Techno Gadgets - Toshiba Encore Windows 8 Tablet Review - Price Toshiba Encore Windows 8 Tablet, Specs Toshiba Encore Windows 8 Tablet.
Eight inch tablets are hot items right now as consumers are discovering the perfect balance they often present between portability and usability. Apple’s iPad mini is an especially popular choice among people looking for a well-polished device with a fantastic selection of apps, but there are plenty of other competitors to choose from.
Toshiba Encore - $280 - $350
- 8.0”, 1280x720 HFFS LCD (189 ppi)
- Intel Bay Trail Z3740 SoC
- 1.3 GHz quad-core CPU, HD Graphics GPU, 2GB RAM
- 32 or 64 GB internal storage, microSD card slot
- 8 MP camera, 1/3.2” sensor, f/2.2 lens
- Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, 19.5 Wh battery
- Windows 8.1 + Microsoft Office
- 445 grams, 10.7mm thick
When it comes to 8-inch Windows tablets, the release of Windows 8.1 has seen many companies try their hands at crafting the perfect tablet. Acer was first with the mediocre Iconia W3 and shortly afterwards a ton of other devices came to the market from the likes of Dell, Asus, Lenovo and also Toshiba, whose 'Encore' tablet is the focus of today’s review.
Like a lot of small Windows tablets in the same price bracket as the Encore, specifications aren’t stellar especially in the display department: we’re looking at a 1280 x 800 panel, a resolution which Windows device manufacturers seem to love. There’s also the popular Intel Atom Z3740 SoC inside, as well as an 8-megapixel camera and 19.5 Wh battery, which makes its hardware package overall a little different to the Lenovo Miix 2 8, which we're also in the process of reviewing.
Design
Most eight inch tablets feature some form of the standard, slightly-rounded rectangular prism design. The Toshiba Encore is no exception, although its take on the slate design is rather uninspiring.
The Encore is a fairly chubby device, making no attempt to match the svelte nature of some of its competitors. Its 10.7mm thick and 445 grams heavy profile compares unfavorably to the Lenovo Miix 2 8 (at 350g and 8.35mm thick) and to the highly popular Apple iPad mini Retina (308g/7.5mm). The size doesn't just look bad on paper, the Encore feels portly in your hands and the design doesn’t try to hide it.
Compounding the issue is the sizable bezel around the display. To either side of the panel is 14mm of plastic and glass, which makes the tablet feel just slightly wider than what would normally be comfortable. Display coverage is just under 65%, although the device is still quite portable overall, significantly more so than a 10-inch device.
Apart from the glass protecting the display, the rest of the Encore is made from plastic that wraps right around the tablet, providing a rim around the front panel. The plastic in no way gives the tablet a premium feel, despite the square pattern that’s used on the back (also only available in silver).
Like most other eight inchers, everything is positioned so that portrait is the default orientation. Most aspects of the design are extremely minimalist: the front has a small piece of branding plus a Windows button and front facing camera to the far right; whereas the back features a Toshiba logo along the bottom, an Intel Inside sticker that looks somewhat out of place, and a rear facing camera in the top left.
On the bottom edge you’ll find the tablet’s dual speakers. In our tests these didn't perform well at high volumes but are certainly usable for casual listening. The right edge has the fairly weak-feeling power button and volume rocker, and the left side has an exposed microSD card slot. All the ports for the device are along the top edge, such as the 3.5mm audio jack, microUSB port and micro-HDMI port, the latter of which some may find especially useful if they want to frequently use external displays.
The design of the Toshiba Encore doesn’t stop you from enjoying the hardware in the device, but it definitely lacks a spark that would make it a more attractive offering. With an 8-inch display the tablet is portable, however it’s neither as slim nor as light as some of its competitors.
Display
Toshiba has gone for an 8.0-inch TFT HFFS LED-backlit LCD panel in the Encore, with a resolution of 1280 x 800. HFFS, which stands for high-transmittance fringe field switching, is an alternate display technology to IPS that offers less color shifting and similar viewing angles. It’s not a display type we often see, but Toshiba might have chosen it to keep manufacturing costs down.
I’m not particularly happy with the resolution of this 8-inch display when other sub-$300 tablets manage to include 1080p panels. Individual pixels are reasonably noticeable (189 PPI) especially along the edges of text, but also when looking at photos and videos.
The panel is capable of displaying 720p videos natively, while all 1080p content will be downscaled to 720p.
This is not to say the Encore’s panel is completely unusable. WXGA is fine for everyday tasks, as has been the case for many years, but over the past 12 months it has been quickly superseded by lower-cost high-density displays. When Asus can produce a 7-inch tablet with a 1080p display for a little over $200, and Amazon can do the same at 8.9-inches, the Toshiba Encore seems behind the times.
Aside from screen resolution the overall color quality is average, especially in terms of saturation, which is noticeably lacking compared to IPS LCDs. The panel’s contrast is good, although there is backlight bleed when viewing dark images, and a minor amount of color banding when viewing gradients.
