Thursday 11 April 2013

Toshiba Satellite U920T




Toshiba's first attempt to break into the fast-growing Windows 8hybrid market is a slightly weird beast, with a love-it-or-hate-it transformation mechanism, that marks it as distinctive, but won't be practical enough for everyone.
It's on sale now for around £899.

Design
Windows 8, with its emphasis on touchscreens seems tailor-made for hybrid designs, which can flip from lightweight tablet to full laptop configuration with little hassle. At least, that's the idea. The trick is to create a design that isn't too bulky in its tablet form, but offers the sturdiness and heft of a laptop when you need to get down to some serious keyboard tapping.
Looks-wise, it's a solidly built workhorse -- black, grey and functional are the watchwords -- it's the slider than really does the talking.
Toshiba has opted for an unusual sliding system that will certainly turn heads when you use it. With the tablet in landscape configuration in front of you, you push the top half back as far as it will go, then bend it upwards on a pair of hinges until you reach the angle you want. It's different, but it's not necessarily easier to use than a standard laptop with a hinge on the back. It requires a bit of space to open up so if you're in a cramped area like a train or plane seat it can be a bit awkward.
It is however potentially more robust than the other type of hybrid that allows you to twist the screen on a central hinge so that it faces outwards for tablet use, and inward for laptop behaviour. The 3.5cm of the keyboard side that sit behind the screen when it's in laptop mode help to keep it balanced too, cutting down on the need for extra weight beneath the keyboard. Still, at 1.5kg it's still too heavy to hold for any length of time. Compared to the likes of Microsoft's Surface with its optional Touch Cover keyboard, it feels unnacceptably chunky when it's not sitting on a tabletop.
The LED backlit screen is okay, but nothing to shout about really. At 12.5 inches it's a little bigger than the average tablet screen but offers a less than full HD resolution of 1,366x768 pixels. Still, while it's not quite up there with the best 1080p best it looks reasonably sharp, though its lack of brightness becomes apparent in direct sunlight which can make it a bit difficult to see than we'd expect. It's got a pretty tight viewing angle too meaning this isn't the best screen to share a movie on.


Software and features
Windows 8 brings up the onscreen keyboard when you need it in tablet configuration and the screen is generally sensitive and easy enough to use -- though it's a bit more prone to fingerprints than the likes of the iPad.
The physical keyboard tiles are reasonably responsive and well spread out across the entire width of the device, which is always nice to see, so there's plenty of room for your digits to get busy. The multitouch trackpad is responsive too and has clearly marked left and right buttons.
If you haven't got used to Windows 8 yet, don't worry, you will. The tile-based interface and touchscreen optimisation are a considerable jump from old-school Windows and there's a definite learning curve, likely to include some pining for the Start menu, which no longer exists. After a short while though the touch interface becomes second nature and finding your way around is generally pretty intuitive, once you've got the hang of the Charm Bar menu that you access by swiping to the left, revealing your Settings, Start screen, Search, Share and Devices shortcuts.
Good to see that Toshiba has gone for the full-fat 64-bit version of Windows 8 too, rather than the RT variety that appears on ARM-based tablets. So you can install any Windows-friendly software you like, rather than having to rely on the Windows Store. To be generous, the Store is clearly a work in progress, but it's got a long way to go to match the numbers enjoyed by the Apple and Google stores. And surely much of the appeal of Windows has always been its versatility and ubiquity -- when you're used to being able to install whatever you want for a desktop or laptop, it quickly gets frustrating when that freedom's taken away from you.
Performance
Our test model sits in the middle of the U920T configurations with a 1.5GHz Intel Core i35-3317U, 4GB RAM and a 128GB solid state drive. In benchmark tests it delivered a PC Mark of 3,754 which puts it well behind the likes of theSony Vaio Duo 11 and the HP Spectre XT but firmly in the midrange for this sort of processor. Still, it took three minutes and 46 seconds to encode our test 11-minute movie for iTunes, which put it just 20 seconds behind the Duo 11.
Frame rates when playing Portal were around the 150fps mark, which isn't great, and led to a few sticky moments -- this isn't a powerhouse gaming machine by any means, though you'll be fine for less sophisticated entertainments. 
There's a brace of high-speed USB 3.0 connections around the sides and back, along with an HDMI port and a hybrid mic/headphone jack and multicard reader that's hidden behind a flimsy plastic flap. There are also cameras on front and back, which seems like a bit of a wasted resource -- yes to the one-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls (via Wi-Fi -- there's no 3G option) but do we really need a so-so three megapixel rear-facing camera that can only be used when you slide the keyboard out?
Conclusion
The U920T carries a pretty good spec and performs reasonably well for its price. It also features a distinctively different way of transforming between tablet and laptop configurations, but whether this is actually better than other methods will come down to personal taste. It's really too heavy to use it comfortably as a tablet for long though, and while the touch screen is okay, it suffers in comparison with some of its full HD rivals.
Specifications
  • Operating system : Windows 8 64-bit
  • Processor : 1.8GHz 3rd generation Intel Core i3-3217U
  • Memory : 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
  • Display : 12.5in 1,366x768 pixels
  • Hard Drive : 128GB SSD


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