SAN FRANCISCO, May 28 — A week ago, the HP 7 Plus was the only premium-branded sub-US$100 (RM322) tablet on sale in the US, and when HP quietly announced it, it took everyone by surprise. However seven days later, the tablet now has a serious competitor in the shape of the Toshiba Excite Go.

Announced yesterday and making its way to retailers in the US in July, the latest Toshiba Android tablet is slightly more expensive — US$109.99 — but it’s also slightly better than HP’s slate.

It uses a quad-core Intel Atom processor rather than the ARM Cortex processor that HP has plumped for and it comes with the latest version of Android pre-loaded (HP has gone for Jelly Bean).

Both tablets offer the same 1024x600 resolution from their 7-inch displays but the Toshiba offers twice as much internal storage (16GB compared with the HP 7 Plus’s 8GB) and its microSD slot will work with cards up to 128GB rather than the 32GB support offered by HP’s unit.

Battery life is also better — up to 7.5 hours of general use compared with HP’s 5.5 hours — and, potentially most appealing of all, is that it comes with OfficeSuite Pro pre-installed. A suite of apps that usually costs US$15, it allows users to open, read and edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents.

The only bad point is that the tablet comes in a satin gold finish, which isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste.

But Toshiba isn’t finished there. As well as a serious entry-level Android slate, Toshiba also unveiled two new aggressively priced Windows 8.1 tablets yesterday.

The 8-inch Encore 2 tablet offers a HD display and a subscription to Windows 365 for US$199.99 while its big brother, the 10-inch Encore 2 tablet, ups the screen size for an extra US$70. — AFP-Relaxnews