Toshiba KIRAbook Ultrabook Review
by Dustin Sklavos on May 9, 2013 12:01 AM ESTConclusion: So Very Close
Without having personally tested any of the ASUS Zenbooks, which at least around the "office" (disclaimer: there is not an office) are generally regarded as among the best ultrabooks on the market, I can't really speak too greatly on how the Toshiba KIRAbook measures up competitively. I can definitely tell you how the user experience measures up to the myriad non-ASUS ultrabooks I have tested, though.
The essential ingredients to any PC computing experience are the keyboard, the mouse/touchpad, the display, and responsiveness. Other factors only become relevant when they're extremes; an unusually fast GPU or CPU, or unusually high thermals or noise. When it comes to the user experience, Toshiba's KIRAbook offers one of the best you can have with an ultrabook. That needs to account for the slightly poorer keyboard quality stemming from the lack of thickness as well as the propensity for clickpads, both of which are compromises made when switching to an ultrabook. Yet Toshiba is able to eke halfway decent depth out of the keys, and the clickpad is serviceable if not mindblowing.
The big wins are the responsiveness and the display. Toshiba's SSD and healthy 8GB of RAM keep the KIRAbook running very smoothly, and the lack of bloatware is immensely appreciated. Display quality is, as I mentioned, absolutely stunning. There was also the pleasant surprise of the speakers, which are really as good as ultrabook speakers are going to get.
So why isn't the KIRAbook a slam dunk? The biggest reason is actually the price, because a starting price of $1,599 forces the KIRAbook into a class it has a much harder time competing in. If the entry level KIRAbook manages to appear in retail at $1,399 or even $1,299, it'll be a wicked deal and easily recommended. But starting at $1,599 and only going north produces some problems and throws design issues into sharp relief.
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First, the lid flex is inexcusable at this price point, full stop. It's not horrible, but it's unnerving enough when you're dealing with a display as beautiful as this one is. The magnesium alloy that Toshiba is using also tragically doesn't look that great; it's not unattractive, but it looks like high rent plastic, which we can all agree wasn't what Toshiba was going for. Whether or not it's more sturdy than the aluminum alloy Apple uses (as Toshiba claims) becomes less relevant because it doesn't actually look better.
As far as the specs go, Toshiba did an admirable job and then inexplicably cheaped out with a vengeance on the wireless connectivity. Whether or not 5GHz connectivity is important may depend on the individual, but anyone spending $1.6k on a notebook probably shouldn't be using a cheap, $50 2.4GHz router and dealing with the interference of everyone else's cheap 2.4GHz routers. My smartphone does 5GHz, and a genuine dual band wireless card from Intel only adds $10 or so to the BoM, if that, so there's no excuse for this.
I also have a hard time recommending any model of the KIRAbook but the entry one. The $1,799 one is a joke; you're paying $200 just to add touchscreen capability to the KIRAbook. At least the $1,999 model (as reviewed) offers a faster processor and the expanded feature set of Windows 8 Pro, but the $200 price jumps are tough to justify.
Finally, the biggest fly in the ointment may actually be the impending launch of Haswell. If you pre-order and buy the first generation KIRAbook you're probably going to regret it in a few months; Haswell promises roughly 10% better IPC, and the low voltage models will enjoy a 2W lower TDP. It's tough to argue with better performance and less heat (and thus less noise), and hopefully in the refresh Toshiba will update the wireless card to something from the last year or two.
Is the KIRAbook a bad product? No, not at all, quite the opposite actually. But it's a good product that has a questionable price and poor timing, and that's ultimately where things go south. Price wise it's actually competitive with the PC market, but has a much rougher time competing with the 13.3" Apple Retina MacBook Pro, which actually starts at $100 less. That's the hard lesson PC manufacturers still haven't quite learned: you don't compete with Apple. You can make something that's ostensibly better than an Apple product, but if it's running Windows, you need to charge less for it. The best case scenario for the first generation KIRAbook is a fire sale after the Haswell-based refresh materializes, and that's a verdict I'm not at all happy to deliver for such a promising product.
