Toshiba Portege R700: A Truly Ultraportable 13.3"
by Vivek Gowri on September 7, 2010 6:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- SSDs
- Toshiba
- Portege R700
Toshiba Portege R700—Performance
In all seriousness, the first step with this computer should be to do a clean install of Windows. With most other computers, it’s fairly easy to just remove the few pieces of pre-installed crapware--the Nortons and McAfees of the world. But with Toshiba, there’s about 25 mostly useless utilities that don’t need to be there. Online backup, a bunch of media apps, updater services, etc.
One of the few utilities that was quite useful was the function key mapping app. Once you press the Fn key, it brings up a listing of what the function key triggers are, so it’s easy to find. For someone who switches from notebook to notebook on a day to day basis, that was a godsend—you don’t need to hunt for each different F-key to change the brightness or volume.
Now, with that out of the way, we can get to the important stuff—benchmarks! With the SSD and the Core i7, we expected the R700 to fly, and that it most certainly did. The CPU benchmarks were on par with the HP 8440w workstation that we had in for review last month (which uses the same Core i7-620M processor). For a thin and light, especially one under 3.5lbs, our R700 test unit is powerful, easily one of the fastest of the breed. The lesser models with the Core i3 processor will probably perform similarly to the ASUS U33Jc except without quite as much gaming prowess. For the $799 R705, that’s pretty respectable given the aluminum construction and super-light form factor.
As a sidenote here, I must add that Peacekeeper results couldn’t be taken, due to a bug with the Toshiba fingerprint reader authentication utility that causes Firefox to crash. Did I mention that you should clean install before doing anything else? I’m personally not a huge fan of fingerprint readers in general, so I’d gladly sacrifice the scanner to use Firefox. Though if you’re a Chrome or Opera fan (or an IE fan, if such a creature exists) I suppose this doesn’t really matter.
For the guys that like looking at Futuremark results, here you go. The Intel HD graphics chip actually holds its own fairly well against most of the other IGPs out there, at least in 3DMark. The PCMark results are dramatically increased with the SSD, and in some sense are artificially boosted by the number of hard drive access tests in the benchmark. Oddly enough, the SSD doesn’t seem too much faster in daily use other than in application launching. Maybe because the Toshiba SSD in the R700 isn’t as quick as the Intel X18M I had in the Adamo, but it just doesn’t feel as zippy as other SSD-based systems do. Or maybe that’s just Toshiba’s battalion of utilities making themselves felt in full force. Really, it needs a clean install to bring out the best performance, I can’t emphasize that enough.
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OCedHrt - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
Would like to see a proper review of the Sony Z. Even though I already have one, I feel this one deserves a proper review.Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 - link
I'm sure we'd love to (Vivek would probably love a change of pace since he handles our ultraportables, etc.), but we can't review what we don't have and aren't offered, and Sony's very cagey about review hardware. :(cheinonen - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
My wife just got that Vaio Z model and I really must say that the screen is drop dead gorgeous. There might be a better screen out there, but I've not seen it if there is one. It's also just a ridiculously fast machine and what I would get if I could afford it (work paid for her's). It's also worth noting that is has a resolution of 1600x900 or 1920x1080, not the 1366x768 of the Toshiba.Osamede - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
I have the Sony Z12 myself and I like it a lot. It's the best screen I've seen on a PC laptop so far.That said the screen on the 13" and 15" MacBook Pro are better than the one on the Z. A bit more glossy but actually also sharper and clearer. You put a powerpoint presentation up on those and the clarity is great, the color "pops" - its phenonmenal. Even on plain old text slides.
On the Z my powerpoints look good, but not that extra good like those Macbooks.
IvanAndreevich - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
I really appreciate it! You are giving us power users who own a desktop IPS screen a voice. With the demise of the AFFS screens from Lenovo we have almost nothing left :( I can't stand TN trash.MrSpadge - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 - link
Agreed!Taurus229 - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
Nice! Make it a giveaway! Would love to have one!jrocks84 - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
Having had first hand experience with many Toshiba R500 and R600's, I can say that those were the flimsiest computers I have ever seen. The screen, the chasis, the... well everything had massive amounts of flex. There were always imprints of the keyboard on the screen too that were near impossible to remove. And they keyboard also sucked.Due to the lack of build quality in the R500 and R600 series, the company I work for lost all confidence in Toshiba and has since started using HP 8440p's and 2540p's. When I heard they had switched to HP, I was quite surprised because of their crappy consumer laptops, but those things were solid and surprisingly had good keyboards too.
On the software side, I have a friend who owns a Toshiba laptop and it too came loaded with all that crapware. Most of the stuff is even Toshiba branded crapware, so it's not like they get money for most of it...
SteelCity1981 - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
That's the first thing i do when i get a laptop is reformat it with a Windows 7 CD, because every namebrand pc now od days just love to add lots of bloatware onto their systemsMETALMORPHASIS - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
Daughter has one from 4 or 5 years ago,runs great. Let your pocketbook be your guide as always!