Toshiba Excite Write – Performance

A quad-core Tegra 4 processor and 2GB RAM is fine for Android to run smoothly and without any noticeable lag or stuttering, and as you’d expect the Excite Write handles day-to-day browsing, viewing and app usage without any complaints. Apps load quickly, and the whole thing provides a very smooth experience.

There are a few Android tablets in this price bracket with very similar specifications, and in day-to-day performance there’s very little to separate them to the naked eye, which is where our benchmarks come in. In Geekbench 3, the Excite Write scored a respectable 2,517 — identical to the HP Slatebook x2, but a little behind both the 2014 Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2,756) and ASUS Transformer Pad TF701 (2,894).

In 3DMark Mobile, the results between the four Android tablets were pretty similar, only with more separating the Excite Write from the top of the class. While the Excite Write notched up a respectable 9,592 in the test, the HP Slatebook x2 was in front by a nose at 10,472, but once again both the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (14,276) and ASUS Transformer Pad TF701 (15,492) steal the show.

Not that this makes a huge difference in the real world, with most
Android games aimed at phones with punier specifications than these. In
our real world gaming experiments, we found that even intensive games
like Real Racing 3 ran smoothly without any stuttering.

Toshiba Excite Write – Camera

The Excite Write tablet features a front facing 1.2MP camera for video calls, and an 8MP camera for more detailed photos. While we’re still suspicious that anyone really uses their tablet for photography, it’s pretty clear that in the cutthroat world of Android tablets, any manufacturer ditching the feature would be at a disadvantage.

The results of the camera are pretty reasonable, though considerably better in naturally lit conditions, despite the LED flash. The images below show the kind of thing the Excite Write is capable of: a touch overexposed, and not great quality when zoomed in, but perfectly usable if you’re without a camera in a pinch.

The UI of the camera is pretty basic, with just three buttons: shoot, video/photo and a third one which opens a wheel of extras: flash, HDR, zoom and so on. Tapping anywhere allows you to focus. In short, it’s a basic package, but it does the job.