Toshiba Portégé Z830 – Let's Get Down To Business (Updated)

Introduction and Physique

The Business Ultrabook

While most of 2011 was all about tablets of both the iOS and Android variety, the last couple months of the year saw the introduction of what appears to be the next step in mobile computing -- Ultrabooks. Intel’s USD 300 million-dollar initative to create the next generation of uncompromised ultraportables has been heeded by most of the major PC vendors, with Ultrabooks from big names such as ASUS, Acer, and Lenovo promptly coming out of the woodwork. This time around it is Toshiba’s turn, with the Portégé Z830.

Compared with the other Ultrabooks that have been released, Toshiba’s Portégé Z830 is by far the lightest, weighing in at an unbelievably light 1.12kg. Granted, the ASUS Zenbook UX21 weighs 1.1Kg, but it has a smaller 11.6-inch display, while the Portégé Z830 has a more generous 13.3-incher. Props go to Toshiba for this amazing feat of engineering, which they achieved with a mix of magnesium alloy and aluminium in a mass-saving honeycomb structure.

Since it is marketed by Toshiba as a business notebook, its over-all design has a decidedly more sedate and business-minded as compared to the silver brushed-aluminium motifs of its rivals, going instead with a matte grey finish and sporting a more angular, rakish form. It also has a fingerprint reader like the Toshiba Tecra R840 and sports the utilitarian-looking Toshiba standard notebook keyboard.

While it may be the lightest 13.3-inch Ultrabook so far, it still isn’t the thinnest. Even at (an already impressive) 8.3mm at its thinnest point, it still comes in second to the ASUS Zenbook. However, the extra bit of space has allowed Toshiba to shoehorn an SD card reader and a good number of full-sized ports into the Z830’s chassis, including USB 3.0, HDMI, and even an old-fashioned VGA port. Other Ultrabooks have resorted to offering smaller versions of the ports or omitting some of them completely. All in all, we are really impressed at how Toshiba has put together their first Ultrabook, fitting in all the necessities of business notebook into a ultralight, ultra-slim, and stately form.