First I saw Toshiba Portege Z830’s advert in Metro. The ad was in the form of a story disguised in a news which described how a man suffering from some mysterious disease and unable to lift anything heavier than his mobile managed to lift this ultrabook from his fingers. Nice way to jumble up news, story, fact and disguise the laptop advert but couldn’t fool me. Bad propaganda, the agency which did should be fired.
Any way, after reading that rubbish I decided to check out Z830 to see why this gadget is really a news worthy.
Toshiba and lightweight laptops don’t go hand in hand. Toshiba laptops are notoriously bulky, thanks to Toshiba’s obsession to pack everything possible in a laptop. I own a Qosmio and before this I had a Satellite M series laptop. Both were bulky enough to be used as dumbell, as noisy as a tractor and hot enough to fry an egg.
So if the makers of such heavy duty laptops come up with something ultralight ultrabook than it is enough to make noise.
Toshiba Portege Z830 has no moving parts and it’s casing is made entirely from Magnesium Alloy which makes it a perfect mobile laptop.
The Portege Z830 Ultralight Ultrabook
At just 1.12 kg Toshiba Z830 is an ideal laptop for highly mobile professionals and executives. It’s lightweight and think frame makes it a perfect travel companion without compromising the power of a true computing device.
What separates this ultrabook from laptop is the solid state hard drive. Yes you heard me, there is no mechanical device in this laptops (of course except fan) which makes it lighter, thinner and ultimately a true ultrabook.
Hard Drive
The most revolutionary feature in Z830 is the solid state hard drive. Hard drives are the ones to blame for the laptop weight. Take it out and you end up with a much lighter computing device. Apple did it long time back and they have been using flash drives instead of mechanical hard drives.
So Toshiba did Apple and used a Solid state device resulting in a ultrathin ultrabook 8.3mm thin device.
128GB of SSD is quite more than enough for any heavy user. Toshiba didn’t compromise with the disk space by using SSD which is big plus for this laptop.
Processor
Toshiba Portege Z830 is powered by 2nd generation of Intel i3/i5 processor which makes it a very powerful laptop sufficient for high end usages, multimedia and gaming. Processor speed of 1.40 GHz is a big turn off. Most of the latest laptops and notebooks come with at least 2.2 GHz so 1.40GHz is going to make you think twice before purchasing this ultrabook.
Memory
Toshiba Portege Z830 is capable of just 4GB of RAM which in my point of view is very less. In 21st century anything less than 8GB is a complete disappointment.
Toshiba Portege Z830 are powered by Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Operating systems which allows at minimum of 8GB RAM. So just having 4GB is underutilization.
However given the fact that there is no mechanical device and it is powered by the high end processor it seems to me that 4GB is not going to compromise with the performance.
Operating systems
Toshiba Portege Z830 series of ultrabooks come with pre-installed Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit or Windows® 7 Home Professional 64-bit operating system.
Graphics
Intel HD Graphics 3000 is used in this ultrathin ultrabook which makes it an ideal choice for entertainment enthusiasts and gamers.
Graphics Specifications
Type : Intel® HD Graphics 3000
Memory : up to 1,696 MB shared memory with 4 GB system memory installed, (with pre-installed 64-bit operating system)
Memory type : shared
Keyboard
Toshiba Portege Z830 keyboard is matt black and it looks quite impressive. However I’ll always have doubt abut Toshiba laptops’ keyboards. Keyboards are always a pain with Toshiba laptops. Only time will tell how good keyboards are with these ultrabooks.
Battery life
Toshiba claims that Toshiba Portege Z830 can give up to 8 hours of battery life which I think might be true. I personally never find Toshiba laptops to last longer on battery. 3-4 hours used to be the peak which I had with my 2 Toshiba laptops.
Weight
Toshiba Portege Z830 just weighs 1.12kg which makes it truly mobile laptop and an ideal gadget for highly mobile professionals.
Display
Toshiba Portege Z830 comes with just 13.3inch screen which is a bit of disappointment. I personally never prefer a laptop with screen size less than 15.6inch. 13.3inch (33.8cm) is really less for a techie like me. But that is the catch, you can’t make a 15.6inch laptop as ultrathin and ultrabook, can you?
Display is Toshiba HD non-reflective High Brightness display with 16 : 9 aspect ratio and LED backlighting.
The internal resolution is 1,366 x 768
Dimensions
W x D x H : 316.0 x 227.0 x 8.3 (front) / 15.9 (rear) mm
Design Colour
Steel grey metallic, magnesium chassis, matt black keyboard.
