The thinnest 10in tablet yet, but has Toshiba thrown the baby out with the bathwater?
Expert Reviews – PCs
With the deluge of ultrabooks stemming from Intel's initiative over the past few months, it's easy to forget ultraportables have been a part of the Windows PC landscape for quite some time. One of the unlikeliest sources was Toshiba; in 2010, a company that had been spending the last few years aggressively pursuing budget consumers produced a remarkably compelling ultraportable in the form of the Portege R700. We reviewed the R700 and found a lot to like, and Toshiba must have appreciated the notebook's excellent performance in both critical and commercial arenas.
Despite the steady march of progress with ultrabooks (due to get a shot in the arm very soon with Ivy Bridge), Toshiba's Portege R700 hasn't gone untouched. Toshiba refreshed it with the R835, keeping the same basic chassis but enjoying the benefits of Sandy Bridge hardware and USB 3.0 connectivity. Forced to compete in a market with ultrabooks, the R835 strengthens the R700's value proposition with models starting at just 9 and featuring full voltage mobile processors from Intel while maintaining the same portable form factor. Let's see how this ultraportable fares among it's ultrabook kin.
Toshiba has announced the arrival of the Toshiba Satellite P855 series laptop, which brings the company’s glasses-free 3D technology to its mid-price laptops for the first time.
Announced at Toshiba’s 2012 Partner Summit, with TechRadar in attendance, the laptop offers a brushed aluminium finish, with Harrman Kardon speakers, the latest Intel Series CPU, Nvidia 630 GT series graphics and it also comes with a 15.6-inch screen.
Toshiba has also remade its trackpad to free up some space. The trackpad is actually bigger as it does away with buttons and brings click-down technology instead.
Look ma, no glasses
Toshiba debuted its glasses-free 3D technology back in 2011, with the launch of the Toshiba Qosmio F750 3D laptop, which trumped Asus’ effort and came first to market with the technology.
The laptop uses a lenticular lens sheet and 3D webcam technology which tracks your eyes, which realigns the 3D for wherever your peepers are looking.
Although the Toshiba Satellite P855 series is a mid-range laptop, Tosh believes that it is powerful enough for budding movie editors and photographers.
Toshiba has also announced the Toshiba Satellite P850 series, which is the same laptop but without the 3D capabilities.
Price-wise, the Toshiba Satellite P855 series will be available from £599.
Toshiba has revealed it is has brought its glasses-free 3D technology to its Satellite range for the first time, with the the arrival of the Toshiba Satellite P855 series laptop.
The laptop was unveiled at Toshiba’s 2012 Partner Summit and although Toshiba is being a little coy on some of the specs, we do have a little bit of information about what you will see when the P855 lauches in the UK.
First up is the fact that Toshiba has decided to add thel atest Intel chip and Nvidia Nvidia 630 GT series graphics. It wouldn’t say which Intel chip but this is to be announced in due course. All of this will be housed in an aluminium brushed metal chassis.
As theToshiba Satellite P855 is glasses free, the screen on the thing is of the utmost importance. in this case, Tosh has chosen a 15.6-inch variety and this is on a screen that has a lenticular film on top of it.
This is the same technology that was last seen on the Toshiba Qosmio F750 3D laptop and the P855 comes with identical eye-tracking technology – which will help with keeping the glasses-free 3D as smooth as possible.
When it comes to the trackpad, Toshiba has opted to get rid of anything resembling a button and instead there trackpad has been made clickable.
The Toshiba Satellite P855 series is distinctly mid-range but Tosh reckons that it will be poerful enough to be used for movie editing and stills editing as well.
Sounds-wise, the laptop comes with Harmon Cardon speakers. Which you will be able to hear for yourself when the isn’t bad considering the Toshiba Satellite P855 is set to come in at around £599.
At CES this year, we got a chance to go hands on with the Excite, Toshiba's latest and greatest Android slate. To recap, it's an OMAP4 device that features a 10.1" 1280 x 800 IPS display and measures in at a downright anorexic 7.7mm thick. At the time, we were given the price points Toshiba planned to hit, but no firm details as to availability or what OS it would ship with.
Today, Toshiba announced that the Excite, formally titled the Excite 10 LE for the US market, will be available for purchase from retailers starting on March 6th, next Tuesday. Pricing is 9.99 and 9.99 for the 16GB and 32GB models respectively, as was known previously.
Since CES, the clock speed of the OMAP 4430 SoC has been raised to 1.2GHz. Unfortunately, Toshiba has decided to launch the Excite with Honeycomb, promising an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich later in the spring. We demoed the Excite at CES running ICS, and it seemed relatively stable then, so it's a bit disappointing to see the shipping device on Honeycomb.
We're on the list for an evaluation unit of the Excite, and we'll work to get the review out as soon as possible.
Recent Comments