Review: Toshiba Z835 Ultrabook

[TheGreatSatan]

A new story entry has been added:

[drupal=690]Review: Toshiba Z835 Ultrabook[/drupal]

by Ken Kirby

Today's review is my first for 2012! We’ll be covering the new Toshiba Z835 Ultrabook available at Newegg for $829 The Z835 has a 13.3 inch screen and weighs only 2.47lbs! The similar sized Macbook air weighs another half a pound and will cost you an additional $500. The last laptop I reviewed of similar size was my Alienware M11x which was only one inch smaller, but weighed a lot more. Obviously, it had a huge battery and was made with a thicker shell to contain the beefy graphics. An Ultrabook is not a gaming machine by any stretch of the imagination, but more suited for business or casual use on the go.

[mDust]

Looks pretty cool! Nice review.
I was thinking about putting an SSD in my netbook to hurry things along but I don't really think it would be worth it. I might have to take a closer look at one of these.

That extra 6gb of ram would make a handy ramdrive...and people think SSDs are fast...hah!

How many cells does the battery have? The battery in my netbook is getting flaky and upon looking for a replacement I found better batteries with more cells. If that ultrabook only has a 6-cell or so, there may be some heftier upgrades for it.

Is the screen really flimsy?..as in it bends a bit? That always makes me extremely nervous. I like the whole slim, sleek design direction but not if it sacrifices critical strength to achieve it. I'm not the gentlest when it comes to devices like this.

[AmEv]

^THAT's why I'm afraid of ultraslim screens. I'm afraid I'm going to whip it open too quickly, *snap*.

[TLHarrell]

What's worse is whipping it open quickly and it stresses the casing over time. I just did some repairs to my wife's netbook (Acer Aspire One) due to one side of the hinge tearing out of the casing, and the webcam cable getting flaky due to it. Repaired the casing with epoxy putty and soldered a bypass for the camera cable. Camera caused system to hang on boot, so it got unplugged.

Small, thin and light is good. But sacrificing any amount of durability is a bad thing. The problem isn't usually on the screen side of the hinge though.

[CrazyTeaPot]

If you want an ultrabook, but can't afford one, you might consider looking around for an Asus UL30VT. I bought one from a member on HardForum for $320, which included shipping. It's a few years old, but it honestly still looks brand new and works just as well. The quality is really high on this laptop. The screen does flex slightly as you open it, but it's honestly not enough to warrant concern. Aside from that, they're pretty similar in specs. I've seen them range in price from $400 to $700. Just look around and you might find a good deal like I did.

Toshiba Z835
OS: Win7 64Bit
CPU: Intel Core i3 1.4GHz 3MB L3 Cache (3DMark06 - 1712)
Display: 13.3" LED Backlight
Graphics: Intel HD 3000 (3DMark06 - 3513)
HDD: 128GB SSD
Memory: 4GB DDR3
LAN: 10/100/1000
WLAN: A/G/N
HDMI: Yes
VGA: Yes (Edit: Whoops. It does.)
Battery: Rated at 8h17m (TGS got 5.5h)
Dimensions: 12.44" x 8.94" x 0.33"-0.63"
Weight: 2.47 lbs.

Asus UL30VT-A1
OS: Win7 64Bit
CPU: C2D 1.3GHz (1.7GHz w/ TurboBoost) (3DMark06 - 1166 - Not sure if TB is included here.)
Display: 13.3" LED Backlight
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce G210M + Intel GMA 4500MHD (3DMark06 - 3338, 3DMark06 - 740)
HDD: 500GB HDD
Memory: 4GB DDR3
LAN: 10/100
WLAN: A/G/N
HDMI: Yes
VGA: Yes
Battery: Rated at 12h (I get 5h with maxed everything, 7h with battery saving + wifi)
Dimensions: 12.90" x 9.28" x 0.60" - 0.98"
Weight: 3.74 lbs.
.......................

Good review TGS.

I love how the ports are mostly located on the backside. That's been a sorely missed feature since the days of my Dell Inspiron 9300. You just don't see it anymore, but I prefer it. It's just where those ports should belong, in my honest opinion. It makes more sense. But I guess typical laptop design gets in the way of that. My Asus for example has no room there due to it being a battery and making a battery with ports in it would probably be tricky and costly I'd imagine.

How do you replace the memory? Do you have to take the whole bottom off I wonder? Though, I suppose 4GB is plenty, so that probably won't ever be a problem for most people. But it's still pretty unfortunate for people who would want more than 4GB. And I can't say I'm too crazy about that soldered-in memory. The whole situation here is just a bit unfortunate.

Is the touchpad multi-gesture/touch?

[mDust]

Toshiba Z835
Battery: Rated at 8h17m (TGS got 5.5h)

Asus UL30VT-A1
Battery: Rated at 12h (I get 5h with maxed everything, 7h with battery saving + wifi)

They must enter power saving mode, disable wifi and speakers, dim the screen as much as possible, change the background to black to minimize pixel usage, disable the cooling fans in bios, kill all processes that might want to use CPU cycles or spin the HDD up...
My 1201HA is rated at 8 hours on a 6-cell, but I get 4.5-5 hours in power saving mode (not much more when the battery was brand new). I'm not sure how they eked out 8 hours.

[AmEv]

Run it at the BIOS screen. External timer.

[CrazyTeaPot]

They must enter power saving mode, disable wifi and speakers, dim the screen as much as possible, change the background to black to minimize pixel usage, disable the cooling fans in bios, kill all processes that might want to use CPU cycles or spin the HDD up...
My 1201HA is rated at 8 hours on a 6-cell, but I get 4.5-5 hours in power saving mode (not much more when the battery was brand new). I'm not sure how they eked out 8 hours.

Yeah I'm not sure what alternate reality they were in where they achieved 12h. If I did everything that I could possibly do, I would probably get 9h. Maybe 10h. I just can't see how on earth they got 12h. It's deceptive marketing if you ask me. They should rate it based on typical user usage in power saving mode, which would have been 7h in my case. That's still a great battery life for what you get, so I don't see why they feel the need to deceive people. But then again, people have grown to automatically assume that you won't get the rated, so I guess it's kind of a catch twenty two.

[AmEv]

The reason they are going for the highest possible battery is simply marketing. What sounds better, 56kb, or 7kB?