Interfaces
One of the reasons why I, personally, prefer Toshiba laptops is the interfaces. Most of the Toshiba laptop models are packed with almost all possible interfaces which makes it easier to connect laptop to external devices. Toshiba Portege Z830 is no exception. It has a bult-in camera & microphone. It has HDMI port which lets you to connect to all latest gadgets at high speed. HDMI allows digital transfer of data. If you have a HDTV then you can directly connect Z830 to a TV.
- 1 × integrated 1.3 Megapixels Web Camera with AutoMacro support
- 1 × external microphone
- 1 × built-in microphone
- 1 × headphone (stereo)
- 1 × HDMI supporting 1080p signal format
- 1 × DC-in
- 1 × external monitor
- 1 × RJ-45
- 1 × SD™ Card Reader (supports SD™ Card up to 2 GB, miniSD™/microSD™ Card with adapter up to 2 GB, SDHC™ Card up to 32 GB, SDXC™ Card up to 64 GB and MultiMedia Card™ up to 2 GB)
- 1 (Right) × USB 3.0
- 2 (Rear) × USB 2.0 (left one supporting Sleep-and-Charge)
Networking
It supports wireless 802.11a/b/g/n, WiFi, Wireless LAN and Bluetooth 3.0.
It has Gigabit Ethernet LAN as well.
Sound
Built-in stereo speakers which supports 24-bit stereo format.
Bundled Software
Toshiba bundled too many software and it is a big pain. All these bundled software reduce laptop’s performance and most of them you would never use. Z830 comes with following bundled software
- Toshiba Bluetooth™ Stack
- Toshiba User’s Manual
- Toshiba Assist
- Chicony Camera Assistant Software
- Toshiba Face Recognition
- Toshiba Value Added Package (Toshiba Power Saver, Toshiba Zooming Utility, Toshiba PC Diagnostic Tool, Toshiba Flash Cards, Toshiba Components Common Driver, Toshiba Accessibility, Toshiba Button Support)
- McAfee® Internet Security (includes free Internet updates for 30 days)
- Toshiba Recovery Media Creator
- Nero BackItUp & Burn Autobackup Essentials
- Skype
- Windows Live Essentials
- eBay
- Amazon
- This PC includes limited functionality versions of Microsoft ® Word and Excel with advertising. Purchase Microsoft ® Office 2010 to activate a full-featured suite preloaded on this PC.
- Nero Multimedia Suite 10 Essential
- Toshiba Security Assist
- Connectivity Doctor
- Toshiba utilities and drivers
- ConfigFree™
Toshiba EasyGuard
- Security
- Toshiba Security Assist
- Antivirus Software
- Password Utilities
- Computrace® enabled BIOS
- Execute Disable Bit (XD-Bit)
- Toshiba Device Access Control (on request)
- Intel® Anti-Theft
Protection
- PC Diagnostics
- Kensington Lock
- Data Backup
- Shock Protection Design
- Durable Design
- Spill-resistant Keyboard
- Solid State Drive (SSD)
Connectivity
- Bluetooth®
- Wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g/N)
- HDMI-out
- Toshiba ConfigFree™
- Video over IP ready
- Voice over IP ready
- Diversity Antenna
Manageability
- Multi-Touch Touchpad
- Toshiba Media Contoller
- Toshiba LifeSpace
- Eco Utility
- PC Health Monitor
- Toshiba TEMPRO Performance Tuning Service
- Toshiba Power Saver Utility
- Virtualization Technology
- Dynadock ‘USB Port Replicator’ (optional)
Special Features
- EasyControl Bar with 2 Control Buttons (Eco Utility Button, Toshiba Presentation Button)
- SM BIOS compliant
- ENERGY STAR 5.0 qualified computer
- Enhanced Intel® SpeedStep® Technology
- HD Audio support
Performance
1.40 GHz of processor and a SSD can give a good performance for entertainment or gaming. It can also easily sustain high demanding applications such as Photoshop.
Toshiba Portege Z830 Models
At the moment Toshiba Portege Z830 is available in 3 models in the UK; Portégé Z830-10N, Portégé Z830-10P and Portégé Z830-104. All models are exactly same with just some differences in Operating System and Processors.
Price
Toshiba Portege Z830 starts from £899 (exc VAT) which is a little bit steep but can be justified as this laptop is think and comes with Solid State Drive.
Conclusion
At first look all the hype generated by Toshiba’s PR machine can be a temptation for gadget enthusiasts. But digging down further you will end up only with disappointment. 1.40 GHz processor speed is too less and a 13.3 inch of screen size is a big turn off.
The 8.33inch thickness and a magnesium alloy frame can be attractive from outside but a constant whirling fan and under utilized memory is not going to convince me to shell out my hard earned £899 .
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