Toshiba Tecra M11
Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 9:14 am
This is a little gem in the laptop world I would think, for many many reasons. I'll probably add/edit this several times as I use the laptop more and more over time.
Lets start out with before you even open it up. The laptop is plastic, just like many others, and in all honesty, probably isn't the most durable thing, but it's not terrible. Having carried it around in my backpack for a couple days now between several textbooks and my other laptop, it's been holding up fine, with no indication that it's under too much pressure or about to break anywhere.
It has 3x USB, 1x eSATA which is combined with a USB port, power in, a DVD+/-RW drive, a basic keyboard, VGA output, ethernet, modem, Express 34, headphone out, line in, and actually a couple ports I have yet to figure out what they go to. I only have the laptop itself and the power adapter, no manual, and I haven't really felt compelled enough to look it up, because it's not any more complicated than any other laptop I've used. On the lid it clearly says Toshiba in chrome lettering, and does look pretty nice if I have to be honest.
The screen is a 13.3" LED backlit, which has a resolution of 1366x768, which is a bit small, considering the internals sport a Core i7 and 8gb DDR3, but you can't have everything, right? The screen is bright enough to use indoors and outdoors, and has a matte finish (at least what I have) so there's no glare problem. The ports seem to be somewhat logically placed around the laptop, a USB port on each side, and one on the back, with the ethernet, modem and VGA on the back. It also sports an SD Card slot on the front, which gets the job done with every SD card I've put into it, from 64mb to 16gb. Transfer speeds over USB seemed somewhat sluggish to be perfectly honest, but I believe it may have been the age of the media I had been using.
Overall the laptop serves its purpose well, and it is the business line, so there are some features that a laptop in it's price range should do, that it doesn't, such as HDMI output, which is seemingly universal on laptops now. The small screen resolution is not hard to work on, but for a $3000 laptop, I would expect a slightly better resolution, as my 5 year old MacBook Pro sports a better resolution (not by much, but every little bit counts sometimes).
The laptop has a Solid State option, however I only have the 320gb Hitachi drive, which does run somewhat warm, however is very quiet. For a Core i7, it runs surprisingly cool, and sips energy. In the Toshiba "eco" mode, the laptop was easily idling at 14/15W, with an external drive plugged in. While transferring data or actually using the laptop for some basic work, the usage in the eco mode had made it's way to ~25W, however it did not seem to sacrifice much performance. Battery life is definitely as high as 6-7 hours depending on usage, but with regular power settings, no eco mode, and even screen brightness set halfway, the battery usage is still close to 4 hours.
The fan is very quiet, though not silent. I could easily tell when the laptop had the fan on to cool it off, however the sound was not obtrusive in any way, and easily mixed in with the background noises where I was.
The features are relatively basic, and the laptop is no-frills, but it does a very good job at what it is, which is the important part. Personally, having set everything I need for school on my MacBook Pro, switching over to the Toshiba isn't going to happen, as the MacBook Pro offers me a backlit keyboard, a larger screen, and everything I've used for the past couple years on it, but that doesn't mean the Toshiba is going to sit on the shelf. Being much faster than the Core Duo inside the MacBook Pro, the Toshiba will be the travelling DAW when doing large mobile sets, so that I can keep those things isolated.
Overall, I'm satisfied by the performance of the laptop, and if someone were looking for a business/work laptop in the performance range, I would suggest this one. It doesn't look desirable, so from the aspect of carrying it around with you, it doesn't seem like it would be a target, it's not flashy, and resembles older laptops in a sense. It's more than capable of doing the job, and has plenty of power on tap. The screen could be better, but as with all laptops, there are hardware limitations. The battery gets very good life, and it works out pretty well, so no complaints.
8/10 for this fine laptop, although I have to say, there are few people who would ever really need a laptop with the power that this one has.
Lets start out with before you even open it up. The laptop is plastic, just like many others, and in all honesty, probably isn't the most durable thing, but it's not terrible. Having carried it around in my backpack for a couple days now between several textbooks and my other laptop, it's been holding up fine, with no indication that it's under too much pressure or about to break anywhere.
It has 3x USB, 1x eSATA which is combined with a USB port, power in, a DVD+/-RW drive, a basic keyboard, VGA output, ethernet, modem, Express 34, headphone out, line in, and actually a couple ports I have yet to figure out what they go to. I only have the laptop itself and the power adapter, no manual, and I haven't really felt compelled enough to look it up, because it's not any more complicated than any other laptop I've used. On the lid it clearly says Toshiba in chrome lettering, and does look pretty nice if I have to be honest.
The screen is a 13.3" LED backlit, which has a resolution of 1366x768, which is a bit small, considering the internals sport a Core i7 and 8gb DDR3, but you can't have everything, right? The screen is bright enough to use indoors and outdoors, and has a matte finish (at least what I have) so there's no glare problem. The ports seem to be somewhat logically placed around the laptop, a USB port on each side, and one on the back, with the ethernet, modem and VGA on the back. It also sports an SD Card slot on the front, which gets the job done with every SD card I've put into it, from 64mb to 16gb. Transfer speeds over USB seemed somewhat sluggish to be perfectly honest, but I believe it may have been the age of the media I had been using.
Overall the laptop serves its purpose well, and it is the business line, so there are some features that a laptop in it's price range should do, that it doesn't, such as HDMI output, which is seemingly universal on laptops now. The small screen resolution is not hard to work on, but for a $3000 laptop, I would expect a slightly better resolution, as my 5 year old MacBook Pro sports a better resolution (not by much, but every little bit counts sometimes).
The laptop has a Solid State option, however I only have the 320gb Hitachi drive, which does run somewhat warm, however is very quiet. For a Core i7, it runs surprisingly cool, and sips energy. In the Toshiba "eco" mode, the laptop was easily idling at 14/15W, with an external drive plugged in. While transferring data or actually using the laptop for some basic work, the usage in the eco mode had made it's way to ~25W, however it did not seem to sacrifice much performance. Battery life is definitely as high as 6-7 hours depending on usage, but with regular power settings, no eco mode, and even screen brightness set halfway, the battery usage is still close to 4 hours.
The fan is very quiet, though not silent. I could easily tell when the laptop had the fan on to cool it off, however the sound was not obtrusive in any way, and easily mixed in with the background noises where I was.
The features are relatively basic, and the laptop is no-frills, but it does a very good job at what it is, which is the important part. Personally, having set everything I need for school on my MacBook Pro, switching over to the Toshiba isn't going to happen, as the MacBook Pro offers me a backlit keyboard, a larger screen, and everything I've used for the past couple years on it, but that doesn't mean the Toshiba is going to sit on the shelf. Being much faster than the Core Duo inside the MacBook Pro, the Toshiba will be the travelling DAW when doing large mobile sets, so that I can keep those things isolated.
Overall, I'm satisfied by the performance of the laptop, and if someone were looking for a business/work laptop in the performance range, I would suggest this one. It doesn't look desirable, so from the aspect of carrying it around with you, it doesn't seem like it would be a target, it's not flashy, and resembles older laptops in a sense. It's more than capable of doing the job, and has plenty of power on tap. The screen could be better, but as with all laptops, there are hardware limitations. The battery gets very good life, and it works out pretty well, so no complaints.
8/10 for this fine laptop, although I have to say, there are few people who would ever really need a laptop with the power that this one has.