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augustofretes - Sunday, May 12, 2013 - link
You should really go on and review the Chromebook Pixel, especially with I/O around the corner.Sabresiberian - Sunday, May 12, 2013 - link
Kudos to Toshiba for stepping up the quality of the screen, but frankly I'm not buying a screen that small that is 16:9. The smallest acceptable size for that dimension, for me, is a 27".Apple still wins. I'm sorry, I'm not an Apple guy, I'm a PC guy, but I wouldn't shoot myself in the proverbial foot by buying one of these over an Apple MacBook just because I prefer the OS. OS X just isn't that bad - it's actually good, it's just not as good, imo, as Windows. And, there is no "price premium" downside here, either, in buying the MacBook. (Regardless of what you think about Apple's prices, their support for consumer level products is second to none. Of course, considering their profit margins, it should be.)
crinosil - Monday, May 13, 2013 - link
What I don't get is why be excited about this...I'm a longtime PC user (writing this on my home gown Windows 8 Pro tower PC as a matter of fact)... but I just bought a Macbook Pro 13 Retina for $1799.00 ... It included an i7 CPU running at 2.9/3.6mhz, 8GB DD3 1600 RAM, 512GB SSD, etc, etc....and only about half a pound heavier.... and by the way....I installed Parallels on it and am running Windows 7 on it in a virtual machine. Could have dual booted into Windows with Boot Camp but I find I actually like OSX.... So with this available... from an American company (yes I know they all build them in China)...why would anyone buy this this Toshiba??ShieTar - Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - link
Did you know that 96% of the worlds population, owning 85% of the worlds money, are not American and thus do not care at all if a product was designed by an American company? And that even of the 4% who live in the US, a large percentage is not actually affected by that kind of nationalist concepts?The 1599$ is a proposed price, the market will quickly figure out what the majority of customers consider to be the worth of the unit. As Dustin wrote in the article, you can expect to see it sell for 100$-200$ less than the Toshiba proposal if you just look around a bit. Add to that the fact, that the Toshiba already includes the Windows-License, which you need to buy separately if you want to dual-boot or parallel Windows on the Mac, and the Toshiba is a very credible and reasonably priced competitor for everybody who wants to use Windows.
crinosil - Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - link
But $1599 is for the lowest spec-ed version... to get closer to my Mac Pro they'll want $1999 and that's we a slower CPU and 256GB SSD... and single band WiFi.... the Window's Licence is a valid point...however, I had about 6 of them lying around so not an issue for me.... Still I also found Windows 7 Home Premium on Ebay for about $65-$75 dollars from reputable sellers.... Still not sure the value here.... and as to world not caring about American designed products....the queues outside the various stores around the world every time Apple releases some nick nack would seem to counter that opinion...ShieTar - Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - link
Nah, I've lived in 5 different cities over the last 20 years and visited about 30 more, and never seen an Apple-Shop anywhere (except on TV). I'm not entirely convinced they exist anywhere outside the US and France. Almost everybody around here buys his electronics either through the Net or from the big markets like Media Markt or Saturn. And Apple is striving to get to half the market shares it holds in the US and France.Made in America is just not considered a positive aspect on consumer electronics by anybody in Europe. It's not nearly as negative as it is for cars, it just doesn't matter to anybody if a phone or PC is American, European, Japanese or Korean.
sxr7171 - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
This one has one hardware feature that Apple does not have. It has Macbook Air weight packing a Macbook Pro Retina quality display. Apple hasn't done that yet. Maybe the new 2013 Macbook Air machines will have 2560x1440 displays.But long story short there are people who would find in this something Apple doesn't yet offer.
relativityboy - Monday, May 13, 2013 - link
As soon as an updated Kirabook (Haswell) comes out I hope you guys do a performance review.sxr7171 - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
Having recently switched back to Windows for hardware reasons (Nec Lavie Z - lighter than any Macbook), I agree simply based on that touchpad. Apple touch technology is miles ahead of anything Ive used on Windows. I'm still playing with these synaptics settings and I'm not anywhere close to the "out of the box" feel of a Mac's touchpad feel. I really like the Thinkpad trackpoint on Windows but no touchpad can compare to the Apple touchpad.Also this OS is confused. Does it belong a laptop or tablet, I can't figure it out. It generally sends you back to the old Windows settings screen for any major settings changes. Apps launch off the start screen into desktop mode anyway. The RT mode has the same apps optimized for touch input.
Also Windows still hasn't improved the overall amount of effort it takes set the machine up the way that one likes. A Mac out of the box takes about an hour to get to how I like it. A Windows machine takes 6-8 hours if not more. Some things are terrible like setting up a Wi-Fi priority list requires you to get into terminal. The time needed to research and implement things is much higher on Windows. I've had to run some Google Searches for Mac also but far fewer and the it rarely if ever necessitates going into Terminal.
All in all I couldn't agree more that competitors of Apple have to undercut Apple on price. The only exception would be if they have very compelling hardware features that Apple doesn't have and those are few and far between.
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