New Portege Z830

Toshiba Z830 VS 2001 Compaq Presario 1700 - Fight! xD




Toshiba Z830 VS 2006 Sony Vaio SZ2

 

If the screen is matte, there usually is a sacrifice in screen quality. This is nothing new and is the be expected. The screen has to be made specifically with matte in mind like the series 9, in low light situations like in the pictures above I don't think anyone is expecting much. Not to mention from those angles.

Do a test in sunlight and results will be a lot different.

I mean lets be frank, most of the time you use the ultrabook is on the go, at home I just hook it up to my IPS screen and everything looks perfectly fine

 

rly? My best buy Z835 has backlit keyboard.

Just got price match for $699, bought it when it was 799.

Now to decide between bestbuy i3 (700) vs toshibadirect i5 (1100) vs Sony Vaio SA (800)

 

FYI ToshibaDirect gives you 15 days to return and if its a custom configured model they charge 15% restock fee :/

or you didn't buy it yet from toshiba?

 

A lot of "X" factors we need to consider before buy notebook. Sort all "X" lists based on priority.
Everybody have different priority, if screen was number 1 priority on the list, don't buy Z830.

 

You cannot make that generalization. There are TWO different screens available on the Toshiba Z830. The U.S. $699 Best Buy version has a glossy screen, whereas the units being reviewed coming out of Europe all have a matte (reduced color gamut) screen. I think we need to specifically state which version we're talking about when we make statments. Otherwise people here are going to be talking at cross purposes.

Also, regarding your comment above about not having a backlit keyboard, I would speculate that you have a defective unit. To my knowledge, ALL models and levels of Z830/835 (both U.S. and European market) have the same backlit spill-resistant keyboard.

 

IMHO, the Z830 screen is fine and, in fact, in the head on view I thought it was better. I always chuckle at the extreme right and left angle view and wonder who uses their laptop from the side.

The Z830 is probably the strongest overall lappy going right now. It just has all the goods. It may lack in a few things such as the total screen brightness of the S9 or the resolution of the Zen which I believe is higher, and I will even state I still love the shape of the S9 EXCEPT for the open and close ports which are begging to break, but... I think that we can all concede that, for total package, the Z is top if not def top 2.

Now...as for the fan....has anyone tried it without the fan yet? Curious. I think the fan is the result of the body being that much thinner and no way of airflow within. Its just that tight.

CES in less than a month folks! Lets see if the manufacturers were listening to us!

 

How would one go about this, outside of physically opening the unit and disconnecting the fan? I'm unaware of any way to disable the fan via BIOS, hardware profile, or software utility.

 

Opening the unit is simple and the power is a simple clip underneath I believe.

 

I don't think brightness is the issue, if you look at ntoebookcheck report while brightness is definitely below the bigger issue is contrast and the fact that colors begin to shift a little on every degree you turn it. Overall the screen is "average" + matte being a huge advantage on sunlight. The only reason it bugs me is because I came from a series 9, otherwise I am getting used to it little by little.

Oh and yeh those hinges were bound to break, mostly due to my developed bad habit of playing with them while I am thinking ...I try to do that on my z830 only to find they are missing lol

Nah not gonna risk frying the pc lol, someone did try it though and he said it worked fine but he kept getting errors that fan is unplugged. I am sure a future bios fix will do something. Overall though, I think Toshiba tried too hard to make this ultrabook thinner then the rest, that is why its sticking out where the fan is on the back. I wouldn't have mined if the entire back was slightly thicker so that it would be more even surface.

I was at last CES due to a coincidence of conventions being on at same time, this time around I end up missing it by 1 day :/...I am still waiting on the ASUS ROG router they showed last ces!!

 

i bought from bb

 

oh it sounded like you bought all 3 of them and deciding on which ones to return lol...well anyways remember you can get the i5 model for 1055 not 1100

 

No offense.
I know word "screen" too general, can be screen resolution, screen viewing angle, screen glossy or matte and etc.
I believe if someone posting screen comparison, they already know about what the most screen feature they need. Different if they asking because they don't know. I already read this issue many time in this thread, why should this screen compare and issue show up again?

Sorry, if my post make people think different.

My Z830 model from Asia region PN : PT224L-014023. toshiba-asia.com never mention if the keyboard have backlit or not

 

I hope Toshiba doesn't hear your thoughts -- because I happen to value "thin," which just shows, different thicknesses for different folks. If you don't like thin, you have a lot to choose -- basically everything else in the industry.

 

hello, hope you liked my screen comparisons
I have another question, is the wifi card of the Z830 better than the samsung 9?
If I change the one in the toshiba with the samsung card will it solve the famous wifi issue of S9?

