The Toshiba Encore 2 WT10-A-102 is a 10in tablet running Windows 8.1 at a competitive price. There’s also an 8in version of the Encore 2 available for around £170, but those wanting to use their Windows tablet for work will probably appreciate the extra space.
Those extra inches will certainly make a big difference to anyone looking to be productive on the road and, usefully, the 10.1in Encore 2 comes with a year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal. This gives you a licence to use the software on the tablet, on a smartphone and on a PC or Mac, making it great value. Be sure to activate your Office 365 subscription within six months of activating your Windows 8.1 licence, though, otherwise you’ll miss out.
It’s unlikely you’ll want to write your magnum opus or edit spreadsheets using the onscreen keyboard, and the tablet has no USB ports for a keyboard and mouse, so you’ll need to use a Bluetooth set. You’ll also likely need a suitable stand such as Toshiba’s own Stand Case to prop up the tablet for comfortable viewing as you work.
The Encore 2 isn’t the most exciting tablet to look at, with a slightly utilitarian design. However, it feels well made, if a bit chunky and heavy, and rather unwieldy to hold one-handed. At 550g, the Encore 2 is very much a tablet you’ll need two hands to use. Its chassis is made from a lot of hard plastic that feels slightly cheap but reassuringly doesn’t have any flex.
There’s a microSD slot for expanding the tablet’s built-in 32GB of storage. There’s also a Micro HDMI output for connecting to an external display; this might come in useful if you want to watch a film on a television or connect a monitor for working. There’s a pair of stereo speakers on the tablet’s sides, but their audio isn’t anything to shout about.
The Encore 2 comes loaded with Windows 8.1 with Bing. This is a version of the operating system Microsoft offers to manufacturers for a reduced cost as long as its Bing search engine is set as the default in Internet Explorer. Microsoft is banking on most consumers not bothering to change search providers, but it’s easy enough to do so if you prefer the likes of Google or Yahoo!.
Processing power comes from an Intel Atom Z3735F chip running at 1.33GHz. It can also burst to 1.83GHz for a performance increase when temperatures allow. This is one of Intel’s quad-core Bay Trail processors, and it showed strong performance in our standard Windows application benchmarks, managing an overall score of 19. This rivals and in fact even exceeds some budget laptops’ scores. With 2GB of RAM, the 10.1in Encore 2 is better equipped for multitasking than the 8in equivalent with its paltry 1GB.
In our SunSpider JavaScript test, the Encore 2 produced a score of 489ms, which is about average for a Windows-based tablet, and higher than we see from most Android slates. In our subjective tests, the Encore 2 certainly handled Windows 8.1 smoothly, and the gestures for pinning apps side by side and multitasking felt smooth and responsive. Apps from the Windows Store also loaded up quickly and the tablet boots in little time.
The Encore 2 also showed reasonable 3D performance in our benchmarks. In our 3DMark test the tablet managed a score of 8,917 in Ice Storm Extreme and 10,326 in Ice Storm Unlimited. The Encore 2 will therefore cope well with Windows Store games such as Halo: Spartan Assault or Asphalt 8. However, don’t expect to play any Windows titles not adapted specifically for tablets on a touchscreen. The catalogue of games on the Windows Store isn’t as diverse as on iOS or Android, either. However, although the tablet couldn’t cope with the intro video to Blizzard’s card-collecting favourite Hearthstone, the game played fine and is optimised for touchscreen devices.
The tablet’s 10.1in display isn’t anything special. Its 1,280x800 resolution is typical of low-cost 8in Windows tablets, but as the pixels are stretched across a larger display the pixel density suffers; 149ppi makes for some fairly blocky text. The display appears slightly grainy and has a subtle blue colour cast, making images appear colder than they should. Our calibrator showed the screen displaying only 63.9 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, which is below average. Its black levels were better at 0.34cd/m2, but an overall contrast ratio of 891:1 is nothing to shout about.
There’s a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera that will be useful for video calls, and a 5-megapixel camera on the back. In outdoor test shots the camera’s performance was surprisingly respectable, showing decent sharpness and colour accuracy; the camera managed to expose the scene correctly and maintained plenty of highlight detail with minimal noise in the shadows. The 10.1in size makes the Encore 2 a somewhat unwieldy camera, but it does a good job if you have nothing else to hand. The display was sufficiently bright enough to be seen outdoors, and made for a large viewfinder.
The Toshiba Encore 2 WT10-A-102 is a very respectable 10.1in Windows 8.1 tablet. It has strong performance, so you’ll get away with running desktop Windows applications as well as tablet apps from the Windows Store. The display isn’t the best we’ve seen, but the camera is surprisingly good. If you factor in a year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal, it’s even better value. If you’re looking for a more elegant Windows tablet-cum-laptop, however, the Schenker Element with its keyboard case is a great alternative.
VERDICT
A Windows tablet with respectable performance even in desktop apps, but its display is a little disappointing.
SPECIFICATIONS
PROCESSOR Quad-core 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3735F
SCREEN SIZE 10.1in
SCREEN RESOLUTION 1,280x800
REAR CAMERA 5 megapixels
STORAGE 32GB
WIRELESS DATA None
SIZE 258.9x9x175mm
WEIGHT 550g
OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 8.1
WARRANTY One-year RTB