Toshiba Portege M780-S7230
Tuesday 13 July 2010
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The good: Responsive touch controls; fast Core i5 processor; lightweight for its size.
The bad: Has an unattractive bulky, old-fashioned design; battery life falls short; no multitouch in tablet mode; Windows 7 touch environment still leaves much to be desired.
The bottom line: In a post-iPad era, Toshiba's expensive and needlessly bulky Portege M780 is a convertible tablet notebook that feels like a design relic from five years ago.
Four years ago, CNET reviewed the Toshiba Portege M400, a convertible tablet laptop that was the first of its kind with a Core 2 Duo processor. Imagine our surprise in 2010 when we received the Portege M780, a Core i5 convertible laptop/tablet with pretty much exactly the same design.
For the princely sum of $1,699, the Portege M780 gives you a sturdy, medium-weight 12.1-inch computer with a firmly locking, capacitive-touch swiveling screen. However, you can get its Core i5 processor and medium-range specs for half the price with non-touch-screen laptops, and the M780's battery life is ... Expand full review
Four years ago, CNET reviewed the Toshiba Portege M400, a convertible tablet laptop that was the first of its kind with a Core 2 Duo processor. Imagine our surprise in 2010 when we received the Portege M780, a Core i5 convertible laptop/tablet with pretty much exactly the same design.
For the princely sum of $1,699, the Portege M780 gives you a sturdy, medium-weight 12.1-inch computer with a firmly locking, capacitive-touch swiveling screen. However, you can get its Core i5 processor and medium-range specs for half the price with non-touch-screen laptops, and the M780's battery life is not stellar.
In 2006, we said the extremely similar-looking Portege M400 laptop had a retro, boxy feel. Four years later, we now say that same look has an "absurdly thick, did-you-pull-this-laptop-out-of-your-basement" feel. Its design is a dull gray silver plastic with black matte plastic highlights around the square screen and keyboard that reeks of a half-decade ago, and the bottom half of this keyboard is far chunkier than any recent "ultraportable" laptop we've seen.
Clearly, this Portege is going after a more industrial corporate crowd akin to Panasonic's Toughbook market. The design and semirugged feel match the look of a Toughbook, but its lightweight plastic heft and slight flex we found on parts of the chassis suggest it has a less-than-rugged construction.
The Portege M780 favors physical buttons and wheels over function-key combos--there's a volume wheel on the front edge, but it has no max/min cut-offs and will spin infinitely until the on-board volume maxes. A row of confusing and small identical buttons below the convertible swivel-screen control power, screen orientation, and even includes an odd mini joystick for repositioning and minimizing open windows. It would have made more sense to convert this stick into a trackpoint.
To its credit, however, the old-fashioned and spill-resistant tapered keyboard on the M780 was one of the more comfortable typing experiences among recent laptops. Its key presses were slightly soft, but the key shape and positioning was generous and spacious. The small touch pad feels awkwardly designed; we wondered why Toshiba didn't simply make it bigger to use more of the available palm-rest space.
The Portege's matte-finish 12.1-inch screen has 1,280x800-pixel native resolution, making it one of the few modern laptop screens doesn't have a 16:9 aspect ratio. We like having a nonreflective screen surface over the highly-glossy glass displays we're often subjected to; however, the heavy touch-screen overlay on the Portege M780 gives images and Web pages a slightly cloudy, occluded look.
We really like the M780s touch-screen responsiveness. Using both direct-touch and the included pen-thick stylus, navigating with touch was both quick and accurate. Unfortunately, a Windows-based computing environment doesn't have icons or other interface elements suited for touch screen, making some controls difficult to use. The capacitive type of touch display the M780 uses creates a small focusing dot wherever your finger goes, which helps you pretrack your touch gesture a little. With the stylus, the dot focuses when the stylus is a few millimeters off the screen, allowing some prenavigation before pressing down and making contact. By pressing a small side button on the stylus, a right-click action can be initiated. However, the Portege doesn't support multitouch, so it could be jarring to anyone expecting easy pinch-to-zoom or two-finger scrolling. Flick-based scrolls seem to initiate preset scroll movements that act with a slight delay and don't feel organic.
The stereo speakers, located above the keyboard, were louder than we needed during video playback, and leaned towards treble-heavy, but they were better than average. The Webcam above the keyboard works in both laptop and tablet modes, and had resolution quality similar to other Toshiba Satellite laptops we've recently reviewed--fine for Web conferencing, passable for pictures.
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Toshiba packs a professional and wide array of into the Portege M780, including mini-FireWire, an e-SATA combo USB port, and a full-size ExpressCard slot. Toshiba didn't include an HDMI port, which makes sense as this is more of a small business machine, but with its speedy Core i5 processor, this M780 could have interfaced with an HDTV for video and streaming shows easily. Ports flank all four sides of the M780's thick base, which can make locating a desired port a bit of a head-scratcher. An included fingerprint reader could be an attractive add for business security.
