Toshiba Z30t (touch) thread

There's an updated model of Z30 starting to appear on the net, with full HD touch screen and Core i7.

So far I only find it on the Scandinavian sites, f ex:
http://www.toshiba.se/laptops/portege/z30/portege-z30t-a-108
( click here for Google translation to English)
but specs do look interesting, especially the matte screen (note that translation is bad, the source text says "reflex free" ie anti-reflective).

I haven't been able to find info on the display technology (TN/IPS etc) or max brightness. Anybody has info about this?

 

The Z30t-A is now also mentioned on Notebookcheck (German):
http://www.notebookcheck.com/Busine...-Z30t-A-mit-LTE-und-Touchscreen.118101.0.html
and seems to be identical to the Z30A except for the touchscreen and weight (1.36kg instead of 1.20kg):
http://www.notebookcheck.com/Busine...-neue-Portege-Z30-und-Tecra-Z40.115977.0.html

I pulled the trigger and bought the Z30t-A, nice machine! The display has nice colors which seems to confirm the stated IPS technology, but the brightness is unfortunately nothing special so I guess it's the same 265 nits as on the non-FHD Z30 model.

If you have any questions I'll try to answer them

 

Ok I already asked in the other Z30 thread but, Mike, could you tell hows the fan noise and battery life with the Z30t?
Many thanks for reply

 

Just like you I am quite concerned about noise. The Z30t is a mixed bag here; the system doesn't need much load to start the fan, but on the other hand the noise is quite subtle at least on the lower speeds. My impression is that it is set to start at a very low core temp (around ~45) so the ambient temp makes a big difference. It is summer here so with 25-26 degrees in the room the fan will run with even just a 10% continuous load on the cpu. Trying one night at 15 degrees it was silent most of the time. The fan will increase its speed in 7-8 steps reaching maximum at around 60 degrees core temp. Considering the cpu can run up to 100 degrees I would have preferred the fan algorithm to allow somewhat higher temps. Unfortunately Speedfan can not stop the fan from running, I have only managed to get Speedfan to start the fan when it is not supposed to run, not the other way around.
So to summarize this point: I am very sensitive to noise, I wish the fan would run less often, but I can tolerate the fairly low noise.

Battery life feels good. I have configured the battery to only charge to 80% (to extend its life) and I have worked with wifi and full screen brightness for maybe 3-4 hrs with still some to go. I haven't yet run to the bottom though and I'm not a heavy full-day-on-battery user so sorry if this isn't enough details for you.

Other things worth mentioning that come to mind:

The speakers sounded really terrible on first use. Any hint of bass would cause a distorted clicking/popping sound so I actually thought the speakers were broken. Eventually I found the control panel for the DTS sound effects and disabling bass enhancement fixed the problem. Digital breakdown ;-)
Bass is quite thin but the overall sound has good clarity and level so there's no problem being several people watching film or video. Speakers are directed towards you (and not towards the desk) which may have an advantage.

I really like the feel of the touchpad and its configurability. I'm using two-finger scrolling, have disabled scroll zones and enabled momentum movement which makes it feel more like a mobile device.

 

Mike, thank you for the detailed response, highly appreciated! I am quite surprised it kicks in so early (45 degrees is really not much). If Speedfan does not work, you could try Notebook hardware control if that works.
I have read somewhere on the internet that there should be a way to adjust the temperature settings in the advanced power settings (no further details stated). That should allow to set them up to kick like 5-10 degrees higher. Could you try to have a look? There should be a way to adjust the temps when the fans kick in.

 

Notebook Hardware Control (NHC) seems nice but looking at its homepage http://www.pbus-167.com/ it seems the project is abandoned? No updates since 2010 and there is only a 32-bit version. They specifically say it doesn't work on 64-bit Windows which is what is installed on the Z30t.

Yes, there is a Toshiba-added adjustment in advanced power settings with three alternatives. They are basically:
1) Keep the system as cool as possible which means the fan runs a lot.
2) Run the fan only when needed.
3) Throttle the CPU to save energy, which means the fan runs less often.
The system is more quiet in (3) but there the cpu never runs at its full speed (max 2.0 instead of 2.6GHz) so I use (2).

 

Hmm, thats interesting. That might be it - the 3 alternatives. It seems the only way to keep the system quiet is to opt for (3). For my personal needs (3) would probably be ok for most of the time (unless I would need to do some high performance tasks). However I dont know what is your usual work on your laptop.
Could you please try something? When you run the computer and do some pure web browsing on wifi, how long does it take for the fan to kick in for the first time? Is it like 20 mins, 1 or 2 hours...? And how quickly can it get quiet again (like it is cooling just for 20 seconds or running continuously for a few minutes).
I know it may sound fussy but I would really appreciate it

About the NHC - you are right, the project is abandoned, however it helped me with my previous Asus laptop to get it quiet (I was able to turn down the fan speed which was not otherwise possible). It was even able to tell me how fast is the fan spinning (in RPM). Very useful (there is a huge difference if the fan runs 1900 rpm vs. 2800 vs. 3800 rpm). The first speed (1900) was like a sound of HDD drive spinning, the third speed (3800 rpm) was like a boeing I thought the NHC may be helpful here, but we have to look somewhere else.

How do you find the IPS screen? Does it have good colours, viewing angles and brightness? Good you have found a way to adjust the speakers. I like the way the laptop is balanced with many stuff - like docking possibility, fingerprint reader, good build quality, battery life time.

