The Toshiba Portege Z835-P370 is Toshiba's latest entry in a very competitive ultrabook market. Toshiba's aim here was to produce the lightest ultraportable laptop while maintaining some functionality and they've done a very nice job. The laptop weighs in at a hair over 2.5 pounds (which is about 3 slim magazines). This is a welcomed replacement to my eight pound 10 year old Apple Powerbook.
Structurally, the laptop is sound. You can pick up the laptop by one corner and the chassis will not flex nor bend. This is surprising considering how thin the laptop is. Conversely, the screen is very flexible and bends easily. I've read reports that the screen wobbles when you are typing with the laptop on your lap but I haven't experienced that at all. While the hinges are stiff enough, you wouldn't want to open the laptop screen with the corner of the screen. You would hold the screen from the center to open it.
The SSD is zippy and loading takes only 4-5 seconds from cold start and almost instantaneous from sleep mode. The i5 processor is very capable of handling the demands of most business users and casual gamers. The laptop never hiccuped when running Microsoft Office products with multiple documents or spread sheets open. While the laptop is not intended for gaming, I was able to play Star Craft 2 on the lowest settings without any lag at all. However, turning up the graphics settings slowed the game down quite a bit.
The only complaints I have so far:
spacing of the keyboard keys. The keys are spaced out in such a way that I tend to miss keys sometimes. It may be a good idea to go to a retail store and play with the keyboard for a bit to see if you like it.
built in webcam picture quality is slightly grainy not what I expected out of a laptop this expensive
fan noise in a quiet room, there is an audible hum coming from underneath the laptop, do anything processor/graphics intensive and the fan kicks into overdrive and can be annoying
Despite some shortcomings, my initial impressions have been very good thus far. This was my first laptop purchase online and I was a little hesitant that I wouldn't be happy but I have been nothing but pleased so far in the week that I've owned it. I'll be back in a few weeks to update my review after I've had a chance top play with it some more, but so far, I'd have to give it two thumbs up.
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I'm giving this a Fiver. What a great little machine. At 2.5 pounds it's like the Jenny Craig of laptops. I did my due diligence research before I purchased and the Toshiba Ultras were rated highly on many different sites. Also I happen to work in the same lab as the Emerging Technologies group for my company and they had ordered 5 evaluation units from 5 different mfgs so I was able to compare them all straight up before purchasing. The Toshiba was definitely the winner and the Samsung Series 9 was very good also. The ACER, ASUS and HP were definitely trailing with the HP coming in last (sorry HP guys). The processor and ram specs were all very similar so I based a lot of my opinion on asthectics, keyboard layout, design and weight. I'm not going to go into so called "cons" like the size of the hard drive or lack of CD-ROM since the buyer knows these things up front anyway and if that won't work for you then look at another machine. A con to me is more like claimed performance not living up to expectations or a hardware component that is flakey. As far as the "heavy lifting" goes, you can do all the heavy lifting you want with the I5 processor as long as it's within the contraints of the capacity of the hard drive. I love the instant on feature and it truly does work as advertised. Along with Amazons usual kick butt fast shipping I'm very pleased with this purchase.
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After reviewing the Macbook Air 13, the Zenbook UX31 and the Toshiba Z835, I selected the Toshiba. In my opinion an ultra-book should include as many features of a standard size notebook as possible into the lightest, most compact form factor possible. The Z835 wins on the most ports and expansion options. The Z835 wins on being the lightest weight. The Z835 wins with having the most reasonable price. The MSRP is $1049.99, however OfficeMax had a sales promotion and the device was $949.00. On top of that, the Z835 also had all of the features I wanted including the i5 quad core processor, 6 gigabytes of ram, Bluetooth and HDMI out. I also like the sleep and charge USB port which allows me to charge my Clear hotspot, a huge plus because I don't have yet another ac adaptor to carry around. The subdued styling works for me being as I'm not crazy about shiny / polished gadgets. The keyboard is great with the key spacing and key travel just fine for me being as I'm a touch typist. The keyboard backlighting also works well for me. The multi touch touchpad is one of the best I've ever used. The response is extremely fluid and smooth. I've stopped using my arc touch mouse, it's that good. For such a small device, the sound system puts out high quality sound. Between the speakers and the audio enhancement software, the sound is excellent. The sound is also great on Bluetooth when I stream to my Plantronics BackBeat earphones. I normally stream music from jazzradio.com, digitally imported or audio galaxy so I've always got access to great tunes. When out taking pictures, I either use the included sd card slot or use my Eye-Fi 4 gig wi-fi card to transfer photos. Everything has worked without a hitch. With the i5 processor, 6 gigs of ram and the SSD, the Z835 is extremely fast and has handled everything I've given it with absolutely no performance issues. Being as I have not been on battery power that often, I can't accurately discuss battery life. However all of the reviews I read give it very high marks for battery life. About the only complaint I have is the small SSD. I hope when larger SSD's come available I can swap them out on my own. For now I carry my 1TB WD USB 3.0 drive, which contains all of my music, pictures, data and movies. For my school and personal files I use on a daily basis, I sync with my cloud based DropBox account. The Z835, along with my Apollo 4G hot spot have become my complete mobile solution, it is that versatile. No more tablet or smart phone and the associated data access plans that come with them. In my opinion the Z835-370 represents the best overall value of all of the ultra-books currently available. The Z835-370 comes highly recommended.