 

I read that the samsung wifi problems could be minimized through some power setting changes, much like the asus ux31 wifi issues. May not be ideal for battery life, but at least the wifi is usable.

 

I don't want to escalate the whole issue with the fan but, has anyone's fan gotten any louder now that it has been broken-in? As in the break-in period of a car.

Mine went from a slight hum to a slight whir.

It used to be a "hummmmmmmmmmmmmm". With the "mmmmm" sound going on and on and on.
Now it's like "whirrrrrrrrrrrr". The "rrrr" is a softly rolled, like how an American would say the name Rodriguez.

 

Z830 wifi is miles ahead of the Samsung original configs. I went through four of them and could not get wifi to work at all. I cursed at conventions, in airports, coffee shops etc.

There may be a new fix coming out on the S9 with the Intel 6300 and a third antenna in the monitor.

 

Anybody have recommendation for Z830 screen protector ?
Z830 13.3" screen dimension around 29.5mm x 16.6mm.

 

I can't seem to find it, but what do we need for a clean install of Windows 7 and are all the drivers available from Toshiba?

 

You missed completely what I wrote, I said Toshiba tried too hard to make this laptop the "thinnest", I don't care for the "thinnest" as long as its thin enough. In attempting to make it the "thinnest" they made a few sacrifices. Look at the back of your laptop, do you see that hump sticking out where the fan is?

That makes the design imbalanced on a flat surface. They either had to make the hump on the other side as well to create a balance or make the whole laptops back as thick as that hump. It would still be thin, just won't be the "thinnest"

Another sacrifice they made is where the modem port is, its sticking out too much causing it to grabbing against my pants when i move it...At very least they could have included a spacer for it like the sd card slot.

You need to get the windows 7 iso from DigitalRiver, google for it or there is a post a few pages back with a link. And yes Toshiba has drivers on site or you can make a backup of your driver folder on your pc.

 

While I would agree with you that trying to be the thinnest and lightest means you have to make sacrifices, part of the reason I chose this machine was that it made the fewest sacrifices out of all the ultrabooks that I have looked at. Sure, we can complain that the ethernet port can catch on clothing if you're not careful, but at least we're not complaining that there is no ethernet port included whatsoever. Yes, we can complain that the hinge isn't perfect, because they went ahead and tried to add a vga port on the back, sacrificing extending the hinge to the end- but hey, we got a full size vga port.

Usually, having one thing means sacrificing in other ways. Whether its the low key travel for a thinner laptop, or a less pristine screen for a lower price. If the ideal laptop at the ideal price point could have been made, you'd think it already would have been. And also, us tech geeks never seem to be satisfied. What would have been a perfectly adequate processor 5 years ago for the power user, today would be scoffed at. People seem so intent on avoiding the i3, when they have lived with something probably less powerful than the i3 for the majority of their technological lives, for better or for worse.

Lastly, just for the record, if you keep the rubber feet on the bottom of your laptop, the fan vent just barely touches the surface of a flat table.

 

Hey I was just wondering if anyone knew when the price at Best Buy for the Z835 jumped up to $849? ( Toshiba - Portégé Ultrabook Laptop / Intel® Core™ i3 Processor / 13.3" Display / 4GB Memory - Silver - Z835-P330 )

Is this still the best price available?

 

Oh, also, I'd just like to point out that while we are lamenting over minor design flaws, the people over at the Asus UX31 forum are talking of bios bricking, breaking screen issues, really terrible vertical viewing angles, continuous wifi problems, trackpad issues abound, poor SSD performance, sound distortion while typing, breaking fans... and thats just what i gleamed from page 172 of 173.

In case it wasn't obvious, I'm quite happy I traded in the UX31 for the Z835

 

Yeah... I'm not understanding the fan hump on the bottom imbalance thing.

First, it doesn't extrude farther than the feet so it is still balanced on a flat surface.

Second, I believe you if you look closely at the design, the fan isn't sticking out, the vent is, such that if laid on a flat surface, air can still move through because some of the holes are on the inclined area. If it were just flat... putting it on something like your lap would totally block off the vent holes.

 

Hey, I am just pointing out how it can be improved..if they made it a little thicker on the back then they could have added more cooling while maintaining balance. If not they could have included same kind of bump on the other side. And all ethernet port needs is a spacer..

We will never ever be satisfied, that is the fate we are doomed with lol...that said applications just tend to waste more resources in general, not to mention 64bit requires things like more ram and etc. To be fair, 5 years ago my laptop 12" laptop had on of those crappy VIA gpus and a "state of the art" Turion processor lol..that said it did run a little sluggish :/..

