Toshiba Thrive

1. CNET

The Thrive earns a Very Good rating at CNET -- a rating assigned to many of the tablets on CNET's top 5 tablet list. The swappable battery and plethora of full-sized ports help reviewer Eric Franklin overlook the thick size and heavy weight of the tablet.

Review: Toshiba Thrive (16GB), Eric Franklin, July 12, 2011

2. TheVerge.com

The full sized ports are the highlight of the Toshiba Thrive, Sean Hollister reports, which he finds largely average in every other way. The build quality in particular is criticized as fat, heavy and cheap-feeling.

Review: Toshiba Thrive Review, Sean Hollister, July 22, 2011

3. Engadget.com

Someone looking for the slimmest and lightest tablet will be disappointed in the Toshiba Thrive, Dana Wollman says, but she reports that the full-sized ports and SD card reader open up a world of storage and connectivity options that the top tablets don't offer. If you don't care about the ports, Wollman says there are better tablet options available.

Review: Toshiba Thrive Review, Dana Wollman, July 22, 2011

4. PC World

Like every other reviewer, Melissa Perenson praises the full-size HDMI, USB and SD card ports of the Toshiba Thrive, but she's also very appreciative of the large number of apps that come preloaded. The tablet may be bulky, but those value-adding features land it in the sixth slot in PC World's list of the top 10 tablets.

Review: Toshiba Thrive Review: A Tablet Edges Closer to the Ideal, Melissa J. Perenson, July 13, 2011

5. AllThingsD.com

Walt Mossberg says the Toshiba Thrive handles well overall, delivering good -- albeit sometimes crash-prone -- performance on par with other Android tablets. The abundance of apps and ports lead him to liken it to a laptop in tablet clothing, which he thinks could be a differentiator for many would-be buyers.

Review: Tablet Strives to Plug Into Laptops' Port Abilities, Walt Mossberg, July 13, 2011

6. Arstechnica.com

A lot of drawbacks are listed, but Ben Kuchera says the Toshiba Thrive's file manager and port selection make it a purchase-worthy tablet if you're in search of productivity. The full size ports could make it a good gaming buy, too, he suggests, if you were inclined to plug in a USB controller, load up an SD card with games and output the video to your HDTV with an HDMI cable.

Review: Life Without Adapters: How More Ports Let the Toshiba Thrive Tablet Compete, Ben Kuchera, July 2011

7. Amazon.com

The Toshiba Thrive receives more than 660 user reviews at Amazon.com, and more than 500 of them rate the tablet 4 stars or higher. Many of the low scores are due to a software issue at launch that has since been corrected. Contributors love the apps, screen and responsiveness of the tablet, but the poor audio quality and buggy Android Honeycomb operating system is panned several times. An update is scheduled to add the much improved Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS to the Thrive in the near future.

Review: Toshiba Thrive 10.1-Inch 16 GB Android Tablet AT105-T1016, Contributors to Amazon.com