How big is too big? A look at the Toshiba Excite 13

The battle of the tablets just got hotter. Toshiba has been quietly assembling its back to school pack (albeit a little too early) with updated laptops, notebooks and the like. What we are most interested in is Toshiba's new 13" Excite tablet. Yes you heard that right... a 13" tablet! According to Toshiba, “The larger size makes it an ideal kitchen tablet. You can watch how-to videos while you’re cooking, or look up recipes. And then later, you can bring it into the living room to watch videos with the kids, or to look at family photos with friends.” Talk about taking it up a notch.

The Excite 13 specs include a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5MP camera and four (yes FOUR) speakers for bumping those beats. The tablet also sports a 1600 × 900 screen resolution, a micro-USB port, a micro-HDMI port and a SD card slot. The Excite 13 runs on Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and comes with a stand that will relieve owners from having to hold, or prop up the large device themselves. And despite being bigger than pretty much every other tablet currently in the market, the Excite 13 is fairly thin and light for its size, it will weigh 2.2 pounds and measure 0.4 inches thick. 

The Excite 13 sits at the top of a revamped tablet line for Toshiba, in terms of both price and screen size with a price tag of $649.99 for the 32GB model, and $749.99 for the 64GB model, when it hits stores in early June. That is big money and we doubt Toshiba can command that kind of premium like the new iPad does. Time will tell if their strategy worked.

Toshiba will also ship a 7.7-inch version of the Excite (known as the Excite 7) at $499.99 for 16GB of storage and $579.99 for 32GB. A 10-inch Excite, the Excite 10, will ship in May for $449.99 with 16 GB of storage and $529.99 for the 32GB. The Excite range of tablets replaces Toshiba’s old line of Thrive slates, which were offered in both a 7 inch and 10 inch model.

As a side note, does anyone else get the feeling that future tablets will come to replace those mini LCD monitors/TVs moms used to have in the kitchen? It looks like that's the direction we are headed in.