The 3GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive are a little less than we'd expect for a $1,700 laptop--Toshiba could have bumped the hard drive to 500GB and the memory to 4GB. On the other hand, this Portege comes with 64-bit Windows 7 Professional.
On its Web site, Toshiba offers M780 configurations ranging from a Core i3 up to a Core i7 processor, and prices from $1,279 to $1,799. Our configuration is a fixed ordering option that's near the top of the pack.
The Core i5 processor at the heart of the M780 felt fast and responsive, and offers plenty of computing power for small businesses or even medium-to-heavy media users. Multitasking is a strength of Intel's new Core i-series processors, and we even found the touch interface to be one of the snappier ones we've tested. On the other hand, as we said, Windows 7 simply isn't designed with the icons or an interface that is ideal touch-screen experience.
Compared with the touch-organic iOS environment on an iPad, we found ourselves floundering at closing windows and scrolling through documents, and resorting to flipping back to keyboard access in laptop mode. A thick stylus tucks into the side of the Portege and works nicely, but there is no multitouch--actions such as scrolling are accomplished with awkward flick-gestures that worked intermittently. Considering this is probably at least half of how a potential buyer would intend to use their Portege M780-S7230, it makes for a compromised performance experience.
The Toshiba Portege M780-S7230 lasted 3 hours and 52 minutes on our video-playback battery drain test using its included six-cell battery. Battery performance less than three hours is usually our cut-off point for acceptability, so the M780 does edge up to a reasonable number; however, other ultraportables (to say nothing of the iPad) run laps around the Portege batterywise. An iPad is far from a fair comparison to a Core i5 laptop, but the gauntlet has been thrown: people want long battery life in touch-screen portables, and increasingly are going to expect it. Batteries that last less than 4 hours inevitably disappoints us. For business use environments such as warehouses or fulfillment centers, we could see this lack of all-day battery life becoming a hindrance.
The Toshiba Portege M780-S7230 is backed by an industry-standard, one-year warranty. Support is accessible 24-7 via a toll-free phone line, an online knowledge base, and a Web site with driver downloads.
The bad: Has an unattractive bulky, old-fashioned design; battery life falls short; no multitouch in tablet mode; Windows 7 touch environment still leaves much to be desired.
The bottom line: In a post-iPad era, Toshiba's expensive and needlessly bulky Portege M780 is a convertible tablet notebook that feels like a design relic from five years ago.
 |  |  |
Four years ago, CNET reviewed the Toshiba Portege M400, a convertible tablet laptop that was the first of its kind with a Core 2 Duo processor. Imagine our surprise in 2010 when we received the Portege M780, a Core i5 convertible laptop/tablet with pretty much exactly the same design.
For the princely sum of $1,699, the Portege M780 gives you a sturdy, medium-weight 12.1-inch computer with a firmly locking, capacitive-touch swiveling screen. However, you can get its Core i5 processor and medium-range specs for half the price with non-touch-screen laptops, and the M780's battery life is ... Expand full review
Four years ago, CNET reviewed the Toshiba Portege M400, a convertible tablet laptop that was the first of its kind with a Core 2 Duo processor. Imagine our surprise in 2010 when we received the Portege M780, a Core i5 convertible laptop/tablet with pretty much exactly the same design.
For the princely sum of $1,699, the Portege M780 gives you a sturdy, medium-weight 12.1-inch computer with a firmly locking, capacitive-touch swiveling screen. However, you can get its Core i5 processor and medium-range specs for half the price with non-touch-screen laptops, and the M780's battery life is not stellar.
| Price as reviewed | $1,699 |
| Processor | 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5 M520 |
| Memory | 3GB DDR3 RAM, 1,066MHz |
| Hard drive | 250GB 5,400rpm |
| Chipset | Intel HM55 |
| Graphics | Intel Media Accelerator HD |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) |
| Dimensions (WD) | 12.0x9.4 inches |
| Height | 1.5 inches |
| Screen size (diagonal) | 12.1 inches |
| System weight / Weight with AC adapter | 4.4/5.4 pounds |
| Category | Ultraportable |
In 2006, we said the extremely similar-looking Portege M400 laptop had a retro, boxy feel. Four years later, we now say that same look has an "absurdly thick, did-you-pull-this-laptop-out-of-your-basement" feel. Its design is a dull gray silver plastic with black matte plastic highlights around the square screen and keyboard that reeks of a half-decade ago, and the bottom half of this keyboard is far chunkier than any recent "ultraportable" laptop we've seen.
