an autumn thing. Around this time every year, give or take a bit, Toshiba unveils its latest business laptop line-up, with new models and spec-boosted upgrades across the board.
For those unfamiliar with Toshiba’s trio of business notebook families, we have:
- the Portégé series of stylish ultraportables, such as slim and light Ultrabooks and convertible 2-in-1 devices
- the Satellite Pro: still thin and light, but built with an eye on the bottom line of affordability
- the Tecra range of muscle-bound ‘desktop-replacement’ laptops, geared to be rolled out as a fleet in medium-to-large organisations where desktop docking stations and security are high on the list.
Standard features across all three skews include Intel’s latest sixth-generation Core i5 and i7 chips; spill-resistant keyboards; identical AC adaptors and port replicators to previous models; and ‘Sleep-and-Charge’ USB ports which can recharge a tablet or smartphone even when the notebook itself is switched off or in sleep mode.
Here are some highlights from Toshiba’s ‘Fall 2016’ laptop line.
The 12.5-inch Portégé Z20T (above) keeps its appealing ‘2-in-1 Ultrabook’ form and insane 19 hours battery life (in notebook mode) but along with sixth-gen Intel powerplants this revamp includes the high-speed USB Type-C connector with up to 16Gb of RAM for heavy-duty app overhead and 512GB of SSD storage.
Its larger sibling, the Portégé R30 13.3-incher (above), is some 27% thinner than the previous edition and has full desktop docking capabilities, with up to 13 hours battery life and your choice of a 500GB (7200rpm) hard drive or 128GB/256GB solid state drive.
The Satellite Pro R50 (above) is more of your big-screen road buddy, with a 15.6 inch display, full-size keyboard with numeric keypad and – increasingly rare these days – an inbuilt CD/DVD drive for both playing and burning discs on the go.
Toshiba is also tempting road warriors with two top-shelf Ultrabooks: the 14 inch Tecra Z40 and 15.6 inch Tecra Z50 with up to eight hours’ battery life and optional 4G LTE mobile broadband.
The really serious stuff? That’s the domain of the Tecra A40 and the Tecra A50 which both sport a docking port and Toshiba’s Tecra-standard ‘High Speed Port Replicator’ with selected models packing a fingerprint reader for added security on the go.