Introduction

The M200 Tablet PC by Toshiba is the very latest Tablet PC to hit the market and Toshiba seems to have hit the mark this time with a very full featured convertible. It boasts a very fast processor with a large amount of ram to satisfy even the most power hungry laptop users. It also features great battery life, combined with the speedy Geforce FX Go mobile chipset. I've had a chance to play around with this tablet for about 3 days now and I must say its 10 times better than my last tablet by Acer in just about every way. The most important feature being the screen resolution which puts every other tablet to shame at 1400x1050. Lets dive into the feature list:

Features

  • Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
  • Intel Penitum M Processor @ 1.5ghz
  • 12.1" XVGA+ Display (1400x1050 Resolution)
  • 512 Megabytes PC2700 Double Data Rate RAM
  • nVidia Geforce FX Go 5200 with 32 Megabytes of separate Video Ram
  • Intel 802.11b Wireless LAN (Customizable with an Atheros g card, or a/g card at time of purchase)
  • Optional Bluetooth (can be added at time of purchase only)
  • Onboard Ethernet and v.92 56K Modem
  • VGA output
  • 2 Powered USB 2.0 Ports
  • Cardbus PC Card Slot
  • Active Wacom Digitzer
  • SD Card Slot
  • Hardware volume knob
  • Convertible Tablet Mode
  • Full Size Pen built into unit for easy storage
  • 4.3 Hours Battery Life
  • Full copy of Microsoft OneNote 2003
  • ~4 pounds


M200 in Laptop Mode (screen at 1400x1050)

Impressions

The first thing that struck me when I took the M200 out of the box was the overall build quality of the toshiba. Made of heavy duty plastic I instantly knew this tablet was going to hold up much better than the beat up old Acer C102ti with many broken parts I have used for the past year. Everything about it is very solid and there are no rubber parts obscuring ports or other pieces that might fall off or get damaged over continous usage. The black and silver design is very sleek and very professional.

The best feature this tablet has to offer is the 1400x1050 resolution display. When you turn the unit on you are greeted by a very bright and very usable screen. The added screen resolution makes every other tablet on the market look rather unapealing. The amazing thing is that even though the display on my 17" LCD on my desktop has a lower resolution (1280x1024), the 12.1" screen on the M200 is very readable and crystal clear. It comes with a rather useless zoom utility that changes the display to 1024x768 with a function key press, but at 1024x768 the text is just blurry and unapealing, don't know why anyone would want that setting.


M200 in Tablet Mode (screen at 1050x1400 Portrait)

As you can see in the images, the display is surrounded by a black border, and because of this, this is one of the only tablets out on the market that doesn't have the horrid pen drifting problem around the edges of the screen. I have full range of motion around the entire screen with the pen with no accuracy problems at all. Also long the screen are 4 customizable pen buttons that when pressed do different things in different applications, from Copy and Paste to launching OneNote or any application you set it to.

Using applications such as OneNote and Journal to ink notes in 1400x1050 is a dream, no more scrolling to fit more text, finally you can write a full letter sized document (something you can't even do on a 14" tablet).

The M200's mechanism for going from Laptop to Tablet Mode is quite amazingly engineered. The screen's center rotation pivot is very strong and with a light push it clicks out of laptop mode, swivels around and snaps into place in tablet mode. To switch the latch you simply move the latch around to the other side as it rotates from one side of the unit to the other very easily. In contrast to other tablets such as the Acer, this method of rotation and latching is far superior. On the Acer the pivot is very weak and needs extra stabilizers, also the latch on the acer is a very poor design and breaks very easily. Kudos to Toshiba for actually getting the convertible model right. (alright, I'll stop the acer bashing from this point on :))

When switching to tablet mode the M200 senses what you're doing and turns the display around for you to portait mode and vice versa when you go to laptop mode. When you close the lid you can set it to auto hiberate and when you open the lid it turns itself on without any user intervention at all. It also features a dual axis accelerometer inside, that senses which way you're holding the tablet, so if you want to switch to a different rotation of the screen all you have to do is hold it the way you want, and hit the screen rotation button.. a little too easy. You can also set different actions to when you shake the tablet around, such as alt-tab and running a specific program. I find this to be a little bad for the hard drive so I turned that feature off.
The M200, gets fairly hot, but not nearly as hot as many laptops. The built in fan kicks on very seldomly and it is very quiet when it does come on. As shown in the picture to the right, the fan is on the bottom left if you hold the tablet with your left hand with the pivot in your hand like I like to do. That may make your arm rather toasty when the fan comes on. The VGA out suppors a plethora of modes, you can have dual monitors and you can clone the screen to display the same thing on both.

The built in Intel 802.11b wireless works flawlessly along with the built in Ethernet and Modem. There is a hardware switch on the side to turn off the wireless also to save battery life. The M200 only comes with a DVD/CDRW drive if you order the M205 Retail package, I have the M200 so I have no idea how well the drive works. My Storix DVD/CDRW works great however and requires no external power source at all when connected to the USB 2.0 ports
  On the bottom of the tablet you'll find the battery, memory compartment and hard drive compartment. The battery has a lock to keep it from coming loose unless you really want to take it out. The memory compartment houses both sticks of ram in one location so if you want to upgrade both sticks you can with very little effort. The Hard drive is replacable and default comes with a 5400rpm Toshiba 40gig drive. When you open the bottom of the tablet you are greeted to a nice clean circuit board with a mini-pci slot to replace the wireless card and a place for Toshiba's internal bluetooth. The M200's battery can be removed while plugged in without turning the tablet off, but it does not contain a bridge battery to allow battery changes without the a/c adapter.

Conclusions

Pros:

  • Very solid design
  • Fast processor
  • Lots of ram standard
  • Fast Video card
  • Only tablet with a 1400x1050 display
  • Long battery life

Cons:

  • Kind of heavy for a tablet
  • 802.11g and bluetooth not standard

The Toshiba M200 Tablet PC is quite simply the best Tablet PC on the market today period. There just is no competiton when no other tablet pc out today has a higher resolution than 1024x768. The speed is fantastic, and not being held back by intel graphics, the Geforce graphics card makes it capable of playing todays most advanced games (although at low resolutions). I have had absolutely no problems with this machine and I don't forsee any in the future. Go buy this tablet now :)

On my fun scale of rating things it gets a 9.5/10.

-Justin

Additional Images:

Desktop (Landscape)
Desktop (Portrait)