The biggest advancement I think is the built in GPUs, CPUs were never too much of a problem. It was more of other bottlenecks such as GPU, ram, HD and etc. If anything the moment we hit multicore support on CPUs is when things took for a turn.

I think right now is the golden age of portable laptops where we were able to reach decent power ratio to be enough for most casual use. Right now it is just a matter of optimizing the quality of components and cutting down on power consumption.

Personally though for average users i3 is more then enough, for business use you need an i5 minimum. The i5 comes with efficient AES encryption/decryption and I use it to encrypt my harddrive for security reasons.

I saw those, but its still causes a slight imbalance, its not a "huge deal" cause I use it mostly on my lap or other soft surfaces but as I said it can be improved...and we both know how long those rubber feat will last lol

 

Hey, I am keeping this laptop so...that said on the UX31 I am not surprised, I like the ASUS brand but when your "Standard" warranty is 2 years and you go out of your way to lower the products warranty down to 1 year, that raises a few eyebrows in my book.

Its like when you go buy a refurbished product or they give you a refurbished part and tell you due to Q\A refurbished are just as good as brand new. They say that but there is a reason why the refurbished stuff come with a 90 day warranty and not a standard one.

Toshiba gives a 3year warranty so I am pretty confident the quality is there.

I know the fan isn't sticking out lol, the hump is there because there needs to be clearance for airflow...I think the bottom is meant to take air in and the back blows air out.

 

Hi Uniten. I'll admit that I've caught my finger on the ethernet port a couple of times. And it has indeed startled me. There should be a fix for that. But the engineering on the "thin" slice is pleasing to me. I think I was hearing your point -- I was just disagreeing with you. I happen to *like* the way the slice is so thin, even though the fan forced a bulge. Reminds me of the way a sports car hood might have to bulget up a bit in the place where an air breather has to rise.

 

From the looks of it, Toshiba has all the drivers that is needed for the laptop. Some of them aren't the most up to date ones, but it's still recent.

This is windows 7:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

This is windows 7 SP1
http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-digitalriver-windows-7-sp1-13-languages.html

For the bloatware/crapware and drivers that came from a factory install, go to this location;
C:\Program Files\Toshiba\TOSAPINS\COMPS1

For the drivers from the Toshiba website:
Model Content Page Just search for your appropriate model. The one on the link is the BestBuy model.

From the looks of it, yes. Google shopping says so atleast ^^

Thanks again Markyger for the heads up of the price drop. I'm glad I got the readjustment of the $699. It sucks to see that this already overpriced laptop just got higher.

 

Huh? Even at its current post-sale price of $849, it's the cheapest of the 1st gen ultrabooks. How do you get overpriced?

 

I dont know the difference between the Z835-ST8305 and Z835-P330

but you can get a Z835-ST8305 for 836$ lol, though if you have bestbuy next to you its probably better to pay 14$ more and be able to have best buys return policy and price-match just in case.

 

Doing a search on both models at Toshiba's website shows that they have the exact same specs and warranty.

 

mines stranded at customs in the UK :-( may not make it to me before christmas!!!!doh!

 

bb i3 - slow but $699 is good price (but $849 is a bit expensive !)
Toshiba i5 for $1100 is very expensive,
Vaio SA for $800 is the best of three. It has a High Resolution LCD, 2nd Graphics Card, Slim and better LCD Quality than Z835.

 

The Vaio SA is a very different machine. It's all relative- 1.27" height isn't exactly slim anymore, when the standard for slim is currently more like 0.6-0.7 inches. And it weighs over a pound more than the z835. But you get a disk drive with that, a graphics card, the port replicator thing, better screen rez, etc. So it depends on how important portability is to you compared to price and screen resolution and other features.

Toshiba i5 vs Toshiba i3 honestly depends on how intensive your processing needs to be- are you a word processor and web browser? or a computer programming and video editor?

 

the sony isn't remotely comparable, its an absolute brick in comparison. its in no way an ultrabook anyway, its more on a par with the tosh R series

 

And I would argue the Tosh R is better than the SA because it has an optical drive, is lighter, has better battery life and a nicer keyboard layout (I wonder if they will update the R with a backlit keyboard).

 

I recently bought a Toshiba Z830-10N. It is the business Portege version here in the UK. The Satellite is the retail version. However, this particular Portege model actually came with windows 7 home premiumn edition.

I wasn't too sure about the difference between the two different versions...I heard that there might be some differences like matt or glossy screen, dual band wi-fi etc...so I got the Portege version since I thought that is more likely to have the better hardware.

