Borrowing technology from its first LED-backlit ultraportable, the Portege R500, Toshiba released a new tablet PC on Monday that takes advantage of the same high-efficiency lighting solution. The M700 tablet uses LEDs to extend the run-time of a lightweight 4700mAh battery to over four hours, and improve screen readability in less-than-ideal lighting conditions.
Besides next-generation backlighting, the M700 also makes use of an advanced touch screen that can distinguish between fingers and styluses to make use of both, and ignore accidental touches by prioritizing input from the stylus whenever it is detected.
While nowhere near as light as its featherweight 1.72-pound cousin, the R500, the M700 does manage to climb onto the lighter end of the scale for tablet PCs at 4.6 pounds. Its 12.1-inch screen also offers 30 percent more resolution than the standard 1024 x 728 display by packing in resolution of 1280 x 800. A shock-absorbing design, spill-proof keyboard and fall-detecting hard drive also help keep it safer from accidents.
Inside, the base model R700 gets an Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 Processer clocked at 2.2GHz, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 160GB hard drive, and an Intel X3100 graphics accelerator, as well as a 1.3-megapixel web cam and Wi-Fi card with support for 802.11n.
Both the M700-S7001X and its more powerful sibling, the M700-S7002 are available immediately from Toshiba for $1,699 and $1,799, respectively.
