhere to more conventional sizes though, such as the company’s 10.1” and  7.7” offerings.

 

“One size does not fit all, so we are carefully considering how and where people are using tablets and designing form factors to best suit various needs,” explained Carl Pinto, vice president of product development, Toshiba America Information Systems, Digital Products Division.

 

Despite the size difference, all three tablets share some common specifications. Each are housed in aluminum shells, coated with scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass displays, and powered by Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

 

Additionally, the tablets boast quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processors, 1 GB of RAM and a 5-megapixel back camera along with a 2-megapixel front-facing one.

 

 

The 10.1” Excite 10 sports a high definition AutoBrite LED backlit display with 1280 × 800 resolution and 10-finger multi-touch support, and weighs in at 598 g (only slightly heavier than the Samsung Galaxy 10.1’s 585 g), with a thickness of 8.8 mm.

 

Toshiba added that the tablet offers “up to ten hours” of battery life, which seems to have become the current standard for tablets.

 

However, the one area where Toshiba’s tablets have sought to distinguish themselves has been with regards to integrated ports. The Excite 10 offers up a micro USB, micro HDMI and, less commonly seen, a full-size SD card slot.

 

 

 

However, the form factor that will likely raise the most eyebrows is the Excite 13, which the company has touted as “delivering more screen real estate than any other tablet on the market.”

 

Its 13.3" AutoBrite LED Backlit display boasts a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1600 × 900 native resolution, a four speaker sound system and up to thirteen hours of battery life, which is somewhat ironic for a device the company admits is ideally suited for the home.

 

Despite shipping with an included tablet stand, though, Toshiba also pointed that at just under 1 kg in weight (997 g), it is still easy to carry. Indeed, this is still lighter than the majority of ultrabooks we have tested to date, which tip the 1 kg mark and hardly place any strain on our ability to carry them for long periods.  

 

Like the Excite 10, it too has a micro USB, micro HDMI and full-size SD card slot.

 

 

 

The third tablet announced, the Excite 7.7, boasts an AMOLED display and is particularly targeted at users on the move for whom portability is of prime concern.

 

The tablet is 7.6 mm thick, and weighs a mere 380 g. It though, only has a micro USB and microSD card slot. Unfortunately, at the moment we don’t know how much battery life the Excite 7.7 will offer; we can only hope that it is at least close to the ten hours afforded by its bigger brother.

 

 

While Android tablets seem to be everywhere of late, we are curious to see how well Toshiba’s Tegra 3 offerings stand up, particularly as the most recent quad core tablet we tested, the Asus Transformer Prime, managed to impress us with its speed and responsiveness.   

 

The Excite 10 tablet will be available stateside at the beginning of May for a RRP of $449 (R3600) for the 16 GB model, $529 (R4232) for the 32 GB model and $649 (R5100) for the 64 GB model.

 

Those more excited about the larger 13.3” tablet and smaller 7.7” device will have to wait until June though. The Excite 7.7 will sell for $499 (R3990) for the 16 GB model and $579 (R4630) for the 32 GB model, while the Excite 13 tablet will have a price tag of $649 (R5100) for the 32 GB model and $749 for the 64 GB (R5990) model when they launch stateside.