Unfortunately, my one has a big gap between the screen and bezel on the right hand side. The left hand side doesn't sit that flush either. There is also a problem with the audio...it plays intermittently...updated the drivers, checked the forums but still no help.....so I think this is an issue too...anyway it is going back....but I do plan to get the same model again.

I got it more becuase out of all the ultrabooks I felt it had the most number of features....wi-di, weight, full size ports, VGA-out, separate microphone port, usb sleep-and-charge, backlit keyboard, battery life, Full size SD slot.

I agree with some of what has been written before. The space key does not always register. I can hear the fan but only when there is no other noise around.....it does not bother me. The wifi signal does not appear to be as good as my desktop replacement laptop. The trackpad buttons are a little stiff. There does not appear to be so many bluetooth profiles available. I think this is because it uses the toshiba bluetooth stack....my previous laptop had a widcomm chipset. The three finger swipe feature only works in internet explorer....I think there is a registry edit available to make it work in chrome.

I have not decided about the battery life yet. In eco mode I think it lasts a lot longer. I was thinking that if the Satellite version only has the single band wifi then does that mean it is more power efficient...however, surely the system would turn off the unused band in a dual band setup. If the fan can be switched off I guess the battery would last even longer.

I was also thinking that the Portege version might have some extra security services running...however, these can be removed in a clean nstall....although I am not sure how to go about this.

I have read elsewhere that it has a poor SSD...however, I think the read speeds are comparable to the other premium ultrabooks...it is just the write speed that are poor......so the resuming from sleep seems quick to me. I have also read that it can be updated to SATA 3.

No individual buttons to control brightness, volume and wireless....although I don't know if the other ultrabooks do. The wireless control is especially flaky as you have to scroll through the available options on one button. So far I have not found a button to turn of the display....I guess it must be there somewhere.

I might be able to answer any questions if they are not too technical.

 

If your using Eco profile, I'd suggest adjusting wifi to medium. It makes a huge difference in wifi speed.

The SSD is below accross the board but still faster then a regular drive.

As for individual buttons to control those things, is it really necessary? you dont adjust them that often and all are accessible via function key. Personally in comparison to my Dell XPS1340 which had the keys as captive buttons that was a lot worse cause when you accidentally swipe you end up turning off your wifi and such.

 

Regarding SSD speeds. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Toshiba SSD and the typical user could NEVER tell the difference between that and the best on the market. This is because you are feeling the effects of access speed which is relatively the same for all SSDs.

Where you will observe a difference is in specific tasks like uploading/downloading large programs and files... My view to this? How often do we do that anyway?

 

Yes...you can buy and install a sata3 msata ssd drive,however it still runs at sata 2 speeds,the only one here who seems to have gotton sata 3 transfer rate from his Portege z is apparition, and he's pretty tight lipped about why his laptop seems to be the only z thats putting out sata 3 speeds.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834127585


Vaio SA is actually not that thick, 0.92". But downsides are lower battery life, heavier, 5400 RPM HDD. The weight is significant, one of the reason why I liked Z835 over UX31, even 0.6 lbs was significant, I can hold Z835 comfortably in one hand, can't do that with UX31, and I'm a weight lifter lol.

 

I am not tight lipped. The speeds I got are the speeds posted in the review. Its impossible to make them up, especially with Anvil showing what system is being tested. If I do a clean install, I get SATA 2 speeds but if I do a migration from my main rig...SATA 3. I don't know why and myself and Toshiba have been back and forth over this. If I can't provide response, I have nothing to say and I learned with the S9 earlier in the year... never speak out of turn until you see something released...

Sorry guys! Perhaps we will get the answer by CES!

 

I don't recall ever saying you made them up,however
every benchmarking suite that list mainboard specs,show the portege z disk controller maximum sata mode to be G2/300,not G3/600 so basically the Runcore Super Speed Demon drive i bought was really a waste of $

 

When I try to clean install W7, I found default factory SSD partion have 3 partion.
It's that ok if I re-create only 1 partion?
I'm too affraid the recovery USB not working if there only 1 partion.

 

I use this to eliminate airflow issue.


In action

 

I have something like that but it's a platform that swivels (good for presenting things to people). You can add bumpers to adjust the height of the incline.

 

I know....just clarifying that I never and I have been working to figure the key out...

 

Got confirmation from toshiba, Z830 asia type don't have backlit keyboard feature.

 

Wow! That's a big disappointment.... How could they make some regions with a backlit keyboard, and some regions without? Sorry to hear that Purba