 

Web+wifi tests:
I'll be happy to run the fan tests but it'll probably be better if I do it later. I've done a lot of changes in the configuration, uninstalled Toshiba software to test things etc, so currently the machine is in an unknown state. When I get some more time next week I'll do a factory reset and start over from a fresh install. I'm planning to try my fan control tweaks again with a vanilla non-Toshiba install. I may even try Windows 32-bit to test NHC.
Remind me if I haven't come back on this within 10 days

Fan noise and hacking:
HwInfo has been able to measure the speed of the fan. If it is correct, the speed ranges from 3600 to 6000 (hm, or maybe it was maxing out at 7000, can't measure it right now). So even the lowest speed does have a faint whistling sound that could annoy you in a very quiet surrounding. There is a big difference in sound level between the lowest and highest rpm.
I have a few ideas on how the fan could be controlled:
1) Find the Embedded Controller registers that control the speed (I have looked but not found anything so far)
2) Hack and override the ACPI DSDT (the fan levels are not defined in the DSDT but I've tested to override the temp calculation of the Thermal Zone, so far without success)
3) Find and trace device system calls to control the fan (haven't tried)
Please add to this list if you find something!

Screen:
The IPS screen has nice colors and viewing angles. It's quite nice to watch videos even when you are several people. To me there are only two fairly small issues: 1) a higher max brightness would have been good for outdoor use, now it's fine for outdoor in the shade but gets a little hard in direct sunlight. 2) the matte screen is sort of semi-matte - you can still see "fuzzy" shapes being reflected but it is of course much better than a fully glossy screen.
The touchscreen surface has a nice feeling, somehow the matte surface makes my finger "stick" less than what a glossy/glassy surface does.

Like you say this machine is one of the few to put all nice features together; matte screen, dedicated pgup/dn/home/end keys, ethernet port, 4g, dock with DisplayPort to drive multiple screens.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience Mike.
I have found a program, that could help - it is call Notebook Fan Control (NBFC) - could be downloaded here:
NoteBook FanControl (NBFC)
However it doesnt provide the controlling commands (config files) for the Z30. But it could be programmed using config files for different models (I think) or the instructions provided by the author of the program. Some people reported it solved their issues with different laptops and were able to force the fan to kick in only when reaching for example 60 C.
I remember it was the same tweak that NHC was using earlier - you also needed to be "on list" or tried some config files how they work (or program them yourself). Luckily one of the config files worked for my Asus F3Jc and made it much more quiet than before So there is no need to try that, the NBFC is probably a more uptodate solution.

Making a fresh Win install is a good idea too, I think (who likes bloatware?) and it could also save up some battery.
How your FHD screen set? At 100% or 125% dpi?

 

I installed NBFC and can see there is no Toshiba profile. I read the docs on how to create your own profile and they recommend RwEverything, which is actually the same tool I tried when examining the EmbeddedController alternative mentioned earlier. I was following the advice here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/tos...ol-toshiba-laptop-fan-speed-rw-everythin.html

Unfortunately RWE hangs on the EC so I wasn't able to get very far. I also tried ACFanControl (made for Acer) that can read EC registers but my impression is that it returned garbage on the Z30. I plan to retest these tools once I do the vanilla install, maybe some software is interfering.
RWE did decompile the ACPI code and I could find some fan-related info and even variables that seem to relate to the EC, but I haven't been able to decipher what addresses they map to. Maybe someone more experienced in ACPI code could interpret it better.
Once we can find the parameters to control the fan, NBFC looks like a fine tool to use!

I'm running my screen at FHD 100% dpi and this works fine for me for all Windows text. I tend to zoom web pages a step or two in Firefox, I guess many sites use a somewhat smaller base font.

A couple of updates to what I've said previously:
Viewing angles: while I think it's far better than on some other laptops I've had, there is a clear decrease in brightness (30%?) outside the mid 80 dregrees sideways.
Fan on/off: ambient temps have been around 28-30 degrees today and then the fan is constantly on even at idle, so it seems it would make a lot of sense to shift fan response upwards about 15-20 degrees...

 

I was trying to decide between following models of Z30 - 1366 and 1900 resolution. Is 1900 resolution brigher and more vivid ? Also my current laptop is 1366 resolution and concerned that 1900 resolution will make fonts too small ? Have you comne across scaling issue when you increase items ? Also does 1366 resolution looked too washed out on z30 ?

 

I can only speak for the Full HD model which is the one I own. The way I understood it, the 1366 model has a TN display with less brightness and dull colors, in contrast to the IPS display on the Full HD model. If this is true, I would never choose the 1366 model.
So far I've been using my Full HD on 100% DPI so can't say anything about Windows scaling. From previous experience I think you could expect some distorted icons in apps that only include low-res imagery.
I enlarge web pages one or two steps though, and that doesn't cause any scaling artefacts.

 

Thanks for detailed reply. Do the desktop icons and menus look too small, given the high resolution ? Also is the 1900 screen IPS, on Toshiba US page it mentions only 1900 TFT LED screen ?

It you try using chrome browser, I am told that has either scaling issues or the menu becomes very tiny is no scaling is used (the text can be enlarged using zoom settings).

 

Icons and menus:
They don't look too small to me, but I'm sure some people will think they do as they are on the small side. It is impossible to speak for someone else.

IPS or TN has been discussed here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/toshiba/751925-2014-toshiba-port-g-z30-haswell-fullhd-ips-panel.html

Chrome:
I think you should ask Chrome questions in a thread or forum about Chrome. In this case you can easily try it yourself by adjusting your own Windows DPI settings.