Toshiba Excite AT7-B618 is a low-end Android tablet with 7″ screen, dual core processor, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB internal storage with micro SD slot and powered by Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. The screen resolution is 1024 x 600, obviously far below high end models, but it’s quite decent for its price (under $70 including shipping). Normally I would not even touch a low-end tablet with this kind of specs, but a family member just bought this and I get the chance to play around first because I need to do the initial settings and downloading apps.
My first impression looking at this tablet: it looks surprisingly okay. The build quality is not as bad as what I initially imagined. It feels solid in my hand and the back surface gives a nice feeling when we hold the tablet. Of course it’s not comparable to any high-end tablet, but this build quality is something I would expect from a $200-ish tablet, not under $100 tablet.
Next is about the software. Android 4.2.2 is old. And after using Lollipop for a while, it was difficult for me to adjust to Jelly Bean again. Everything feels so sluggish and less polished. Playing with the launcher menu feels ok, but when I tried to play some simple games (mainly board games, such as 2048 and Bejeweled), immediately I noticed how slow it is. But again, this is a low-end tablet and I had to keep reminding myself about that fact.
The first issue I encountered was downloading apps. Even though technically this tablet promises 802.11n WiFi, downloading multiple apps from Google Play felt painfully slow even for small apps (less than 20 MB). I left the tablet on my desk after initiating a lot of Google Play downloads. Then I picked up the tablet again after 2 hours hoping that all apps had been downloaded and installed. I was wrong. It downloaded 3 apps, then all others produced error messages in Android notification. I tapped on those error notifications and did second attempt to download the apps, it worked. So there was nothing wrong with Google Play or the apps. Somehow the tablet lost the Internet connection (WiFi) when it was idle and locked. I still can’t figure out why.
It is probably worth to note that Toshiba Excite AT7-B618 comes with some pre-installed apps (Facebook, Twitter, Evernote and few others). We can update these apps via Google Play, but somehow we can’t uninstall them. At least not with the out-of-the-box operating system.
After dreadful process of installing 60+ apps in a slow tablet, I started my next experiment: using external memory card. I had prepared a micro SDHC (8 GB) and inserted it into the memory card slot. The triggers a notification and somehow it appears in Spanish ! I checked multiple times to make sure that I selected English in all parts of the Settings. Somehow this one notification appears differently. Does anyone know how to prevent Android 4.2.2 from displaying such notification when a memory card is inserted? I can’t seem to do it after more than an hour trying to figure out things from the Settings menu.
If this is my personal purchase, I would surely go back to the store to return the tablet by now. But again, I would never choose this tablet for my personal purchase. Since this is not mine, I will endure the painful process of initial setting and complete my task.
Leave A Comment