Toshiba Portege R700: A Truly Ultraportable 13.3"
by Vivek Gowri on September 7, 2010 6:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- SSDs
- Toshiba
- Portege R700
Toshiba Portege R700—Conclusion
The Portege R700 is a great notebook, make no mistake about it. It’s extremely thin and light, one of the lightest 13.3” notebooks on the market, especially for notebooks that include an optical drive. Yes, there are myriad flaws, like the occasionally flimsy construction, the terrible disk image it’s loaded with, and the pretty woeful screen. Evaluated as a mainstream ultraportable, it’s pretty great. You get quite a bit for your dollar if you stick to the $799 R705 model available through Best Buy, with a Core i3, 4GB memory, 500GB hard drive, and WiDi. For a notebook that has an aluminum chassis, magnesium casing, a 3.2lb carrying weight, and 8 hours battery life, that’s an awesome deal. That combination of features, performance, and portability alone are good enough to make it my pick for road warriors on a budget.
But that assessment comes based on the lower price of the R705. It even holds mostly true for the lower-end R700 models. But for our $1599 test unit? It’s not that good of a deal, and the flaws which are excusable at lower price points become that much more prominent in a higher end market. Also, it comes down to the R700-S1330 simply not being worth twice as much as the R705—yes, you get bumped from a Core i3 to a far faster 2.66GHz Core i7, and also get a 128GB SSD in place of the standard 500GB mechanical hard drive, but it’s not that big of a difference considering every other thing about it is the same.
For a little bit more than the R700-S1330, you can get yourself a very nice—and more powerful—Sony VAIO Z series ($1749 on Newegg currently, even less than that if you’re willing to search). That gets you a Core i5-520M, an Optimus-enabled Nvidia GT 330M, two 64GB SSDs in RAID 0, a 3.04lb chassis, and a stunning 13.1” high-res screen. I don’t have numbers for the display, but having seen it in person, it’s absolutely amazing. It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder how Toshiba could justify charging $1599 for this.
But again, as I said before, the problem is not with the R700 series itself. It’s a well designed, fantastically portable notebook, and in R705-trim, quite a good value to boot. However, this particular configuration is simply not worth the money Toshiba is charging for it. You’d be better off spending a bit more for a better computer or just getting a lower-end R700 model and dropping an SSD into it on your own (along with wiping the factory Win7 install).
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OCedHrt - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
Would like to see a proper review of the Sony Z. Even though I already have one, I feel this one deserves a proper review.Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 - link
I'm sure we'd love to (Vivek would probably love a change of pace since he handles our ultraportables, etc.), but we can't review what we don't have and aren't offered, and Sony's very cagey about review hardware. :(cheinonen - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
My wife just got that Vaio Z model and I really must say that the screen is drop dead gorgeous. There might be a better screen out there, but I've not seen it if there is one. It's also just a ridiculously fast machine and what I would get if I could afford it (work paid for her's). It's also worth noting that is has a resolution of 1600x900 or 1920x1080, not the 1366x768 of the Toshiba.Osamede - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
I have the Sony Z12 myself and I like it a lot. It's the best screen I've seen on a PC laptop so far.That said the screen on the 13" and 15" MacBook Pro are better than the one on the Z. A bit more glossy but actually also sharper and clearer. You put a powerpoint presentation up on those and the clarity is great, the color "pops" - its phenonmenal. Even on plain old text slides.
On the Z my powerpoints look good, but not that extra good like those Macbooks.
IvanAndreevich - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
I really appreciate it! You are giving us power users who own a desktop IPS screen a voice. With the demise of the AFFS screens from Lenovo we have almost nothing left :( I can't stand TN trash.MrSpadge - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 - link
Agreed!Taurus229 - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
Nice! Make it a giveaway! Would love to have one!jrocks84 - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
Having had first hand experience with many Toshiba R500 and R600's, I can say that those were the flimsiest computers I have ever seen. The screen, the chasis, the... well everything had massive amounts of flex. There were always imprints of the keyboard on the screen too that were near impossible to remove. And they keyboard also sucked.Due to the lack of build quality in the R500 and R600 series, the company I work for lost all confidence in Toshiba and has since started using HP 8440p's and 2540p's. When I heard they had switched to HP, I was quite surprised because of their crappy consumer laptops, but those things were solid and surprisingly had good keyboards too.
On the software side, I have a friend who owns a Toshiba laptop and it too came loaded with all that crapware. Most of the stuff is even Toshiba branded crapware, so it's not like they get money for most of it...
SteelCity1981 - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
That's the first thing i do when i get a laptop is reformat it with a Windows 7 CD, because every namebrand pc now od days just love to add lots of bloatware onto their systemsMETALMORPHASIS - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
Daughter has one from 4 or 5 years ago,runs great. Let your pocketbook be your guide as always!