Sure, the Toshiba Portege R700 is impressively built, with a decent keyboard and an almost scandalous number of ports shoved into the sides of its slim chassis. But they’d be frivolous without enough power under the bonnet and the runtime to match. Do the innards of the Toshiba Portege R700 come through? Find out in this section of our Toshiba Portege R700 review.
Read the rest of our Toshiba Portege R700 laptop review
Toshiba Portege R700 laptop review
Toshiba Portege R700 laptop review: Build
We’ve raved about the slim size and weight of the Toshiba Portege R700, but it’s not the only anorexic laptop on the market right now: the MacBook Air has been on a Size Zero diet for years now, and MSI’s X-Slim series models are very nearly invisible from the side too. What makes the Toshiba Portege R700 stand out is that it cuts very few corners to trim down its profile: on the inside, the 13.3-inch laptop is a high end machine worthy of a place fulltime on your desktop.
The model we tested was a middle of the range Toshiba Portege R700, priced at £899, with an Intel Core i5 2.4GHz processor and 2GB of DDR3 RAM, but even the cheapest £629 model still comes with the same amount of memory, a 2.26GHz Core i3 CPU and an even longer quoted battery life of 8h55m.
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While we can only speak for the model we tested, we can safely say that Intel’s full power Core CPU is a big step up from previous gen Core 2 Duo chips and ULV/Atom chips baked into many other ultra portables of the same size. While a model with only 2GB of memory might not seem particularly future proofed, for everything you’re likely to do on the go (watch video, run multiple tabs and multiple browsers, stream music in the background, and word process) it’s more than enough, and we found that it just wouldn’t buckle under our demands.
The only issue you may have is with Intel’s integrated graphics: this is not a machine for gamers, though we suspect many will be happy with and settle for its ability to run even full HD Flash video seamlessly – that’s the new minimum requirement, and there are no problems there at least. And really, if you need to do hardcore video editing, you shouldn’t be looking at a 1.3kg, 13.3-inch laptop anyway.
Then there’s a the battery life. On its own accord, it’s not all that impressive: about 5 hours of real world use with Wi-Fi on, and no external GPU to suck out extra power. But considering the specs inside, it should still prove more than enough for when you’re on the go – and for the size and weight it’s downright excellent. We like to look at it like this: you could opt for a netbook with a longer battery life, but the real world benefits are lost as you have to wait for a struggling Atom processor to deal with even the simplest of requests, and of course you have to endure a smaller keyboard too.
On a final note, we didn’t notice the heat spots some others have reported on the underside of the Toshiba Portege R700 in heavy use. Perhaps some reviewers don’t wear trousers, or pants, but we didn’t notice it while clothed, which is how we do our computing – certainly compared to the volcanic activity inside the Asus Eee PC 1201N, it’s nothing you’ll notice.
The only potential buyer we could see coming away from the Toshiba Portege R700 disappointed would be an avid PC gamer hopeful of a cheap and portable machine for gaming on the go. The Toshiba Portege R700 isn’t really it, and if that’s you, we suggest you take a look at the Alienware M11x in the meantime. Otherwise, you’d be hard pressed to find something the Toshiba Portege R700 can’t handle, and for students and suits alike, it should prove more than enough for anything you throw at it. And considering its size and price, that makes it a bargain.
The Toshiba Portege R700 has made our best laptop and best PC laptop Top 5 lists, which is why we’ve given it our Recommended rosette. Check out more Top 5s here and find out more about how they work with our Top 5 guarantee.
Read the rest of our Toshiba Portege R700 laptop review
Toshiba Portege R700 laptop review
Toshiba Portege R700 laptop review: Build
