Toshiba Thrive 7 Review, Honeycomb at 7 Inches

If 2011 was the year of the tablet, then Q4 2011 had to be the quarter of 7-inch versions.  With a late-in-the-year burst of releases from various manufacturers spurring break-out products like the Kindle Fire and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, it's as if manufacturers made a concerted effort to target lower price points in an move to capture opportunity upsides during the holiday season.  There's little question Amazon's product, with its $199 price tag and an entire platform of media services and brand recognition behind it, made a big splash and now the competitive offerings are ramping up.

Meanwhile, Toshiba was a shade on the late side to the 10-inch tablet party with the original Thrive released early this year, but they're ready to strike while the proverbial iron is hot now in this late seasonal market buzz for 7-inch devices.  We called the 10-inch Toshiba Thrive the "Swiss Army Knife" of tablets back when we reviewed it, with its copious amounts of connectivity options and full-sized ports.  It's a large-than-most tablet but the sort of device that differentiates itself in a crowd of too similar designs. 

The second coming of the Thrive, the Toshiba Thrive 7 that we're going to take a look at today, however, has to squeeze features and functionality into a decidedly smaller form factor.  Though Toshiba once again does there level best here, to offer as much openness to connectivity as they can in this smaller version of the Thrive.  We'd almost call this version the "Thrive Mini."  At the internal component level, the Thrive 7 shares a lot of similarities with the original 10-inch Thrive, it's just packed into a petite frame with a slightly trimmed down price tag of $379.

Before we delve into the particulars, let's give you a quick, hands-on nickle tour of the new Toshiba Thrive 7".

Toshiba Thrive Android 3.1 Tablet Specifications & Features

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The specs list above really says it all.  The Toshiba Thrive 7 is, for all intents and purposes, a 7-inch version of the original 10-inch Thrive, including the NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoC platform its built upon.  Which of course is not a bad thing at all.  Tegra 2 Android Honeycomb-based tablets are solid solutions. In addition, the one thing the Thrive 7 has going that the Kindle Fire can't claim, is a wide open Honeycomb OS, complete with the Android Market.  Though many power users might point to the fact that the Fire can be rooted, the average mainstream consumer is likely not willing to go that route.  It is within this mainstream customer base that the Thrive 7 can, dare we say, "thrive."