One area the Encore’s display really excels is viewing angles. Like an IPS panel, the Encore’s LCD is viewable at nearly all angles, however there is noticeably less color shifting and distortion. This is actually surprising considering there is a decent gap between the protective glass and panel itself, which in TN panels would significantly affect viewing angles.
The gap does manage to affect the panel’s reflectivity, which can make the display a little tricky to view in bright settings. Maximum brightness from the LED backlighting is very good, which negates some of the reflectivity issues, and there’s a wide range of brightness levels to make use of. The well-hidden photodetector provides accurate automatic brightness, although it can be somewhat slow to adjust.
Performance: Intel Bay Trail Atom Z3740
Inside the Toshiba Encore is Intel’s ‘Bay Trail’ Atom Z3740 SoC, a very popular choice among manufacturers building mid-range and entry-level Windows tablets. The very same SoC is seen in the Asus Transformer Book T100 and Lenov
o Miix 2 8, so the performance from the Encore should largely be the same as these devices.
CPU-wise we’re looking at four 1.33 GHz ‘Silvermont’ cores, with a Turbo Boost of 1.86 GHz when higher single-thread performance is needed. There’s an Intel Gen 7 HD Graphics GPU clocked at 667 MHz, plus a dual-channel LPDDR3 controller that’s paired with 2 GB of 1067 MHz RAM. Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n make up the tablet’s connectivity; there’s no LTE/HSPA+ model available, which some users will find disappointing.
General performance around the operating system is very good. All animations are fluid thanks to hardware acceleration, and loading Modern apps is reasonably fast. The included 2 GB of RAM is standard in tablets now, and as you’d expect it allows the device to multitask with little effort. Using the browser is also quick when manipulating and loading webpages, not as quick as a high-end Intel ‘Haswell’ processor, but on-par with ARM-based devices.
Windows 8.1 will give you access to the full desktop on the Toshiba Encore, and you’ll easily be able to use non-intensive applications such as Microsoft Office, VLC, Spotify and the included Windows Explorer. However the Atom SoC is definitely unsuitable for more professional tasks, such as using Photoshop or rendering in 3ds Max.
There are a few performance hiccups along the way. From time to time the power button would become completely unresponsive, making it impossible to wake up the device, and at other times the Windows button wouldn’t work. There were also a few occasions where an application I was using crashed, or simply refused to load at all. Hopefully we’ll see these minor annoyances fixed through a software update.
The Encore won’t struggle with games available through the Windows Store, as Intel’s seventh-generation HD Graphics GPU – a low-power version of the GPU found in their ‘Ivy Bridge’ processors – is always up to the task. The GPU only needs to render to a 1280 x 800 display, so you might find that some older Steam games will also work on the Toshiba Encore, provided you connect a keyboard and mouse.
When it comes to benchmarks, the Encore performs as expected. The Bay Trail SoC is a strong performer in CPU-bound tasks, both single-threaded and multi-threaded, despite what may seem to be low clock speeds. I’d have liked to see the Z3770 here to squeeze out a bit more performance, but the Z3740 is still a good choice.
Intel isn’t known for their fantastic graphics cores, but the HD Graphics unit in this SoC is a decent performer. It’s not at the same level as the Adreno 330 in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800, or the PowerVR G6430 in the Apple A7, but at lower resolutions like you’ll see on the Encore, it doesn’t disappoint.
The Encore is available in two models, 32 GB and 64 GB, both of which come with a microSD card slot for expanding storage. Our 64 GB review unit is formatted with 52.7 GB of space, of which around 40 GB is user accessible out of the box. This is more than enough to store a range of apps plus some local media, and a better choice compared to the 32 GB, which will be restricted as Windows 8.1 requires a lot of space.
There doesn't appear to be any issues with the Bluetooth or Wi-Fi performance of the Toshiba Encore. I easily managed to transfer data on both my 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz 802.11n networks at over 18 MB/s. Admittedly it doesn’t have the latest Wi-Fi technology (802.11ac), but routers packing this tech are yet to become widespread.
Software, Camera
The Toshiba Encore comes loaded with Windows 8.1, so there are no surprises when it comes to the tablet’ssoftware. Features such as app snapping and gesture-based multitasking remain extremely useful parts of the Windows ecosystem, especially for power users such as myself that enjoy having Twitter open alongside a web browser on an 8-inch display.
Windows 8.1 comes with optimizations that enhance the experience on smaller-screened tablets. Many areas of the OS now have functional portrait modes, which is critical for this sort of tablet that is mostly held in a portrait orientation. Some apps, such as Bing News, are actually better to use in portrait than landscape, thanks to the work Microsoft has put in.
The applications available through the Windows Store will still be an issue for those who aren’t too fussed about Windows 8.1’s powerful feature set. Each month the situation does improve, but the quality and range of apps available is still noticeably lower than the iOS App Store or Google Play Store. Occasionally I’ll find a really solid Windows app in the Store, but not nearly often enough to put the platform on the same level as its competitors.
