Toshiba Portege R835: Less Ultra, More Notebook
by Dustin Sklavos on March 30, 2012 11:35 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Intel
- Toshiba
- Sandy Bridge
- Notebooks
Another Low Quality TN Panel
I recently enjoyed a meeting with Toshiba reps to discuss their upcoming back-to-school lineup. When asked what my biggest pet peeves were when reviewing notebooks and what bothered me the most, it'll surprise no one to say lousy monitor quality was at the top of my list.
Each time I write about a notebook with a crappy display, more and more people get irate in comments, and many of you simply write off the review. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that hardware like this is still what's prevalent in the marketplace, and that Joe Consumer either doesn't seem to care that much about screen quality or just doesn't know to ask for better. That tide may change with the rise of tablets, but there are people who see text on a high resolution screen, see that it's "too small," and just assume the screen quality is poor. So this problem persists.
Writers here have the unique luxury of being able to interact directly with representatives from the vendors producing these notebooks, and "stop giving us crappy panels" is a banner we continue to wave. In the meantime, though, understand that if we stopped reviewing notebooks with bad panels we'd be down to maybe one notebook review a month, and then you'd just wonder why we're not reviewing laptops.
With that spiel out of the way, it should come as no surprise that the Toshiba Portege R835's display is, once again, pretty bad.
There you have it. Apart from the Vaio Z2's stunning 1080p display (still TN and still suffering from middling viewing angles), what you see above is what the Toshiba Portege R835 has to compete with. It's a broad, industry wide issue. The R835's display isn't really any better or worse than anything else out there that doesn't command a price premium. The 1366x768 display resolution isn't necessarily that bad on a 13.3" screen, but the dire viewing angles, poor contrast, and poor color will always be.
When Apple can stuff a 2048x1536 LCD into the new iPad 2012 for just $499, it's obvious that all we really need is more volume on quality displays and pricing can come down. For that matter, we're not even looking at crazy prices for a decent bump in display quality right now. The stock 1366x768 display in the R835 can be purchased online for just $75, whereas the nicer panel in the Samsung Series 9 appears to go for around $90. Assuming that's the actual panel I've seen in a Series 9 laptop (it's far better than the low-contrast TN panels found elsewhere), $15 extra is a pittance for the improved contrast and brightness. Or how about Apple's vaunted MacBook Air 1440x900 LCD: $100 for a replacement, just $25 more than what we currently have foisted on us.
What it would take is for ASUS, Acer, Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc. to simply start shipping better quality displays for a small bump in price, and we could get rid of the "save $15 for garbage quality" mentality that we're currently living with. Many consumers may not immediately recognize the difference, but the race to the bottom is not doing them any real favors. It's another reason we're frequently inclined to recommend business laptops that cost several hundred dollars more, as the added cost comes with often overlooked items like superior build quality—or in other words, you get what you pay for.
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TegiriNenashi - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
AmenSunburn74 - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
Honestly dude, I don't care. My laptop is for browsing and for word documents. I can get my pixel fixation at home. 1366x768 is fine up until around 14inch screens for most laptops.snuuggles - Monday, April 2, 2012 - link
Glad you have a toy. Some people have to get actual work done, so they need more than 768 height.arthur449 - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
I just helped my sister choose a laptop to replace her 7 year old Dell laptop.Based on my discussion with her for what she needs, I established the following minimum requirements:
1) 8GB memory--Because some people like to leave, at a minimum, 5 weeks of browser tabs open.
2) 7200rpm HDD--7200rpm drives are at least better than the 5400rpm garbage they're cramming in every laptop these days.
3) >1366x768 screen resolution.
4) <$750
Surprisingly, that eliminated HP entirely (my go-to brand, as popular brands tend to have problems that can be Google'd), and almost everything on Newegg. This led me to the following revelation: despite all the competition in the inexpensive laptop market currently, there's really not much in the way of meaningful choices for consumers. >95% of $400 - 700 laptops are going to have 720p, 5400rpm, or 4GB (or mismatched 6GB) of memory.
I'd love to have a balanced model to recommend for friends and family.
(We eventually settled on the Dell Inspiron 17R.)
Impulses - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
The display is really your biggest limiting factor... The state of displays on laptops these days is a very sad affair. The $500-800 market is way over saturated and anyone that actually wants to pay more for some premium features doesn't really have a lot of choices without some massive compromises (or having to spend 3x as much).That is why Anandtech reviews a lot of high end systems... There's very little interest amongst the reader base in having them highlight the minimal differences amongst all the budget models (this is addressed at the guy campaigning for more cheap laptop reviews).
If you fall in that camp just read one of their yearly laptop round-up or recommendation articles, they do a good job steering you in the right direction... Or go read PC World, Laptop Mag, etc.
montanio - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
I was in the market recently for a laptop replacement for my parents. I eventually found some deals on a VAIO SE (15.5") that are 1080p with very good viewing angles for $800 (Amazon) which is a good deal considering it doesn't require shipping/tax. Official website has similar configurations but tax makes it unattractive. I added a Samsung 830 128gb to it, bought a USB3 enclosure for the old 640gb drive, and added a 4GB stick for less than $200. I added a external sheet battery to double the battery life as well since that was one of the main selling points for the series ($90) Grand total is <1100, which isn't bad considering the quality of the screen is excellent. Weight is <2.0kg without the sheet battery, pretty slim, feels a bit fragile though. Its a bit over what you said, but laptop markets are all about compromises, typically with more severe trade offs the more "cheap" you box yourself into. Sometimes its worth the little bit more you put out, the point of diminishing returns depends on the brand/model.Screen resolution is pretty important... I've always hated working on my 13" screen's 1366x768... Typing is okay, but if you need to reference things for example from a webpage, or have to edit your work later (especially documents with graphics) then its really a pain. 900p screens seem very attractive though, unfortunately the quality on them aren't exactly the best from looking at current laptops.
arthur449 - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
Both of your suggestions are helpful, and if I were buying the laptop for myself, I'd definitely be adding the memory and replacing the HDD with an SSD myself (as vendor markup on those items is amusing). And if it were mine, I wouldn't mind the additional complexity of having a discrete/switchable GPU and a 15" or 14" screen, as this would be my secondary or tertiary computing system.Unfortunately, if I end up doing that for her (she lives out of state) and something goes wrong with the rest of the hardware during the warranty period: we're in a difficult situation.
I loved being able to instantly recommend the HP dm1z last year when people were asking about a recommendation for a cheap and small travel laptop. Great battery life, superior keyboard, and it came with a comparatively zippy 320GB 7200rpm hard drive. There's no magic bullet system available like that for families with one (laptop) computer that only needs to occasionally move from room to room depending on whether they're studying, researching, or writing lengthy dissertations in comments sections of Anandtech.com
Gunbuster - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
1366x768 screen; stopped reading.I'm so sick of these low res screens.
quitesufficient - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
As soon as I see 1366x768snuuggles - Sunday, April 1, 2012 - link
+1That is quite literally what I just did.