Toshiba P50T-BST2N01 4K laptop UNBOXING

Could you share which caddy you ordered that does NOT work? I am curious which one works too.
Thank you.
By the way, after I removed rubber feet, I do not put them back until I am sure I wont be replacing anything for a very long time.

 

How is the shimmer in your screen? It may not be enough to bother you?

 

I know it does not bother me. It is less noticeable when using Firefox to browse website, it is much less noticeable
when watching 4K video using MPC-HC, which is pretty much what I have being doing the last couple of weeks.
I have also shown the 4K video to several of my friends, none of them point out the "shimmer" on the screen.

But everyone will have different feelings, a deal breaker for one may not be a big deal for another.

The shimmer is strange to look at when I first open my laptop, I thought my screen is broken lol.
After watch so many 4K video, I decided to keep this laptop, until next 4K IPS LED 15.6 inch laptop that has no shimmer came along.

THEN I will dump the Toshiba, and switch to whoever made that next perfect laptop.

 

A few people asked about the compatible blu-ray drives for this P50T 4k. The correct drive is uj172.
Additionally there are no "interrupt" issues as they are called. It works just fine.
The gpu is about half as powerful as NVidia 870m or 770m. It is probably on part with NVidia 750m

 

Honesty I see no shimmer issues. In fact I think this laptop has one of the best screens I have used. The screen contents are clear and sharp from all reasonable angles and the display is reasonably bright. The 4K resolution is absolutely wonderful. I have waited 6+ years for a screen with this resolution and the display is a pleasure to use because I can fit so much on the screen. The 4K resolution works especially well with Visual Studio development.

I know this issue bothered you and it's a shame. If I look at the screen really closely and them move my head I do see a bit of a shimmer but this is no different from any other LCD screen I own. I also have a Vaio Duo 13, a premium tablet convertible from Sony with a good screen and I feel the Toshiba screen is even better than that. Maybe you got a bad screen or maybe you looked too much but if you notice it you notice it so that's what matters at the end of the day.

For my needs I absolutely love this laptop. Now if I can only replace the optical drive I'd never use with a second HDD I will be all set. I expect to have the other replacement caddy later today so I will try it out and let you all know how that goes.

Amazon shipped me a 12.5 mm caddy when the one i ordered is a 9.5 mm caddy. I ordered a different product so hopefully they will send me what I ordered and it will work.

Oh and another thing. I am really glad I decided to do a fresh clean install of Windows. I have no garbage apps and I only have what I need. The drivers I downloaded from the Toshiba site worked great. Thanks so much for everyone who helped me figure out the right drivers!

 

this is a rare occasion when I will back someone's complaint of a personal but not common opinion. This screen does have a shimmer. It does not take a trained eye to notice it however this shimmer is not a deterrent nor does it reduce the quality if the screen. People are like fish and fish have to acclimate to new tanks. Though this screen may have a "shimmer" it is as abnormal as a frame around the display. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this screen. Can screens be better? yes. Is this screen worse then one should expect? absolutely not. is the shimmer worth mentioning? no!

 

umm yes it is worth mentioning at this price level. If you all can personally actually see it, but that does not concern you is great (for you), as I have said it may not bother you (as in some people will not care, as I would expect). The fact that you can actually see it, outlines that it is prominent, and others that may take the plunge should know before they buy.

No one should expect this on a screen that is glossy like this. I maybe something that would be expected on older anti-glare monitors.

Also there is another reason why shimmering will not be an issue. The panel is such a huge upgrade to those that have had mediocre screens mostly in the past, there is simply no comparison.
If someone has a few really good panel otherwise (such as I do), then you can notice the difference i.e. MacBook Retina has superior whites (light colours), no shimmer, and higher brightness, although it does not have the same resolution.

What I am doing is giving others the opportunity to know about it before they end up owning it, I have no intention of slandering those that already are happy with it.

 

all good and fair balanced points.
I think the price is actually cheap for what this machine offers. if it had a regular screen its well worth 1300$ with these specs if not more. with that 4k screen which is basically unique I think 1800$ is not unreasonable. I still think that is a fair price which Toshiba is known for (amongst other things).
If I didn't make it clear I too think the screen could be better. Most screens if not all I have ever seen could be better. This one is no exception.

 

If I want to add 2nd storage option, does anyone know which 9.5mm caddy with SATA interface works on this laptop ?

By the way,

60Mbps 4K Video

IMHO this is one of the best quality 4K video that will truly show the beauty of this laptop!

 

Don't get me wrong, it is an awesome machine, with a wicked panel upgrade over the dismal FHD panel they were/are using in the Toshiba P50. When compared to what out there, the P50t is sitting right next to the HP Envy 15-j price range, although I would rate the Toshiba P50 a better build.

Even though I have taken the Toshiba P50 with 4K back, I do miss it very strangely, although I don't really need it as the machines in my current sig are sufficient. Also I have a HP 2012 dv6 that has the a FHD IPS screen (HP added and never announced it) which is excellent.

 

Again, there are lots of great FHD IPS screen laptops out there, but for 4K IPS laptop, Toshiba is the only choice for now.

