Overview and specs
Windows 8 and its emphasis on touchscreens has shaken up the laptop market, with hybrids and convertibles now as commonplace as ultrabooks and traditional notebooks. The Toshiba Satellite W30t-A-101 is the latest hybrid machine to arrive at the TechRadar Lab, and it uses an unusual design.
Rather than using the kind of 180° hinge that Lenovo has employed on various Yoga devices or opt for a Sony-style sliding mechanism, Toshiba has gone down the detachable route: the screen can be attached to the base and used as a standard laptop, or removed entirely and function as a tablet.
Toshiba has outfitted the W30t with an Intel Haswell Core i3 processor which comes with one of Intel’s new integrated graphics cores, and there’s also a 12.5in IPS display, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard disk. In an unusual move, Toshiba has crammed the components behind the screen, along with the W30t’s primary battery – the base only houses the keyboard, some ports and a secondary power pack. No other machine mentioned here has this feature.
The W30t will set you back £630, which puts it towards the more affordable end of the growing hybrid market: the Sony VAIO Duo 13 and its hinged mechanism costs upwards of £1,200, the business-like Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga costs around £1,000, and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 2, which pairs its tablet with a fabric-based keyboard, costs £800.
The Toshiba costs a little more than the £550 Lenovo Yoga 11S, which is clad in orange metal and aimed squarely at consumers, and at the cheaper end of the field is the Asus Transformer Book T100, which uses a similar separation mechanism – but costs just £330.
If the £630 model we’ve reviewed here is a little too expensive, then Toshiba has one other model available. It’s the W30t-A-100, and it shares its screen and chassis with the system we’ve reviewed here. The big difference comes under the hood, where Toshiba has fitted AMD hardware. The A4-1200 is a modest mobile processor with two cores clocked to 1GHz, and it’s got Radeon HD 8180 graphics.
While that’s enough to run Windows, it won’t be able to match the Haswell hardware inside our review sample in either applications or games – but, on the plus side, its £550 price is significantly cheaper.
Specifications
It’s vital for any type of laptop to have a good screen, which is why Toshiba has installed an IPS panel inside the W30t. That’s usually a guarantee of quality – almost all top laptops include this type of panel – but elsewhere the Toshiba’s panel gives away the W30t’s mid-range status. Its 1,366 x 768 resolution, for instance, matches the resolution of the Lenovo Yoga 11S and the Asus Transformer Book T100, but it can’t compete with the pixels offered by the Full HD panels on the Sony VAIO Duo 13 and the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga.
Power is provided by Intel’s Core i3-4020Y. It’s designated as a mid-range chip, and it uses the latest Haswell architecture, but the ‘Y’ suffix is important – it means this is an ultra-low-power part. That means a modest clock speed of 1.5GHz, no Turbo Boost, and only two Hyper-Threaded cores.
The integrated graphics chip has been cut back, too: rather than the HD Graphics 4600 GPU included on full-fat Haswell chips, the Toshiba’s processor has HD Graphics 4200. Both cores have 20 stream processors, but the difference comes in clock speeds – HD Graphics 4600 hits a maximum of 1,350MHz, depending on the processor, but HD Graphics 4200 is reined in to 850MHz.
It’s not all bad news, though: this ultra-low-power part has a TDP of just 11.5W, which is the lowest of any Haswell chip – and should help ensure lengthy battery life.
Storage space
The rest of the specification matches up with our mid-range expectations, with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard disk. The latter component provides plenty of space, but other machines have more impressive storage: every other machine we’ve mentioned in this review has an SSD.
The Toshiba’s Intel-made wireless chip is dual-band, and there’s Bluetooth 4.0, but there’s no Gigabit Ethernet on-board or in an adapter. The port selection is found wanting elsewhere, too; there’s only one USB 3 port, on the base. Elsewhere, there’s a micro-USB port, microSD card slot, micro-HDMI connector and a headphone jack.
It’s all wrapped up inside a chassis that’s finished with silver brushed aluminium and black plastic and, while the Toshiba looks good, it doesn’t quite have the impact of the super-slim Sony VAIO Duo 13 or the bright orange Lenovo Yoga 11S.
Part of that’s because the Toshiba isn’t quite as smart, but part of it comes down to the dimensions: the Satellite is 25mm thick and weighs 2.1kg. Sony’s machine, meanwhile, is almost a kilo lighter and is 22mm thick, while the Lenovo Yoga 11S weighs in at 1.4kg and just 18mm.
Performance and conclusion
- 3D Mark: Ice Storm: 34,570, Cloud Gate: 3,446, Fire Strike: 511.
- Cinebench 11.5: CPU performance: 1.56, OpenGL graphics performance: 17.67fps.
