Toshiba AC100 review: FIrst look

News
By Mary Branscombe
published

It was only unveiled yesterday, but we take a quick first look at the Toshiba AC100 to see what it brings to the table.

The play/pause, forward and rewind buttons work well with the media player and the HDMI port lets you play 1080p video. There's even a function key to switch to an external screen. There's a webcam for video chat and the Tegra processor is fast enough to cope with that. The USB port and SD slot let you copy files easily. There's also a mini USB port that lets you plug into a PC to copy files across, but you can't charge the AC100 that way.

The 10in screen leaves enough space for a reasonable keyboard with enough action to type fast, although the feel is light and a little flimsy.

With Android you can't minimise an app or put two windows side by side to compare or copy information. Toshiba does as much as it can to enhance the interface and the extra row of keys where the function keys would be on a Windows PC adds a lot here. The escape button takes you back a step and there's a button to open the task manager so it's easy enough to flip between apps.

Mary Branscombe
Mary Branscombe

Mary is a freelance business technology journalist who has written for the likes of ITPro, CIO, ZDNet, TechRepublic, The New Stack, The Register, and many other online titles, as well as national publications like the Guardian and Financial Times. She has also held editor positions at AOL’s online technology channel, PC Plus, IT Expert, and Program Now. In her career spanning more than three decades, the Oxford University-educated journalist has seen and covered the development of the technology industry through many of its most significant stages.

Mary has experience in almost all areas of technology but specialises in all things Microsoft and has written two books on Windows 8. She also has extensive expertise in consumer hardware and cloud services - mobile phones to mainframes. Aside from reporting on the latest technology news and trends, and developing whitepapers for a range of industry clients, Mary also writes short technology mysteries and publishes them through Amazon.