Toshiba Portégé Z830 review

Most manufacturers are confidently aiming their Ultrabooks at the consumer market, but Toshiba’s Portégé Z830 bucks the trend. Squeezing business-friendly features into a millimetres-thick chassis, this is the executive Ultrabook that every executive has been waiting for.
It’s no surprise to find that the Portégé Z830 is slim and light – such attributes are the very currency of the Ultrabook – but Toshiba has done a sterling job with the design. Weighing in at just 1.09kg, the Toshiba is disconcertingly light, even by the standards of its peers. And yet, somehow, it still manages to feel solid enough to inspire confidence. The base barely flexes at all, and while the lid is altogether more malleable, you have to prod viciously on it before any pressure impinges on the delicate LCD panel within.

Visually, it’s less successful. Where other Ultrabooks trade on their striking good looks, the Toshiba’s dark grey chassis looks rather ordinary. What it lacks in style, however, it more than makes up for with sheer practicality. You’ll find a USB 3 port on its right flank; an SD card reader, headphone and microphone sockets on its left. It crams even more along its rear edge, adding two USB 2 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, D-SUB and HDMI.
With a fingerprint reader nestling between the two touchpad buttons, and a TPM 1.2 module inside, security is also top of the Portégé Z830’s priorities. Wireless connectivity is good, too, stretching to dual-band 802.11n and Bluetooth 3, but the current model lacks 3G. Thankfully, Toshiba has confirmed that there's room in the chassis for future models to accommodate 3G.

This, the top-of-the-range model, has precious little lacking elsewhere. It comes with a 1.7Ghz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and the Intel QM67 chipset throws in vPro support for good measure. It all makes for a seriously nippy machine. Applications spring into view within seconds, and the low-voltage processor ploughs through even intense video editing without breaking a sweat.
Battery life is great – the Toshiba’s non user-replaceable battery lasted 8hrs 3mins in our light usage battery test – but the Core i5 processor is more than capable of stepping up a gear. With a result of 0.6 in our Real World Benchmarks, the Portégé Z830 is a featherweight that packs a mighty punch. So mighty, in fact, that we found the area above the keyboard and around the rear cooling vent getting rather warm with extended use. Squeezing this much power into such a dainty slice does, after all, have its downsides.

Ergonomics

When we first clapped eyes on the Toshiba’s keyboard, we feared it might be the Portégé Z830’s undoing. The layout looks cramped, each key shrunken vertically to squeeze into its allotted space, and there’s barely any travel on each keystroke. Our fears soon proved unfounded, however. The keys do feel a little dead under the finger compared to the best laptop keyboards, but they’re not bad by any means and once you start typing, the layout doesn’t feel cramped.

The touchpad is unremarkable. The fingerprint reader between the two touchpad buttons works well, and while the touchpad itself is a little small – and two-fingered scrolling is disabled by default – we didn’t find ourselves hankering for any drastic improvements.
The 13.3in display is the Portégé Z830’s weakest suit. The 1,366 x 768 pixel resolution is a disappointment – we’d have preferred a 1,440 x 900 panel – and while the matte finish keeps reflections at bay, the flat, uninvolving colour reproduction robs images of vibrance. It’s plenty bright enough – we measured it at a maximum of 294cd/m2 – so perfectly competent for office applications and day-to-day usage, but the poor contrast ratio of 187:1 and dull colour reproduction aren’t particularly inspiring.

Verdict

As a business proposition, however, the Toshiba Portégé Z830 is entirely convincing. Toshiba has crammed great performance, comfortable ergonomics and convincing battery life into a chassis that weighs barely more than kilogram, and has also managed to shoehorn in all the ports, security and manageability features required of a true business laptop. It might be early days for the Ultrabook, but, on this showing, the Portégé Z830 has a bright future in big business.