Toshiba Portege R835-P88

Toshiba Portege R835-P88. The Toshiba Portege R835-P88 shows that an ultraportable can still kick ultrabook butt. Only 3.2 pounds including optical drive. Speedy performance. Nice screen and keyboard. Good battery life. WiDi.

The Toshiba Portege R835-P88 is the latest version of a model that's been around for years. It weighs a third of a pound more than the average ultrabook. It has an old-fashioned optical drive instead of a newfangled backlit keyboard. It also costs less than virtually all ultrabooks and runs faster than any of them—and yeah, an optical drive can still come in pretty handy sometimes. For portability, performance, and value, the Portege R835-P88 is what we said its R835-P50X predecessor was 11 months ago: the epitome of what an ultraportable should be, and an easy successor to last year's model as an Editors' Choice in the category.

Design

The R835-P88 weighs 3.2 pounds on PC Labs' scale—more than the 2.9 pounds of the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Thunderbolt) and numerous ultrabooks, though actually an ounce less than our Editors' Choice ultrabook HP Folio 13. Its magnesium alloy chassis is a handsome dark blue, accented by chrome (plastic) screen hinges.

The screen feels solid, less flexible or flimsy than that of Toshiba's 2.5-pound ultrabook models such as the Portege Z830-S8302. It's a glossy 13.3-inch panel with the usual 1,366 by 768 resolution; vertical viewing angles are narrow enough that you'll find yourself adjusting its tilt, but horizontal angles are sufficiently broad and brightness and color are fine.

The keyboard, as mentioned, isn't backlit but offers a first-class layout, with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys plus Ctrl and Delete in their proper lower left and top right corners, respectively. Its typing feel is snappy and sure, if a little shallow. The touchpad works smoothly, its twin buttons giving just the right amount of tactile feedback.

Features

On the right side of the R835-P88's chassis, next to the DVD±RW drive, are headphone and microphone jacks, a USB 3.0 port, and an Ethernet port. On the left are VGA and HDMI ports and two USB 2.0 ports, one an eSATA combo port with Toshiba's "sleep and charge" functionality for recharging handheld devices without turning the laptop on.

Bluetooth and WiMax are absent, but the R835-P88's 802.11n Wi-Fi worked fine in our tests and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) is on hand for users who want to zap audio and video to an HDTV set equipped with a Belkin or Netgear adapter. Toshiba preloads the system's spacious 640GB (550GB free out of the box), 5,400-rpm hard drive with a slew of house-brand utilities and a scanty 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security.

The diminutive speakers above the keyboard pump out pleasant enough audio, but were occasionally drowned out during our tests by the Toshiba's cooling fan—inaudible during routine productivity work, the latter grew noticeably loud during strenuous exercises such as our graphics benchmarks.

TextArticle

Posted in: Laptop,Toshiba