Toshiba R840-10Z review

The Toshiba R840 is part of the Tecra line, these are marketed as performance business computers, and we’ve seen a few upgrades of the Tecra line over the past couple of months to keep the R840-10Z a very modern laptop with a lot of power.

What we like best

The Toshiba Tecra R840-10Z comes at the upper end of the pricing scale, so we wanted to find out if it did represent good value for money. Since this is a business laptop portability is important, when closed it is just under 2cm thick which is the benchmark between laptop and ultraportable, it also weighs 1.99Kg, which is rather heavy for such a thin machine. The inclusive optical drive however is something you don’t commonly find on such a svelte laptop so we have to applaud Toshiba’s design team for making the Tecra R840-10Z so well stocked and portable.

This laptop has a very sturdy feel and professional look to it, the numeric pad, spacious keyboard and brushed hand rest helps distinguish it from ThinkPads. It has the no nonsense lines that you’d typically find on a business computer but some uniquely Toshiba characteristics like the silver hinge supports that add tasteful bit of character to the design.

Toshiba also boast up to 9 hours of battery life on a single charge, we suggest you don’t tempt fate, especially if you intend to run some heavy going applications, but you are nevertheless given enough power with the battery to get a fair bit of work done before you have to go in search of a socket.

What we like least

Most business laptops have a couple of security features thrown in, and yet there is no fingerprint scanner, since it does have an inbuilt webcam VeriFace is an option but there is no sign of it being inclusive when you purchase the laptop.