Japanese gadget maker Toshiba on Thursday announced that Android Honeycomb-based, 10.1-inch tablet, Thrive, will hit store shelves by July 10.

Thrive, which can be pre-ordered from June 13 at retailers like Amazon and Best Buy, offers a screen resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels, and comes in three sizes, viz. 8GB, 16GB and 32GB.

The tablet comes equipped with a NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, SD card slot, USB ports, a removable battery, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2-megoapixel front-facing camera.

The entry level 8GB model is a Wi-Fi only tablet that will cost $429, while the 16GB and 32GB models will be available for $479 and $579, respectively.

Toshiba claims that its Thrive tablet is very close to a laptop. Vice President & general manager Jeff Barney said, “Since we are laptop people, we’re a little bit different, and we looked at a device that had continuity from laptop computing.”

Thrive comes pre-loaded with a number of applications that let users to connect to printers and log onto their PCs remotely.

Toshiba has plans to launch more tablet models later this year.