Toshiba Portege Z830 review: first look

Sasha Muller September 2, 2011

Image 1 of 13

With several manufacturers at IFA unveiling their vision of Intel’s Ultrabook concept, Toshiba’s 13.3in Portege Z830 takes the thin and light formula even further than ever before.

In the flesh, it’s stunning to behold. Measuring only 15.9mm at its thickest point, the Z830 impresses before you’ve even hit the power button. And where other Ultrabooks proudly proclaim their sub 1.4kg credentials, the Portege Z830 trumps them all: at 1.12kg, Toshiba hasn’t just left every Ultrabook in its wake, it’s even trumped Sony’s VAIO Z Series.

Despite that headline-grabbing weight, the internal honeycomb struture allows it to feel unusually burly. Given its millimetre-thick stature, we could barely coax any flex out of the Z830’s base.

The lid, meanwhile, is more pliable – it brings to mind the taut, yet highly flexible likes of Sony’s VAIO Z Series – allowing it to absorb the shunts and knocks of a laptop on the road.

After spying the USB 3 port on the Z830’s right-hand side, and the SD card reader and audio inputs and outputs on the left, we initially assumed that Toshiba had been forced to compromise on connectivity; not so. Somehow Toshiba’s engineers have managed to squeeze in a comprehensive selection at the rear.

With two USB 2 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and a VGA socket, Toshiba”s accepted zero compromise to achieve such a stunning form factor. Wireless connectivity also includes all the usual faces: 802.11n (no confirmation whether dual-band is on the cards), Bluetooth 3.0 and optional 3G.

The backlit keyboard is very similar to that of Toshiba’s existing 13in notebooks. In our snatched minutes with the Z830, we noted a soft, cushioned key action, and there’s not a jot of flex anywhere to be found. The wide keys felt a little too squat for our liking, but we’ll hold off judgement on the keyboard until we get to play with the Z830 for a little longer.

There are no such issues with the touchpad, however. Again retaining the familiar Toshiba design and discrete clicky buttons, Toshiba’s clearly foregone flashy glass and buttonless designs for straightforward practicality: a good thing. A fingerprint reader hides in the middle, and it’s also possible to disable the touchpad with the button above.

Toshiba were a little more coy when it came to exact specifications and pricing, stating that such information would be following in the coming weeks. They confirmed the basics, however: as yet undisclosed variants of Intel’s second Generation Core processors will take the reins alongside a 128GB SSD and anything up to 6GB of RAM. Given that every other manufacturer has been happy to release the details of the CPUs in their Ultrabooks, we can’t help feeling that Toshiba’s got something new up its sleeve for the Z830.

Pricing will make all the difference to the fortunes of Toshiba’s featherweight Ultrabook, but with Portege and Satellite branded versions of the Z830 set to hit the shelves sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, it looks like the battle for the best Ultrabook has only just begun.