 

Just pulled the trigger on this beast. It's $200 off for this weekend + $100 off with a coupon (not sure how many are left though). Seems like a great deal to me.

It will arrive next week and I'll post my thoughts when I get it. I do need replace the optical drive with a HDD caddy. Hopefully, I can find one that will work. Plan is to put the original HDD in the caddy and replace the main drive with an SSD that I bought for my work laptop but never got around to putting it in.

 

That is very nice discount!
Unfortunely noone knows which caddy is right for this laptop(yet), so you might have experiment by yourself....

 

I am thinking of upgrading its memory to 16GB because I will run a virtual machine on it. Any recommendations, guys?

 

The prebuild model of this laptop already come with 16GB memory , which is the max amount already.......

 

UK variant has only 8GB but come with bluray drive.

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

 

I see, then perhaps you can look at the internal picture of the laptop at page1 and choose the right RAM for it.

 

FYI...Anyone interested in a mobile workstation, Toshiba replied to my inquiry about the 4K display on the Tecra W50 and they said it would be available sometime next week...

 

Nice info! Thanks.

FHD model of W50 is on preorder here:
Toshiba Direct | Tecra W50 Laptops & Notebooks

For detail spec on Tecra W50:
http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/product/pdf_files/detailed_specs/tecra_W50-ABT1500.pdf

For information on W50 GPU:
NVIDIA Quadro K2100M - NotebookCheck.net Tech

It seems W50 has weaker GPU than P50t? Since bandwidth of K2100M is lower than the GPU on P50t.....
But besides that, it seems W50 is better version of P50t. Maximum 32GB RAM, CPU runs up to 3.7GHz, SSD is finally an option in customization section. Too bad that GPU is not good enough.......

 

Toshiba has a special on the Satellite P50T-BST2GX2 model. It's got the i7 4710 processor, 12 GB RAM and a Blu-ray writer. It's $1499 with free shipping. Seems like that might be hard to pass up. Thoughts?

 

That was the price of P50T-BST2N01 during the memorial weekend...too bad it ended now...

 

This is the 4K model. But it has the upgraded processor, a little less RAM, and the BD writer rather than just the DVD writer.

 

Sorry, my bad. Did not notice that Toshiba has cheaper version of p50t now.
The $1499 is a really good price. The only problem is that instead of Hybrid HDD , it comes with 5400rpm HDD.
Program can run really slow with that 5400rpm HDD,if you can replace it with 128GB or 256GB SSD then it would be a much better choice.

 

i got all the screws off the bottom and the shell wont come off. do i have to remove that square tap next to the card reader?

 

Are you sure that you also removed the screws in the middle? It should come off fairly easily if you remove all the screws but there are a LOT of screws to remove. The four rubber feet stay in place but all the other rubber covers on the underside conceal screws.

 

Okay I have definitive bad news about converting the optical drive to a second hard disk bay. Even if you get it to work, it WILL NOT work. I tried several optical drive/HDD caddies and none I tried can fit the snap on optical drive cover with the eject button. If you buy a 9.5mm optical drive caddy you CAN put a 2.5" SSD/HDD and you can insert it into the laptop but there will be a gap because the "eject button panel" from the optical drive can't be attached to a standard ODD to HDD caddy.

And if you thought that was bad, here comes the really bad news.

Even with the gap, you can close the laptop up and you can start using the second disk. I bought a 1.5 TB HDD and I was really happy using that with a 500 GB SSD and I thought this setup was perfect but I realized that the fan never quit. At first I thought it was because of the 100s of Gigabytes I was syncing via my Synology Cloud Station, Drop, Box, One Drive, AND Google drive (yes I have a lot of data!).

However even after two days of syncing and getting everything setup. the fan never quit and it constantly shows about 15% CPU utilization. After much examining all the processors and threads running on this computer with "Process Explorer" I found out the culprit. Basically when you put a HDD where the optical drive used to be, it results in ACPI.sys taking up 10-15% of your CPU cycles. The laptop will overheat and the fan will not quit and this can't be good for the long term and it sounds really annoying.

So, the second HDD option where the ODD used to be does not work, unless you want an overheated laptop to constantly run the fan because you are never below 15% CPU utilization.

I have to say whoever designed this laptop with an optical drive with no option to at least pay more for a second hard disk drive is a moron. I had to waste about 6 hours to figure this out. The last time I used an optical drive for anything is about 2 years ago. I have no idea why anyone would release a laptop with a 4K display and have no provision to buy it with 2 hard drives.

As it is, I am now going to either get an external slim hard disk and have it constantly attached to a USB port (horrible option) or I'm looking for a super thin hard drive enclosure that I can squeeze inside the optical disk cavity area and have a USB cord coming out of there to connect to the USB port right next to where the optical drive used to be. I have ordered 4 super slim 2.5" drive enclosed on Amazon to see if any are slim enough to fit inside the optical disk cavity.

The bottom line is if the Y50 was available with 4K or there was another 4K laptop available that can support 2 hard drives I would never have bought or kept the p50t. I absolutely LOVE the 4K display but that's about the only thing I like about this laptop. The display is amazing and I can fit so much in it with Visual Studio and everything else I run but too bad an idiot designed the specs for this laptop who did not have enough foresight to think that someone paying almost $2K for a laptop with the highest resolution display you can buy might need to install 2 hard disks instead of the optical drive that would be pointless for so many people.