Honest reviews on Toshiba Portege Z835-P370 13.3-Inch Ultrabook (Silver)
I debated buying a Thrive or this and chose the laptop.
What's great:
+ Weighs very little and I can easily stow it in my leather padfolio case with expandable file.
I have gotten positive feedback on both. Be careful of making your executive team jealous!
Many a project manager and business analyst just want a lightweight PC for taking notes, recording a meeting,
processing email or surfing the web. Ideal match.
+ Thin! My LG phone is thicker than this notebook.
+ The Solid State Drive (SSD) is sweet. Instant on. No long boot times. Spoil me baby!
+ Includes 1 USB3.0 port and 2 USB2.0 ports, one of which is on the side, the rest on the back.
+ The Ethernet off the back is wonderful, being out of the way, though I had to get used to it being mounted upside down.
+ Anecdotal battery review: I unplugged at 10am this morning to use it in meetings all day and a working lunch and near 5pm
it was low and finally hibernated. 7 hours work without complaint? OK for my purposes.
What's not:
At 128GB, you start the Windows experience half-full. I upgraded from the Home version of Win 7 to Professional.
Now, I have 67 GB free. The formatted 128 GB is actually only 102 GB capacity, 67 GB now free.
Why oh why won't Toshiba make this product with 256 GB drives?
So, how do you get a little more space to buzz around with this tiny dancer laptop?
Well, while I bought a SanDisk Extreme Pro (45 mb/sec) SDHC card, I was wondering how it would play with the Portege.
Answer: Toshiba has a crappy 15 SDHC unit built in and all I could get out of it was 15 mb/sec.
Nevertheless, I am planning to pickup a slow (15 mb/sec) 64 GB SDXC card and check that for compatability.
Watch out for cooling. My first unit arrived and booted with an OS complaint the cooling system was not working. Exchanged!
The new unit arrived working fine, but I quickly learned the laptop is silent only when doing little or nothing.
If you dare to install something that requires CPU power, like a game, you will hear the fan ROAR as it tries to keep up
with the heat generation of the CPU. I dumped the games I installed immediately. Back to work I guess.
The screen is 1366x768, which is OK, but not great. This low res vertical is still one of the day-to-day
most annoying feature of laptops, when we live on the web and screen real-estate is king. 1024 would have made this an
awesome design, but it is only OK.
Last caution is that the thin screen is a handling risk. If it seems fragile (and it does) then it probably is fragile.
Get insurance.
Personally, I would have rounded the corners if I were on the engineering team, but the squareness fits in with the Microsoft
world. Haha, sorry MSFT.
So, am I happy with it? You bet I am!
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I had the computer for one month and the screen malfunctioned. I sent it to Toshiba for them to repair it under warranty. Then about two to three weeks later I receive it back, with a copy of the warranty and a note saying the repairs are not covered but without stating the reason. What they did with it for three weeks is anyone's guess as I heard nothing from the company. After more hours on the phone with the company, it appears that any issues with the screen are assumed to be the customer's fault and Toshiba calls you a liar if you try to convince them otherwise. For comparison, I had an Asus whose screen malfunctioned after 11 months and they replaced it no questions asked. The computer itself is a fine machine but if you happen to get a lemon, you will get no love from Toshiba. So thanks to their policies, I will not look to purchase any Toshiba products in the future.
Update: After receiving it back from their repair facility, the computer would not charge or turn on when plugged in. Weeks more with the Toshiba repair facility await. What a horrible product
