Stuck upon the Toshiba Portege R705’s magnesium amalgamate palmrest is the glossy plaque celebrating the company’s 25 years of “laptop creation.” Now, we’re a initial to hatred upon the plethora of decals which decorate Windows laptops these days — and this a single also deserves to be peeled off as well as tossed into the garbage — though the sticker actually happens to speaks volumes about because a $800 R705 is such a large understanding. We guarantee to keep a story lesson short, but for years the Portege array has been Toshiba’s top-of-the-line ultraportable code, featuring a latest CPUs whilst customarily environment the standard for portability, and always been trustworthy to severely hefty price tags. Take the Portege R500, that was a worlds lightest laptop in 2007, and price dual grand.

The Portege R705, which is disdainful to Best Buy for right away, changes that formula. And in jubilee of a large two-five, Toshiba’s put out a 3.2-pound, Core i3-powered stunner that’s less than half the cost of past Porteges. Oh, as well as did you mention it has an on-board optical drive, 500GB of storage, Intel’s wireless arrangement record as well as promises 8.5 hours of battery life? We won’t kick around a bush — it’s impressive. But did Toshiba maintain a same Portege standards when formulating the R705, or did it cut quality along with the dollar signs? That’s been the categorical subject, as well as we’ll answer it and others after a break in our full review. Toshiba Portege R705 examination

Look and feel

The R705 looks a lot similar to past Porteges, as well as even yet it’ll be found upon a shelves of Best Buy it still looks similar to the laptop for a business veteran. While the dark army colored (it looks black in some lighting) lid isn’t glossy, a matte, magnesium amalgamate aspect still picks up fingerprints and will need the occasional rubdown. The chrome shade hinges supplement a little something to the pattern, as well as they’re additionally quite stout – unlike the Acer TimelineX 4820T, a shade doesn’t stagger during all. Speaking of build quality, Toshiba’s come up with the brand-new honeycomb structure underneath the base and palmrest to give a entire complement some added rigidly. That fear about the R705 feeling cheap fast disappeared — it’s essentially pretty remarkable how solid the complement feels for its size as well as weight.

Perhaps the R705’s resigned aesthetic is Toshiba’s approach of not detracting courtesy from its insanely thin and light framework. The complement measures an in. during its thickest indicate as well as weighs an unimaginable 3.2 pounds. Carrying this machine home for the night done our 4.5-pound Macbook Pro feel like the bag of bricks. Toshiba essentially claims it’s the lightest 13.3-inch laptop in a universe with an optical drive – as well as we can’t seem to find any information which proves differently. In further to that optical drive, a chassis additionally makes room for two USB ports, an USB/eSATA, Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, headphone and microphone jacks. There’s also an SD card reader container built into the right side of a palmrest.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

Like each alternative laptop we’ve reviewed in a final couple of months, a R705 has the chiclet keyboard. The black, squared-off keys are a lot similar to those upon Toshiba’s Mini NB305 netbook in conditions of their Technia rise, and they’re likewise utterly tiny. We’re only not certain why they’re shrunken – there’s certainty sufficient space on the deck to fit larger keys — though there’s more room in in between any a single, so maybe that’s the idea. This may end up bothering some with incomparable fingers, but for what it’s worth, we typed this review quite comfortably. By the way, a R705 is really a sort of laptop you’d expect to have a backlit set of keys, though it’s just not an option. Believe us, you looked for the switch some-more mostly than we’d similar to to mention.

The plastic touchpad is decently sized and comfortable for pulling around a cursor. The desk pad does await multitouch gestures, as well as whilst pinch-to-zoom worked fine, two-finger scrolling failed more mostly than not and the right side doesn’t function as the corkscrew frame. Yep, you were forced to corkscrew a complete length of Engadget the good old fashioned approach. There’s dual dedicated left as well as right mouse buttons, though you instruct they were lifted a bit more.

Usually this is where we’d spend some time criticizing Toshiba preference of a super silken screen, though we’re about to change our balance. The 13.3-inch, 1366×768-resolution arrangement is silken, though far less glossy than those we’ve seen upon laptops newly — quite the worst offenders from Sony and Acer. We’d contend it’s essentially got the perfect volume of gloss for a laptop similar to this, not to discuss it’s copiousness splendid and colors appeared quite crisp. Still, a observation angles are disappointing. We could see a shade while sitting to a side of it, but sloping it caused colors to distort. The dual tiny speakers on top of a keyboard were tinny, but were fine for sharing the greeting to the dual complete rainbow on YouTube with a crony sitting close by.