Overall After 6-8 hours of wasted time I am very disappointed. I'll likely never buy another Toshiba again. They have apparently no idea about who uses their laptops. I don't care how much they wanted to charge for this I would have bought a higher end version of this laptop with a 4K display and 2 hard drives. It seems even the upcoming Tecra W50 has only room for one hard disk.

The reason many people are wanting to have 2 hard drives is so they can have a 250-500 GB SSD for applications and the OS and then another cheap 1-1.5GB HDD for the data. It never dawned on the geniuses at Toshiba why this makes more sense as opposed to the BS hybrid drive they try to sell with this laptop.

I called their tech support line based in the Philippines and it seemed like I was talking to a bunch of kindergartners who had no clue.

Sorry about the tone of this post but I've wasted so much time and I'm fed up with the design limitations of this laptop. I basically just bought about $400 in accessories trying to get a second hard drive to work.

 

newmodeus actuually asked i take a picture of the dvd drive so they can find the right caddy for the lappy.

 

15 screws total including the ram door?

 

I got the bottom open. now what's the combination to enter the bios? i pulled the hdd out and planned to clone it to the ssd.

 

Trust me. Finding the right caddy will be the least of your problems. It will not work. Well, it will work if you don't mind constant 10-15% CPU utilization and constant fan noise to keep an overheating laptop from heating any more. See my post above for the details.

 

It's not jut me. This is what happens when you replace the optical drive with a HDD:

Toshiba Support Forums: Satellite P50-A - high CPU after ...

 

Yeah so true that post over at Toshiba, and was one of the reasons I gave up on the P50t-B. That port is so bad it was even causing interrupts with the standard Blu-ray drive mine had in it, with the mouse locking up for split seconds when shifting it around the screen.

 

Like I said it is moronic they designed this laptop to be not able to handle higher data throughout.

I am keeping mine because I want the 4K display. I love the extra resolution for running Windows applications but 4K is the ONLY reason to buy this laptop.

I ended up figuring out a very inelegant but functional solution to having a second hard drive. I basically bought the slimmest 2.5" HDD enclosure I could find and made it fit where the optical drive would fit. I then have a USB cable connecting the second HDD to the USB port right next to the optical drive enclosure. It works.

 

So you were able to replace the DVD drive with BD drive and it was causing problem?
It would be strange if that happens because some models in other country ships with BD by default.

 

"the standard Blu-ray drive mine had in it"

 

I just got my laptop and decided to try out putting another HDD in the bay. Actually, I tried an SSD. Now, I had an old caddy for my old laptop that I never used. It didn't fit so I took it apart to get to the connector ( I think it's micro sata to sata conversion) which I used instead of the full caddy ( together with some tape. Just a temporary solution until I find a slim caddy).

I too had the same problem as you, CPU was pegged around 14% and the thing was getting hot. Was about to give up and just live with a useless DVD drive.

But, this morning I thought I'd give it one last google and found this thread right here on this website:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...655065-hp-elitebook-8560p-won-t-shutdown.html

With some care I cut that third pin ( which I verified with a multimeter was connected to the GND pins). Seems to be working so far. CPU is low..no excessive fan.

 

Hello!
Thanks for the info. Did you happen to take a picture when you cut the 3rd pin?

 

I dont have this problem.

 

May I ask which caddy and which drive you use that does not have this problem?
Much appreciated.

 

P50T deal for whoever is interested:

ET deals: $270 off Toshiba Satellite P50T Core i7 touch laptop | ExtremeTech

 

hmmm... after some updates from windows maybe? i just noticed it now that chromatune has a laptop with a no smoken red circle over it. anyone else?

 

1 ea. 2nd HDD / SSD Caddy for Toshiba Satellite C55, S55, S75 Series $37.75

 

What is the Brand/Model number of the caddy and a link of where to buy it? Much appreciated.

 

When does this begin? After you update windows?
Mine did not have this issue.
It is possible an update to graphic driver might cause this, maybe revert to old driver will help.

 

2nd HDD / SSD Caddy for Toshiba Satellite C55, S55, S75 Series [OBHD9-SATA-SATA-BU9] - $37.75 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

 

By the way, for those of you own p50t and browsing web using Chrome, here is a useful link

How to Enable Chrome High DPI Mode in Windows 8

Chrome looks MUCH better after this high dpi tweak.

 

By the way, for those of you own p50t and browsing web using Chrome, here is a useful link

How to Enable Chrome High DPI Mode in Windows 8

Chrome looks MUCH better after this high dpi tweak.

 

I noticed that the difference between 12GB RAM and 16RAM is $100: P50T Laptops

Is that $100 worth it?

 

$100 for just a change of 12 to 16gb ram is definitely NOT worth it

 

If I have chance to buy it again, I would probably go with the 12GB one, only because it has BD drive so the only thing needs to be done is replace that HDD with SSD.
Find the right BD to fit DVD slot is much more difficult than upgrade memory......