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—Battery, Heat, Noise
So, now for the real test. The R700 has some pretty great specs, but with the powerful Core i7 processor, how does it acquit itself versus the rest of the thin and light class with regards to battery life?
Overall, pretty well. Toshiba claims 8 hours of runtime and we managed exactly that in our ideal battery usage scenario. In our more realistic internet browsing test, the R700 hit 5.5 hours, and just under 4 hours in our HD x264 playback test. So overall, given the specs, pretty solid. I’d expect the R705 to get better battery life in both the internet and x264 use cases, but not significantly more than 8 hours when completely idle. So where you’d get around 5.5-6 hours realtime usage out of the R700 test unit we have, the lower specced R700s and the R705 are probably closer to 6-6.5 hours of real world battery life.
Toshiba’s heat-dissipating aluminum honeycomb under the palmrest does it’s job quite well, and even during benchmarking and stress testing, the palmrests don’t get hot. However, the bottom of the computer gets pretty toasty, probably due to the powerful Core i7 processor being shoehorned into such a small enclosure. And when doing anything intensive, the fans definitely make themselves heard. It’s not particularly disturbing, but I will say that it’s kind of unnatural to hear the fans cranking at max speed but not feeling the heat at all in the top half of the chassis.
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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!