HP Plus wins by a nose
Dr Mike
(Jul 27, 2014)
on Amazon
I'm making a direct comparison to a new Toshiba Excite 7 which has the same Android OS 4.2.2 and the same memory and A7 processor. The price is approximately the same for the HP Plus and the Toshiba.1) The HP comes with both front and rear cameras, while the Toshiba only has a camera facing the user. The HP has no flash.2) The HP is slightly thinner than the Toshiba.3) The HP has a very slippery case, while the Toshiba has a dimpled surface that is easier and more comfortable to hold.4) The HP screen was not fully seated into the case and it snapped into place while I was examining it. The Toshiba had no issues with construction quality.5) The HP (listed as white) has a silver back and a white bezel. The white is somewhat distracting. The Toshiba (listed as black) has a silver back and a black bezel.6) The HP has a screen that is more reflective (more glare) and doesn't show smudges as much as the Toshiba. The Toshiba screen is less reflective.7) The HP doesn't register scrolling very well, particularly at the edges. The Toshiba scrolls well at any location on the screen. I tested pulling down the tools menu from the upper right corner. The Toshiba had 10/10 success at this, but the HP only had a 2/10 success rate. However both were equally successful when interacting with the center of the display. The HP eems to detect taps a little better than the Toshiba.8) The HP has more neutral grays, while the Toshiba has more violet appearing grays (both with and without Smartcolor turned on).9) Blue hues on the HP appear to lean toward the greenish side, while the Toshiba blues appear to lean to the violet side,10) The HP is lower in contrast at all brightness levels, while the Toshiba contrast was perfect across a wide range of brightness levels.11) The HP needed to be set to a brightness of about 75% for good usability, while the Toshiba looked best at 40%. Curiously the entire lower half of the HP screen is slighly darker than the upper half, and there is a noticable demarcation line depending on the image.12) I ran my own app which I coded myself and which uses localstorage memory. Both the HP and the Toshiba performed well. The Toshiba seemed to access memory slightly faster, which may be due to differences in the HP and Toshiba OS overlays. However, both tablets did very well with my software and accessing memory.13) The HP has apps installed for phone calling (pay calls), while the Toshiba had none installed. The HP has a nice selection of installed apps, but I'll never use most of them.14) The HP has an accelerometer, but the Toshiba has none.15) The HP has no bluetooth, but the Toshiba has bluetooth.16) The HP has a better wifi receiver than the Toshiba.17) The HP speaker sounds tinny, but the Toshiba speaker is more mellow and sounds better.18) The HP notification sounds are much louder than the Toshiba (all sound settings @ 100%).19) The HP microphone sounds slightly better than the Toshiba, but both are rather poor.In summary, I think the HP has more value than the Toshiba because it has 2 cameras and the wifi range is MUCH better. Also the color display is more realistic without the added violet cast that the Toshiba has. The Toshiba however has a better screen for reading b/w text. The Toshiba also has a more comfortable case to hold and is less likely to dropped.
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