The Most Disappointing Features of the Toshiba Thrive Mobile Tablet

The Toshiba Thrive is a great tablet with powerful hardware, a large display, added ports, a replaceable battery, and other great features at an affordable price, but check out these poor features before you run off to buy the Toshiba Thrive tablet.

Design

One of the most noticeable and worst features of the Toshiba Thrive mobile tablet is its design. The Toshiba Thrive looks like many iPad-like tablets with a minimalistic design featuring a touchscreen display surrounded by a black frame with little buttons. Where the Toshiba Thrive branches off and is bested by its competitors is due to its bulky design and heavy weight. If the Thrive were a two dimensional tablet it would be equal to most tablet, but it has a bulky frame to accommodate its many ports and replaceable battery and weighs a whopping 1.66 pounds.

Back-lit LED

Usually having a Back-lit LED screen on a computing device is a great additional feature, but not on the Toshiba Thrive tablet. The Back-lit LED features of the Toshiba Thrive leaves a lot to be desired due to the fact that it makes the Thrive's display overwhelming in dark lighting scenarios, the LED bezel can be irritating to stare at for an extended amount of time, and tweaking the settings of the Back-lit LED display does little to change its impact. The Toshiba Thrive would have been better off with a traditional touchscreen and the Back-lit LED feature of the Thrive's screen does more harm than good.

Lack of Accessories

Buying a tablet usually isn't complete after simply buying a tablet alone, and the Toshiba Thrive has very little accessories to choose from. To be fair the Thrive does have a compatible screen protector, multiple colorful back cover protectors, a portfolio case, a battery replacement, and a dock available from Toshiba, but has virtually no accessory support from third-party vendors. Accessories are used to customize gadgets and can help to personalize them and the Toshiba Thrive's lack of third-party accessories is a bit disappointing.

Back Camera Placement

The Toshiba Thrive has a front and back facing camera that'll likely outdo most tablets on the market, but there's a catch; the Thrive's powerful back camera has horrible placement. Unlike the iPad 2 and other tablets on the market that opted to dock their rear facing to the left or right side, the Thrive's back camera is positioned in its center '" making it difficult to capture video without shaking and making camera angles nearly impossible.