Toshiba Portege Z830 review

This is Toshiba’s first foray in to the ultrabook market, and, as you might expect the Portege Z830 caters for business use mixing lightweight mobility with lightspeed processing. Toshiba’s Portege range focuses on mobile computing, which is normally to the detriment of things like connectivity. Some models also have a fragile feel to them, but the Portege Z830 is very sturdy considering the thinnest part of the ultrabook is a mere 8.33mm thin.

Machines such as these are rapidly taking over the dying netbook market; they offer a similar degree of portability with a computer performance rivalled only by desktops. The Portege is an excellent tool for those of you who need to take your computers with you when travelling, and like to get a bit of work done on the way.

What we like best

The Toshiba Portege Z830 can be equipped with an Intel i5 processor, is a processor that most businesses are adopting due to its excellent performance, and the laptop offers a battery life of up to 8 hours. This computer has a 128 GB Solid State Drive; this reduces moving parts within the system so the rigours of travel will not pose any threat to your data.

The Z830 has a sleek almost futuristic look to it, with green backlighting on the full sized tile keyboard. It’s hard to believe that this machine is full of delicate components – it feels solid through and through. Don’t let the lack of a clasp to keep the screen down deter you, the hinge was strong enough to keep the Toshiba Portege Z830 firmly shut whilst depositing and removing from the laptop bag.

What pushes the Z830 ahead of competition like the MacBook Air and Asus’ Zenbook is its connective capacity. It boasts a full HDMI connection along with USB 3.0 and a couple of standard USB ports as well. You’ll also find connecting to networks easy wherever you are with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0 options available.

What we like least

As a business machine, it’s not really fair to complain about the graphics capability. The Portege Z830 has a rather standard Intel HD Graphics chipset which will see you through standard media files but save the heavy stuff for a desktop. There wasn’t much to be said for the speakers either – if you have a decent set of headphones you’ll be sitting pretty but we wouldn’t recommend relying on the sound of this computer in a presentation.