Toshiba Tecra R10 business laptop

Toshiba and business go well together, they make business line notebooks at a very competitive business price. We recently got our hands on the Tecra R10 from Toshiba and put it through the paces that any professional might want or need to do. It takes some design cues from the more expensive, consumer oriented Portege R600, but still features a simple ‘business class’ design. Despite being ‘business’ oriented, Toshiba was kind enough to pack it full of features, including a discrete Nvidia Quadro NVS 150M graphics processor with 128MB of dedicated memory. Let’s dive in and take a look at Toshiba’s Tecra R10.

Toshiba Tecra R10 business laptop review

Overview

Toshiba and business go well together, they make business line notebooks at a very competitive business price. We recently got our hands on the Tecra R10 from Toshiba and put it through the paces that any professional might want or need to do. It takes some design cues from the more expensive, consumer oriented Portege R600, but still features a simple ‘business class’ design. Despite being ‘business’ oriented, Toshiba was kind enough to pack it full of features, including a discrete Nvidia Quadro NVS 150M graphics processor with 128MB of dedicated memory. Let’s dive in and take a look at Toshiba’s Tecra R10.

Design

Classy. Simple. Uncluttered. There isn't anything on the Tecra I found overly annoying. There's no god-awful piercing LED lightups, there's no silly speaker adornments - it keeps it simple. Heck, even the power button is simple and doesn't light up, something I haven't seen for a while now; that is truly old school, and I like it.

The sleek tapered design for the LCD lid is welcome, it adds a very nice touch of eco-modernism to the design. The laptop itself is pretty thin as well and being clad in an aluminum-like paint scheme, it's not quite Tuxedo overkill for business, but what I'd call well dressed business casual. Upon opening the Tecra R10, you will find an ample palm rest and a matte black bezel surrounding the LCD. About the only thing that comes close to annoying is the mouse keys which are plastic chromed, which collects fingerprints but is not the worst we've seen on recent laptops. Kudos are deserved for matching the keyboard to the same color as the laptop as well - and only having 4 small stickers adorning the keypad.

Size and Weight

The Tecra is Toshiba’s business oriented thinner and lighter lineup, and it does an outstanding job at maintaining that image. It's not as thin as they come and it's not the featherweight champion, but I didn't have any issues picking up this 4.3 lb 14.1 inch laptop. Less than 5 lb is key for me and having both an integrated optical drive and decent sized screen while staying light is a testament to Toshiba’s engineers. It feels sturdy when you pick it up - and no supermodel dimensions adorn it as it is a bit bigger at 13.3×9.9×1.1-inches

Keyboard

A laptop with a bad keyboard might as well be a bicycle with square wheels. The Tecra R10's keyboard does a good job of keeping up to the task of being responsive, tactile, and quiet yet firm It did suffer a bit of flex when I observed my stubby nubs pounding at the nice sized keys, but it is acceptable and the 85 keys with nice spacing are appreciated. No fancy backlighting, no fancy numberpad - the keyboard works as it should. I can't complain about the layout - it all seems simple and very thought out, except the left side. I'm not sure why they chose to have the power button and quicklaunch / info buttons on the left instead of the top, but I think they should have moved them there and made even more room for this nice keyboard.

I love that if you press the CapsLock key has an LED that lights up to let you know when it is activated, taking the confusion away if you’re typing in the dark. The simple Toshiba Quicklaunch key beneath the power button is also very subtle, yet I found it strangely awesome and effective (albeit in the wrong place in my opinion). One tap and you have all your business vitals at your finger tip to enable / disable. Having page up and page down right next to the arrow keys was almost a hit and miss affair, but as soon as I got used to them, they were awesome to have available for quick scrolling and not having to wonder what combination or key I need to hit to get down that 100 page document awaiting my calling (income taxes anyone?). I guess if you had to nit-pick and use them a lot like I do, then it’s fair to note that home and end are in somewhat illogical places and require a Fn key command. Well, you can't win them all.

Touchpad

If I had to name my biggest beef about laptops in general, it's with trackpads - some are good, some are horrible, and some are ok. Very rarely do we get a "very good" trackpad - and unfortunately, the R10 doesn't get that award. There was too much lag with the cursor for my taste and it is turned off when the system is put into sleep mode, making it a 3-4 second delay to get things going. The buttons are relatively quiet and offer good feedback however, hundreds times better than the E105 buttons I reviewed.

