Toshiba Portege Z835: Incredibly Light, but Not Incredibly Fast

At a Glimpse

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Nice raiment of full-size ports
• Incredibly dilute and light

Cons

• Slow processor
• Questionable display upper-class

Our Verdict

This may be the best Ultrabook you can corrupt for below $1000 appropriate now, but it's clear where Toshiba made concessions to drop the price.

At just 2.4 pounds, the Toshiba Portege Z835 is the lightest of the first wave of Ultrabooks. Most rivals, like the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s and Asus Zenbook UX31E, weigh around 3 pounds. You can straightaway feel the difference when you pick finished this light-as-a-square laptop computer. Unfortunately, this Best Buy exclusive constellation makes a few obvious concessions to reach its attractive $799 (as of November 18, 2011) price.

Start with the anemic CPU: The Portege Z835 configuration we tested features a Essence i3-2367M running at a worthless 1.4GHz with no Turbo Mode. The system also has 4GB of Jampack and a 128GB solid drive, though not a specially trick. The result in our tests was a disappointing WorldBench 6 score of 79–a lower mark than we've seen from any other Ultrabook so further. Forget about modern gambling, as this laptop computer doesn't break 30 frames per second even at low resolutions with low quality settings. Toshiba offers other configurations, up to a Sum i7-2677M with 6GB of RAM, but that escalates the price to virtually $1500, and you still get just a 128GB SSD.

Dull computer hardware specs don't necessarily mean that the system is a infliction to use. Even a fair SSD is pretty spanking compared with standard rotating hard drives, then boot-up multiplication and resume times from quietus or hibernate mode are nice and immobile, and about everyday programs launch quickly. If you're just fascinated in whatsoever basic Web browsing and papers editing, the Portege Z835 is certainly snappy enough.

Media playback is another matter. The processor is capable of keeping up with most high-def video playback, though the quality isn't quite crest-mountain pass. A bigger job is the display, which is subpar. The 1366-by-768-pel impanel is not especially bright, and the apparent contrast is poor. Black levels seem like "really dark dull" at best, and you can immediately notice the problem when viewing dark scenes. The wake angles from the sides are all honorable, but the vertical viewing angles are terrible. They're so bad that I couldn't discover a good weight at which to place the screen to fork up even-looking backlighting from top to bottom.

Typing and pointing are passable. As with most Ultrabooks, the keyboard has a same short key travel. The keys are too a petty squat, having had some of their height lopped off. You'd think up this would ruin typing speed and accuracy, but information technology's really alone a minor drawback. And whereas many Ultrabooks have put a backlit keyboard on the chopping block, the Portege Z835 manages to retain the backlight. The touchpad is smaller than many others, in component part because Toshiba gives upfield any space at the bottom for a pair of physical buttons as an alternative of instalmen a big buttonless touchpad. The feel is pretty good, though not nearly as smooth as the glass-coated touchpads on the first Lenovo and Asus Ultrabooks. The expected multitouch gestures, such as pinch-to-soar up and two-digit scrolling, are based, though they aren't all enabled by default.

The Portege Z835 has a really classy look for it, and that's not something we often say about Toshiba's laptops. The muted gray exterior carries ended to the within, with subtle brushing on the magnesium-alloy body. Unfortunately, it doesn't feel quite as hardy As you'd trust. The deck feels substantial, and the laptop holds up well when closed, but the lid and screen bend quite a a tur low-level straight modest pressure.

I'm preferably impressed by the collection of ports and connectors along this Ultrabook. All Ultrabooks are space-constrained, but Toshiba manages to fit separate earpiece and microphone jacks on the unexpended along with an SDHC card one-armed bandit. Along the back butt, you'll find the power plug, VGA, HDMI, deuce USB 2.0 ports, and gigabit ethernet. The right English houses a one-man USB 3.0 port and a Kensington lock slot. This is as nice an array of full-size ports as we've seen on an Ultrabook.

A couple separate nice features are worth mentioning. An "Eco Mode" button near the index button reduces power using up by dimming the display, turn off the keyboard backlight, and switching to a more conservative baron profile. Next thereto is a button to spark off remote screen projection via Intel's WiDi, which is built in.

Alas, information technology seems system makers don't get to a reasonable price these days without bundling some truly annoying software. Since this machine is a Best Buy exclusive, you'll find an obnoxious Best Buy PC App, which is just a way to sell you more stuff from Best Buy. You'll also have to deal with the Norton Internet Security visitation nagging you active how your PC is unprotected. A Toshiba Book Place app–which appears to be Blio with a Toshiba skin thereon–is also installed, along with the Google Chromium-plate browser. The web browser we keister deal with, but there's atomic number 102 good reason for the system to include some Norton and Google browser toolbars; that's about two toolbars also many. Fortunately, nigh of this bundle-ware is unobtrusive; I've certainly seen systems with a dispense Thomas More dust on them.

The $799 Best Buy version of the Toshiba Portege Z835 is an interesting proposition. It's noticeably lighter than other Ultrabooks and the MacBook Air, it features a amazingly good array of ports and a backlit keyboard, and it doesn't skimp out on the SSD the way the likewise priced Acer Aspire S3 does. On the other manus, the performance of the Core i3 processor isn't equal to the level of its contemporaries, the reveal quality is mediocre, and the CRT screen has a trifle too much flex–an vexation flaw connected an differently rigid machine. This is certainly an easier laptop to recommend than the Acer Ultrabook (the other bomber-$1000 option), but it isn't quite an as likable as the Asus Zenbook UX31E or Lenovo IdeaPad U300s.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/478389/toshiba_portege_z835_incredibly_light_but_not_incredibly_fast.html

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