Toshiba to unveil world’s thinnest ultrabook and tablet at CES

Toshiba is putting tablet makers on notice, saying that it plans to unveil the world's thinnest 10-inch tablet next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced Friday on its Japanese-language website.

The company isn't divulging the make or model of the device, saying only that "the world's thinnest and lightest" 10.1-inch tablet will be part of the Toshiba product lineup at CES. Toshiba will also be bringing along new Ultrabook laptops and LCD televisions, according toa translation of the announcement.

As noted by CNET, the unnamed tablet could simply be one that the company is already selling in Japan for about $800 a pop. That Android 3.2-based tablet, called the Regza AT700, was first unveiled last October at the CEATEC show in Tokyo, where TechRadar got a look at it.

Toshiba's Regza AT700 is 7.7 millimeters thick, about 13 percent slimmer than Apple's iPad 2, which measures in at 8.8 millimeters. It's also slightly lighter than the iPad 2, weighing in at 558 grams as compared with 613 grams for the Apple tablet.

The Regza AT700 sports a 1.2GHz, dual-core chip from Texas Instruments, 1GB of memory, and up to 32GB of onboard storage, plus a microSD slot. The tablet also has a USB 2.0 port and an HDMI port, is rated for up to seven hours of battery life, has a front-facing 2-megapixel Webcam and a 5-megapixel camera on the back, and boasts a 1280-by-800 resolution display.

Or perhaps the mystery tablet is something else entirely. It could be something special Toshiba is cooking up for the U.S. market, though it's likely that the device in question is the Excite, a re-branded version of the Regza AT700 that's set to be released in North America this month. Given that Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is out of the bag, it could be running that OS rather than Honeycomb

Toshiba has released the hounds for CES after going public with the products that it will showcase at the world’s most prominent consumer electronics show, which takes place next week.

Amongst the new launches, the Japanese company is promising to unveil the world’s thinnest tablet — with a 10.1-inch device — and the world’s thinnest tablet — which Engadget thinks could be the Portege Z835 – for the US market.

Also amongst the line-up that Toshiba is bringing to the Las Vegas show is a prototype of waterproof tablet with an OLED screen and a 55-inch QFHD TV that provides a 3D viewing experiences sans the geeky specs. The company will also be showcasing more of its digital home products, which could include solar-powered devices.

Toshiba is one of a number of firms that is developing ultrabooks, many as part of an Intel initiative, to take aim at Apple’s MacBook. Rumours from last year suggested that many manufacturers were being squeezed on price and profit by Apple and its range.

Like its ultrabook touting-rivals, Apple is placing significant emphasis on quality portable devices as a report in November highlighted, claiming that the MacBook Airnow represents 25 percent of the company’s total notebook shipments in the US.

The source of Toshiba’s CES news is a Japanese tech article and a Toshiba press announcement, both of which have been translated from Japanese into English using Google Translate. We’ve seen this tactic provide some bloopers in the past, so it isn’t entirely impossible that there could be slight differences at the show.

The Next Web will be reporting live from the floor, so rest assured we will keep you posted with what’s happening in Vegas.

Posted in: Tech News