If Intel has its way, there will come a day when we no longer use the word "ultrabook", and will just call everything laptops again.
Until then, the ultrabook portfolio has been fleshed out with a third member: Toshiba's Satellite Z830. It's immediately clear that Toshiba has leaned on its experience with its Portege R400 and R700 series of laptops; it's managed to jam in more connections than anyone else. While it still has a USB 3.0 port, USB 2.0 port, headphone jack, SD card reader and an HDMI port, it also manages to fit in an extra USB 2.0 port, dedicated microphone jack, gigabit Ethernet and VGA port. Rather than pretending to be an ultra-light computer without compromise, the Z830 actually delivers. Toshiba puts a lot of this on the back of its laptop, something that we usually chastise — however, having at least one of the USB ports on the side helps to keep day-to-day usability intact.
There's a backlit keyboard here, too, something that's always appreciated, although the keyboard does feel a little mushy, and flexes slightly when typing. It also has quite a short throw, meaning that you'll need a period of adjustment. After this point, though, we found that it didn't impact on our typing speed or accuracy.
The 13.3-inch, 1366x768 screen has the hallmarks of a wide-gamut panel, with slightly exaggerated colours. It's still TN-based, and has poor vertical viewing angles as a result, but nowhere near as bad as Asus' ZenBook UX21.
Construction is acceptably solid for something this thin, although the unit has inherited the R series' far-too-flexible screen. While it may induce some fears as to its ruggedness, we've tossed the laptop around for a few weeks without care, and it's happily withstood our abuse.
Inside is a Core i7 2467M @ 1.6GHz, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB Toshiba SSD. The SSD isn't as fast as Asus' offering, but will still dominate any mechanical drive.
Toshiba's SSD is acceptable, but Asus' eats it for breakfast.
(Screenshot by CBS Interactive)
Performance
In this test, we're encoding a 720p XviD file to H.264, a primarily processor-bound task. The Toshiba comfortably takes the lead, arguably as a benefit of its SSD, compared to the Acer. Strangely, the Asus lags here, despite having the more powerful processor and faster SSD.
Our iTunes test encodes two albums worth of AAC files to 224Kbps MP3s. It stresses both CPU and disk, allowing the SSD units to show their might against mechanical hard drive competitors.
CNET Australia's Photoshop CS5 test applies many different filters to a series of RAW files, performs common tasks such as layer creation, image rotation and resizing and then exports to the web. It hits all aspects of the system, and it's no surprise that the Zenbook comes out on top here.
For our multimedia multitasking test, iTunes is set to encode to MP3 continuously, while a Handbrake encode is run in the background; the time taken is when the Handbrake encode stops. Designed to punish the system, every extra bit of performance here counts, with the Toshiba trailing a good 67 seconds behind Asus.
Now this is interesting. Toshiba offers considerably better battery life than its competitors, both under heavy and light loads. Its heavy-load test outdoes the other vendors' light battery tests.
Conclusion
Toshiba's Satellite Z830 is without question the leading ultrabook in the market today. With extra ports, backlit keyboard and stellar battery life, it stands head and shoulders above competitors. While there's still room for improvement on the screen and keyboard front, we have no hesitation in recommending the Z830 for those who want something thin and light, but still with enough power to perform daily tasks.
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