Holiday Gift Guide: Computers Of All Kinds

9. Toshiba Portege Z830

This holiday season is an exciting time if you're interested in buying a new laptop. Ultrabooks are finally here, there are plenty of great gaming laptops to choose from, and there's always a smattering of other interesting computers, too.

The trendy, techie powers-that-be really want to make “Ultrabook” happen this season. You’ve heard the descriptions of these semi-affordable skinny machines, and while they do sound far better than that passé Netbook trend, you think “Ultrabook” is really just another word for “MacBook Air competitor.” Mostly, you’re right.

Toshiba, however, was making “Ultrabooks” before the MacBook Air was even a twinkle in Apple’s eye. While the laptop marketing machine has been spreading the good news about Ultrabooks, Toshiba feels like it is preaching to the choir. The Portege line has roots in the R500—a 2007-vintage, 2.4 pound laptop that was .77 inches thick and even included a DVD drive. We remember testing that machine and marveling at its design.

So, when the Portege Z830 showed up on our doorstep, we can’t say we were surprised by its excellence: among this year’s crop of Ultrabooks, it is the lightest 13-incher (2.47 lbs), sports one of the best battery endurance ratings in this weight class, and has the most ports (including USB 3.0, 2x 2.0, SD slot, Gigabit Ethernet, VGA and HDMI), to boot, all for one of the best prices—it starts at $800 (Toshiba, why not throw in an optical drive here while you’re at it? No?  Nobody else is doing it, you say? Okay, fine.).

We’ll just come out and say it—while you’ll gawk longingly at other Ultrabooks on offer before the Holidays, this is the one you’re going to buy as a gift, if you’re going to buy one as a gift at all. And—we almost never say this—we think you should walk yourself into a Best Buy store to admire it in person and then pick one up. That’s because Best Buy has a specific model—the Z835—that is a full $80 cheaper than the comparable version from Toshiba’s site. There’s no reason not to save that cash.

This is not the flashiest or sexiest Ultrabook (see Asus and Lenovo in this article, for that). It’s a staid, matte, silver and black affair, dressed in featherweight magnesium alloy. Its style is conservative, efficient, and practical, but the form factor itself is what makes it hot—12.4 inches long by 8.9 inches wide, by 0.3-0.6 inches thick. For reference, the Macbook Air is 12.8 inches long by 8.9 inches wide by 0.1-0.7 inches thick (did Toshiba really just whoop Apple in the footprint game? Dang.).

The Z830 includes a fairly standard trackpad and keyboard—nothing to complain about. Toshiba says the keyboard is “spill resistant,” but we couldn’t bring ourselves to test that out. As an extra perk, Toshiba threw backlighting into the keyboard, which is a luxurious touch we’ve grown accustomed to in higher-end new laptops. Like all of Toshiba’s Porteges, the screen and housing is thin and flexy. This used to freak us out a little bit, but we’ve never seen one break in six years, so we think it is okay. The screen is matte—not glossy (relief!).

The internals on the Best Buy version we mentioned are pretty standard for this form factor, though by no means as fancy as you could get with one of the models that comes direct from Toshiba. Best Buy’s has a 1.4GHz Core i3-2367M CPU, 4GB of RAM, and the ubiquitous 128GB SSD. Go with Toshiba directly and you can get up to a Core i7-2667M, 6GB of RAM (same SSD), and a better battery. We don’t know about you, but we’re not sure we’d spring for the upgrade on this particular machine. Though it’d be more powerful, it would end up costing more than the cheapest MacBook Air, and for some reason that bugs us.