A look at the Toshiba Portégé R830 laptop and the firm's plans

JAPANESE ELECTRONICS MAKER Toshiba came to The INQUIRER towers today to give us a closer look at its Portégé R830 laptop and some insight into the PC market's future.

Toshiba senior product manager Ken Chan showed us the R830 and dubbed it the company's "Hero Product", telling us, "We've put everything we know about a PC into this product."

Chan told us that the R series of Toshiba laptops has six key strengths and said those are that they are thinner, lighter, faster, stronger, smarter and easier.

For starters the R830, which is priced from £949, looks very smart with its brushed magnesium alloy chassis and it's certainly light, weighing just 1.5kg, 630g lighter than Apple's white Macbook.

It's suitable to compare it to the Macbook as the R830 has a 13.3in screen. We like the LED display on the Toshiba, which has 1366x768 resolution. It is also non-reflective, which might not look as glamorous as a glossy screen but provides a much better experience for the user.

Toshiba has included support for both e-SATA and USB 3.0 to cover both formats, but Chan gave us his opinion, saying, "Now that we have USB 3.0 there is no need for e-SATA."

Mobility is where it's at with the R830, with its size, weight and impressive hardware including an Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor. Toshiba also touts a notable 10 hour battery life, which will definitely help if you're taking the laptop out and about.

We asked Chan what he thought about the growing tablet market, which is threatening the laptop market. He answered, "Everyone wants to go and be the next Ipad and to grab a slice of this new market."

We really like products such as the Asus Transformer that combine the content consumption strength of tablets with addressing content creation by adding something like a keyboard dock, so we asked if he thinks the laptop market will be threatened by these kinds of devices.

He told us, "You still can't beat the input device and I can't see that disappearing." He backed up this claim by showing us the consistent sales figures of laptops. He also said, "Over the next six to nine months the playing field will be clearer." And, he added, "We're trying to pick the right horse."

So it seems that Toshiba is taking its time before jumping into the tablet market, intending to study the market so that it can create the right device. Maybe we'll see it announce that within the next few months. µ