- Measured brightness: 266. Black level 0.31. Gamma 2.05. Contrast 777:1.
- Delta E 4.7. Only 60.7% sRGB gamut coverage.
The low-power Haswell processor returned a mediocre score of 1.56 in Cinebench – only the Asus Transformer Book T100, which is powered by a quad-core Atom chip, was slower in this processor-intensive test. The HD Graphics 4200 chipset scored 17.67fps in Cinsebench’s OpenGL graphics test – marginally ahead of the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, despite the latter machine officially having a better Intel graphics core. It’s also further ahead of the cheaper Lenovo Yoga 11S and Asus Transformer Book T100.
The Toshiba sat in the middle of the group in 3DMark’s gaming tests. Its score of 3,446 in the Cloud Gate benchmark can’t compete with the 4,322 from the Sony or the 4,215 scored by the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga – but it’s easily able to best the 2,710 from Lenovo’s consumer laptop or the meagre 1,222 result from the Asus Transformer.
The Toshiba’s two batteries worked in tandem and lasted for 3hrs 52mins in PCMark 8’s Battery Life benchmark, which opens and closes a variety of demanding applications with the screen on full brightness. It’s a good result that will only improve with a dimmer screen and less strenuous work: the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga ran out of juice after just 3hrs and six minutes.
The 500GB hard disk has far more space than any SSD included in the machines mentioned here, but it suffers when it comes to speed: the Toshiba’s sequential read and write results of 104MB/sec and 99MB/sec are mediocre.
The Satellite’s screen doesn’t have the sheer number of pixels packed into some of its rivals’ panels, but the Toshiba makes up for its 1,366 x 768 resolution with good quality. The measured brightness of 266 nits is ample, even if the Lenovo ThinkPad’s 400 nit panel is brighter, and the contrast of 777:1 is good, too – it means rich colours across the board.
Limitations
The panel’s limitations were exposed in our colour tests. The Toshiba’s Delta E of 4.7 is average, which means mediocre colour accuracy, and the screen could only cover 60.7% of the sRGB gamut. While the Toshiba’s panel could handle green, yellow and blue shades reasonably well, it’s poorer when tasked with reds, pinks and purples. This screen is good enough for day-to-day use, but it’s not up to task when it comes to work.
We’ve already noted that the Satellite weighs more than its rival, and the Toshiba’s chunky frame impacts negatively in several different ways. When in laptop mode, the W30t is top-heavy, with a tendency to tilt away from the user when it’s touched, and the screen’s weight of 1.05kg – not to mention its width and depth of 331mm and 14mm – means we’re not inclined to use the Toshiba as a tablet for any great length of time.
The screen’s build quality is great, with a sturdy back panel and no flex anywhere, but we can’t say the same about the base. It’s flimsier, with depression obvious on the wrist-rest, and it’s too easy to press the base and bend the keyboard. That keyboard, too, suffers: the keys are light, feel insubstantial, and have very little travel, presumably because much of the base is taken up by the second battery. We’d much rather use the keyboards on either of the Lenovo machines.
Conclusion
The Toshiba has its faults, but let’s concentrate on its good points first: the Haswell processor has enough power to handle plenty of applications, the pair of batteries result in good longevity, and the detachable design adds versatility when you don’t need a keyboard.
Build quality, especially on the tablet, is good too, and the screen is bright with great contrast.
We liked
The Toshiba’s Haswell processor is a reasonable performer that regularly outpaced others in its price category, even if more expensive systems have beefier hardware, and the inclusion of two batteries made for good longevity.
The screen’s build quality is excellent, the laptop looks good, and the panel itself has good brightness and contrast, which means that images leap from the screen.
The Toshiba’s detachable mechanism works well, and means that you don’t have to carry around a keyboard if you’re just after a tablet.
We disliked
The sheer weight of the screen section means the Toshiba isn’t comfortable to use as a tablet, and when it’s deployed in laptop mode the entire machine feels off-balance. The keyboard isn’t particularly good, either, and the lack of an SSD means that storage and boot speeds are slow.
The screen’s good brightness is hampered by mediocre colour accuracy, and the chunky Toshiba is thicker and heavier than its key rivals, which means it’s awkward to use in tablet mode for any length of time.
Final verdict
Hybrids occupy a strange space in the market between tablets and laptops, and the Toshiba suffers by having one foot in both camps – it’s a competent machine, but its heavyset design and mediocrity in key departments makes it difficult to recommend, with dedicated laptops and tablets doing each job with more aplomb.
If you need a hybrid, though, the Lenovo Yoga 11S is a better choice despite its slightly slower processor: it’s slimmer and lighter, looks better, and has a slick folding mechanism – and that’s not to mention the bright, high-contrast screen or the excellent keyboard.
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