POWERMARK:
This showed that the estimated batter life under load was 2 hours and 47 minutes. This is only an estimation and running through various tests showed a little more battery life.
Final Thoughts
This certainly is a good first Ultrabook from Toshiba!
It is very light weight and easy to carry around – just want you want, and need from an Ultrabook.
The lid of the Z830 felt a little flimsy and I would worry that it might be damaged easily.
Toshiba claim the Z830 has a spill-resistant keyboard which can withstand accidental fluid spills, but I didn’t test that! One thing I did like was that the keyboard was backlit, however the keys took a little getting used it, sometimes I wasn’t sure if I had pressed them or not!
One thing that I really didn’t like was the fan noise. It seemed to be constantly on, no matter what I was, or wasn’t doing and at times it could be a little distracting.
The Z830 booted very quickly and performed all the tasks I wanted it to without problem (and that was with the i3 processor – the i5 should be even better).
I was a little disappointed with the battery life – Toshiba claim around 8 hours, and as usual this is with a number of the settings turned off, or down, and not really stressing the machine. When I used it “normally” I managed to get around 4 hours, which wasn’t bad consider what I was using it for
The other disappointment was the screen – the quality was pretty good, but it wasn’t excellent. Also, with a resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels it has a lower resolution than a lot of other machines, including my MacBook Air.
There are currently five different variants of the Z830 with options including a better processor and additional memory. It’s worth checking out the various options to ensure you get the one you want! Although disappointingly, there isn’t an i7 version.
Price wise, the Z830-10P we had for review retails for £969.00 (plus VAT at 20%).
The Z830 is certainly worth taking a long look at, and it is a great little machine (even with the few disappointments), however I would say it is just beaten out by the ASUS UX31E. And don’t forget that there are a number of new Ultrabooks just on the horizon, so expect Toshiba to up it’s game!
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