Intel Wireless Display opening

We really didn’t end up watching most video upon a 13.3-inch arrangement itself given the R705 boasts Intel’s Wireless Display technology, otherwise well known as WiDi. Unlike a Toshiba Satellite E205, it doesn’t come with a $100 Netgear Push2TV, which is the other key part indispensable to wirelessly beam video to a large shade. It’s the bummer that a box isn’t included, though if you do happen to hook your mechanism up to your TV to watch videos or listen to song we’d suggest adding it at checkout. As you referred to in the review of a E205, the whole thing couldn’t be simpler to set up. There’s still a two second delay upon the TV, but it doesn’t have much disproportion if you’re only watching some video. In further, with the recent WiDi firmware update, you can magnify a desktop – you actually wrote most of this examination upon the laptop shade whilst iTunes was open upon the 40-inch HDTV. We’ll get to the graphics in a bit, but a streaming episode of Mad Men as well as the local 1080p record played uniformly on the big screen.

Performance and battery life

Performance-wise, a R705 was really allied to the series of Core i3 laptops we’ve reviewed newly. Actually, only similar to the Acer TimelineX 4820T and a Sony EC Series, it’s configured with a 2.26GHz Core i3-350M and 4GB of RAM. It kept up with the everyday slight of essay in Microsoft Word, checking the Twitter feed in TweetDeck, surfing a web in Firefox, as well as chatting through Trillian. Watching the DVD with those programs open in the background was additionally a breeze. For those that demand some-more energy, the Toshiba R700 has the same framework, but will be configurable on Toshiba’s site with Core i5 / i7 CPUs as well as with solid state drive options. Our unit had the 500GB tough drive with Windows 7 Home Premium. The hard drive accelerometer is the good safety addition, but it’s rather than sensitive, so you’ll substantially want to disable the alerts.

The R705 relies on Intel’s integrated HD graphics, as well as though we’ve been meditative a appurtenance would be a undiluted claimant for NVIDIA’s Optimus, unfortunately for right away we’ve nonetheless to see any laptops with the dual technologies (though, NVIDIA claims they can live in peace. Regardless, a integrated option was excellent for personification behind high-def YouTube videos and unchanging flash video upon Hulu as well as Amazon, but it won’t prove those which want to play some high resolution games.

 PCMarkVantage 3DMark06
 Battery Life 

Toshiba Portege R705 (Intel Core i3-350M) 5024 1759 4:25 

Acer TimelineX 4820T (Intel Core i3-350M) 4926 1724 5:04 

Dell Vostro V13 (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300) 2687 556 2:39 

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 (Core 2 Duo SU7300) N/A 905 5:12 

ASUS U30Jc (Core i3-350M, NVIDIA) 4841 1739/3686 4:10 

ASUS UL50Vf (Core 2 Duo SU7300) 3724 827/3438 6:10 

One of the major – as well as honestly a single of the only — concerns about a R705 has to do with the warm temperatures. Toshiba has worked on the new Airflow cooling technology that pulls fresh air from a air blower upon a bottom left of a system, and then directs a comfortable air out the left opening. It’s a cold thought (oh approbation, joke dictated, though the left edge of the laptop does turn incredibly warm during CPU-intensive tasks like personification Flash content — as well as when you watched an part of Mad Men a bottom of the complement became quite warm as well. We’d say a heat on a R705 was worse than which upon a TimelineX 4820T, essentially. However, during our normal bland usage — surfing the web, chatting, listening to music — we weren’t bothered by the feverishness even when you had the machine on our path.

Toshiba’s promised 8.5 hours of battery life seemed utterly impractical to us, as well as in being it was actually about half of which. The R750’s 66Wh six-cell battery lasted 4 hours and 25 minutes upon our video outline test, which loops the same standard definition video with shade brightness set during 65 percent. That’s really comparable to a TimelineX 4820T, as well as in the bland use with WiFi upon as well as lightness during 85 percent you squeezed about five hours out. It’s a decent runtime, but it’s not going to final a flight from New York to London.

It was the service to boot up a R705 and find a desktop probably mark free – a small Recycle Bin icon in the tip left dilemma was no worry. However, Toshiba still loads up the ultraportable with a little combined software, together with the Bulletin Board and webcam programs. Also, since a system is the special to Best Buy, it comes with Best Buy’s own program installer. Blech.

Wrap-up

Remind us to appreciate Toshiba for celebrating the 25th year in the laptop commercial operation with a R705. Despite some feverishness issues, a $800 Portege R705 was simply considerable. Flat out, consumers haven’t been able to get such a feature-packed ultraportable during such an affordable price until now, and a cheaper cost tab doesn’t outcome in a shoddy setup as you approaching it might. If you’re looking for the skinny and light 13-inch laptop under $900, the R705 beats all the others upon a marketplace – as well as that’s not something you contend often. Hey, Toshiba, how do you feel about celebrating each birthday this way?