The desktop on an 8-inch tablet is something of an oddity. Yes, the x86 Intel Atom SoC will give you access to the same desktop applications that you use on your laptop or desktop. You can run Adobe Lightroom, you can launch Steam games, you can edit videos in Sony Vegas, you can use a desktop browser; but will you? Probably not. The Atom SoC isn’t powerful enough to run intensive applications, the screen size is too limited to be useful, and the touchscreen is too imprecise to control apps designed for a keyboard and mouse.
The Encore isn’t meant to be your main PC that you use for everything, but instead a companion to it. With this in mind, the desktop really doesn’t fit in.
Toshiba has bundled a few extra applications with the Encore, the most annoying of which is a Norton Security trial that never ceases to notify you when your trial expires. There’s also an interesting connected photo gallery app called NeroKwik and a music streaming service called Rara, although I don’t see the point of using these apps over OneDrive and Xbox Music, which are included Microsoft services that offer similar functionality.
Luckily, all of these apps can be uninstalled with relative ease, returning the Encore to a stock Windows 8.1 experience.
Camera
On the back of the Toshiba Encore we find a Sony IMX175 1/3.2” CMOS sensor with a resolution of 8-megapixels and an individual pixel size of 1.4 µm, paired with an f/2.2 lens. Interestingly this is the same sensor as found on some variants of the Samsung Galaxy S III, which at the time had a pretty great camera. On the front we’re looking at an Omnivision OV2722 2-megapixel 1/6” sensor, again with 1.4 µm pixels. Both cameras are capable of 1080p30 video recording.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Encore’s rear camera, although it makes sense considering we’re looking at a Sony-made sensor, which are usually very polished products. Images taken in good conditions are sharp, vibrant and color accurate, paired with fantastic clarity, detail and dynamic range. Automatic controls seem to almost always get the white balance and exposure correct, which is something other cameras of this class struggle with.
Looking at 100% crops reveals significant post-processing, however photos taken are 3264 x 2448 so downscaling removes most artifacts. It’s not like you’ll be using this tablet for your everyday photos (at least I hope not), so eight megapixels should provide enough room for minor amounts of manipulation after the fact.
1.4 µm pixels and an f/2.2 lens are a decent combination for photography in dimmer conditions, which allows the Encore to take respectable, but not fantastic shots while indoors. I expect a lot of tablet photography will be in this type of lighting – for example photographing whiteboards or lecture slides – so it’s good to see you don’t need to worry about blur or grain. Of course both blur and grain are a factor when shooting at night, where the Encore struggles, but this isn’t a critical issue.
The Encore comes with a dedicated camera app called TruCapture designed especially for photographing printed material, whiteboards, notebooks and the like. It supports reflection reduction, automatic cropping and whitening, all aimed at making photos of text easier to read. In my experiences it works well with a little bit of manipulation in the app afterwards, so it’s worth using over the standard camera app in the aforementioned situations.
Battery Life, Wrap Up
The Toshiba Encore packs a sizable 19.5 watt-hour battery, which should be more than enough to see it through a regular day’s worth of usage. Unlike smartphones, the battery life of a tablet is rarely a concern, although it’s never a bad thing to see a device strive to last the longest in all conditions.
That said, the Encore’s battery life doesn’t seem to hold as long as some of the other tablets I’ve tested recently, despite featuring similar internals. This could be due to the HFFS panel, which is a type of display seldom used on tablets, but other software and hardware choices may also be contributing factors.
Our video playback battery benchmark backs this up. The Lenovo Miix 2 8, which is very similar to the Encore spec-wise manages to last nearly two hours longer.
Closing Thoughts
Toshiba’s first foray into the world of 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablets isn’t the fantastic product the company was hoping for. The drab, chubby design is particularly uninspired, failing to make an impression up against slimmer and more portable competition. The inclusion of an HFFS display is interesting, although its overall quality falls behind IPS-type panels, not to mention the disappointing resolution.
It’s not all bad news for the Encore, though. Like all previous Bay Trail-powered devices, I was once again pleased with the performance from Intel’s low-power SoC, which competes well with offerings from ARM.
The Sony-made 8-megapixel rear camera is surprisingly good, although it’s of little consequence when you consider a tablet isn’t exactly a go-to device for photography. Windows 8.1 is also a great operating system for power tablet users, despite lacking a solid collection of touch oriented apps.
At $279 for the 32 GB model, or $350 for the 64 GB, the Encore faces many competitors that appear to have done a better job differentiating themselves or paid more attention to build quality. For a similar price, the Asus VivoTab Note 8 offers full Wacom stylus support, or for a bit less money the Dell Venue 8 Pro packs similar hardware on a slimmer case. On the Android front, LG sells the G Pad 8.3 with a high-res display and competitive hardware for $325, plus of course there’s cheaper options like Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD 8.9 for $230 or the 8-inchSamsung Galaxy Tab 3 for $250.
If you value Windows 8.1 support more than anything, you may find these sub-$300 tablet to look like a bargain. Note however that using desktop apps and typical productivity software like Office is somewhat challenging in this form factor (unless you plan to add a keyboard). If that's your primary intention you may be better served by hybrid PC like the Asus Transformer Book we recently tested.
Toshiba Encore Windows 8 Tablet Review . Toshiba Encore Windows 8 Tablet Review