Display Quality

Instant notice - we're not in the frizzled consumer crowd - no, this Tecra sports a matte screen. Although the colors may not be as rich, I prefer matte screens for business use as it cuts down annoying glare considerably, and at 1280x800 resolution, you get a good bang for the buck for pixels in this 14.1" widescreen. The brightness was more than enough, though I wish there were a bit more steps in the lighting scheme as I noticed a very drastic change from 50% to 60% brightness. I would say, if you have a lamp nearby (like I do now) you could type relatively easily on about 30% brightness. Pumping it up to 100% after that was almost like stabbing my eyes as it was very, very bright; however it will be needed if battling a sunlit bus/train/plane/car ride. Color washout wasn't too bad and horizontal viewing angles were much better than expected. The top of the LCD bezel is a bit bigger than I'd want, but understandable because it's tapered and houses the 1.3MP webcam, which is perfect for Skype business chats. I do have a bit of beef with the hinges on the R10, as they are quite big and a bit bulky, but they felt sturdy enough and didn't offer much flex.

Connectivity

The Tecra R10 is pretty well stacked for connectivity, about on par for the business thin & light class. In particular, I have always LOVED the hardware scroll dial for the volume - keep it up Toshiba!

The left side houses a VGA port, 2 USB 2.0 Ports (one also doubles as an eSATA connection), lock slot, mic input, headphone output, and that awesome volume dial.

The front is simple, a lone SD card reader. Unfortunately it is not a multi-card reader, but SD is very widely used today from digital cameras to cell phones to GPS.

The right side features the optical drive, wireless switch, another USB port, ethernet port, and power port...but wait, cleverly hidden is an ExpressCard slot as well! Nice!

The rear is as simple as I like it, with nothing there. And for good reason as the LCD hinges push the LCD down to cover that area when in use, making any ports there inaccessible.

Performance

If you would like to read more about our testing methdology, please see here.

Windows Vista Experience Score

Processor	5.2
Memory	5.9
Graphics	4.4
Gaming Graphics	5.1
Primary Hard Disk	5.7

The scores here are all very respectable for a thin & light machine, reflecting our good performance impressions of the machine.

PCMark Vantage Pro

Toshiba Tecra R10	3546
Lenovo ThinkPad T400	3746
HP Pavilion HDX16	3320
Lenovo ThinkPad X301	3308
Sony VAIO FW270j	3235

Toshiba's well loaded machine competes well on this benchmark, thanks to its hefty amount of memory and speedy hard drive.

3DMark Vantage
We were unable to run 3DmarkVantage on this laptop. Although it can run a 1280x800 resolution, it could not generate the 1280x1024 resolution the benchmark required.

Worldbench 6

Toshiba Tecra R10	98
Lenovo ThinkPad T400	91
Toshiba Satellite E105	83
HP Pavilion HDX16	80
Sony VAIO FW270j	74

The Tecra R10 performed a surprise move here, besting even the ThinkPad T400.

Battery Life

Regular Use Battery Life

Runtime in minutes
Toshiba Tecra R10	230
Lenovo ThinkPad T400	334
Lenovo ThinkPad X301	235
HP Pavilion HDX16	156
Sony VAIO FW270j	181

DVD Playback

Runtime in minutes
Toshiba Tecra R10	113
Asus G50	80
Toshiba Satellite E105	83
HP Pavilion HDX16	80
Sony VAIO FW270j	74

We ran the daily battery test strain using a constant stream of audio files and video files as well as basic word documents and internet browsing. It stayed alive for a respectable 3 hours and 50 minutes, but dropped to just under 2 hours when playing a DVD. This isn't terribly impressive for normal usage, or compared to the competition, but do keep in mind the Tecra R10 has almost a full pound advantage in weight over models like the Lenovo ThinkPad T400.

Conclusion

At a price tickling the $1500 mark, the Tecra R10 is a bit more spendy than a close competitor like the Lenovo ThinkPad T400. It packs business class looks and comes loaded with almost everything you might need. While it may not be a lean and mean 12 or 13.3 inch form factor, the R10 is a very competitive with its 4.3 lb, 14.1 inch frame. Is it a bit more expensive than others hitting the mark? Yes - but I feel it's a very good contendor to the Sony's and Macbooks out there to carry a good brand following from Toshiba.

It plays fairly well on the road, has business casual looks, and performs like an rockstar at the superbowl halftime show. I'm not sold on the harddrive space, and it could do justice for a slightly better resolution to match it's dedicated GPU. I suppose just make sure to keep a spare battery or power outlet nearby and I'd be safe to guess you'll stay productive - and if you planned on purchasing this unit for playing DVD's...you better tell your boss that before complaining to me about it.