Clearly, this Portege is going after a more industrial corporate crowd akin to Panasonic's Toughbook market. The design and semirugged feel match the look of a Toughbook, but its lightweight plastic heft and slight flex we found on parts of the chassis suggest it has a less-than-rugged construction.
The Portege M780 favors physical buttons and wheels over function-key combos--there's a volume wheel on the front edge, but it has no max/min cut-offs and will spin infinitely until the on-board volume maxes. A row of confusing and small identical buttons below the convertible swivel-screen control power, screen orientation, and even includes an odd mini joystick for repositioning and minimizing open windows. It would have made more sense to convert this stick into a trackpoint.
To its credit, however, the old-fashioned and spill-resistant tapered keyboard on the M780 was one of the more comfortable typing experiences among recent laptops. Its key presses were slightly soft, but the key shape and positioning was generous and spacious. The small touch pad feels awkwardly designed; we wondered why Toshiba didn't simply make it bigger to use more of the available palm-rest space.
The Portege's matte-finish 12.1-inch screen has 1,280x800-pixel native resolution, making it one of the few modern laptop screens doesn't have a 16:9 aspect ratio. We like having a nonreflective screen surface over the highly-glossy glass displays we're often subjected to; however, the heavy touch-screen overlay on the Portege M780 gives images and Web pages a slightly cloudy, occluded look.
We really like the M780s touch-screen responsiveness. Using both direct-touch and the included pen-thick stylus, navigating with touch was both quick and accurate. Unfortunately, a Windows-based computing environment doesn't have icons or other interface elements suited for touch screen, making some controls difficult to use. The capacitive type of touch display the M780 uses creates a small focusing dot wherever your finger goes, which helps you pretrack your touch gesture a little. With the stylus, the dot focuses when the stylus is a few millimeters off the screen, allowing some prenavigation before pressing down and making contact. By pressing a small side button on the stylus, a right-click action can be initiated. However, the Portege doesn't support multitouch, so it could be jarring to anyone expecting easy pinch-to-zoom or two-finger scrolling. Flick-based scrolls seem to initiate preset scroll movements that act with a slight delay and don't feel organic.
The stereo speakers, located above the keyboard, were louder than we needed during video playback, and leaned towards treble-heavy, but they were better than average. The Webcam above the keyboard works in both laptop and tablet modes, and had resolution quality similar to other Toshiba Satellite laptops we've recently reviewed--fine for Web conferencing, passable for pictures.
v class="u2" style="width: 389px; text-align: left; padding-bottom: 3px;">
| Toshiba Portege M780-S7230 | Average for category [ultraportable] | |
| Video | VGA | VGA plus HDMI or DisplayPort |
| Audio | Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks | Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks |
| Data | 3 USB 2.0 (1 with eSATA/sleep-and-charge), SD card reader, mini-Firewire | 3 USB 2.0, SD card reader |
| Expansion | ExpressCard/54, docking connector | None |
| Networking | Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth | Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional mobile broadband |
| Optical drive | DVD burner | None |
Toshiba packs a professional and wide array of into the Portege M780, including mini-FireWire, an e-SATA combo USB port, and a full-size ExpressCard slot. Toshiba didn't include an HDMI port, which makes sense as this is more of a small business machine, but with its speedy Core i5 processor, this M780 could have interfaced with an HDTV for video and streaming shows easily. Ports flank all four sides of the M780's thick base, which can make locating a desired port a bit of a head-scratcher. An included fingerprint reader could be an attractive add for business security.
The 3GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive are a little less than we'd expect for a $1,700 laptop--Toshiba could have bumped the hard drive to 500GB and the memory to 4GB. On the other hand, this Portege comes with 64-bit Windows 7 Professional.
On its Web site, Toshiba offers M780 configurations ranging from a Core i3 up to a Core i7 processor, and prices from $1,279 to $1,799. Our configuration is a fixed ordering option that's near the top of the pack.
The Core i5 processor at the heart of the M780 felt fast and responsive, and offers plenty of computing power for small businesses or even medium-to-heavy media users. Multitasking is a strength of Intel's new Core i-series processors, and we even found the touch interface to be one of the snappier ones we've tested. On the other hand, as we said, Windows 7 simply isn't designed with the icons or an interface that is ideal touch-screen experience.
Multimedia multitasking test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
HP Pavilion dm4-1003
680
Toshiba Portege M780-S7230
726
Adobe Photoshop CS3 image-processing test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Toshiba Portege M780-S7230
122
HP Pavilion dm4-1003
126
Apple iTunes encoding test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Toshiba Portege M780-S7230
139
HP Pavilion dm4-1003
140
Video playback battery drain test (in minutes)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
HP Pavilion dm4-1003
261
Toshiba Portege M780-S7230
232
Compared with the touch-organic iOS environment on an iPad, we found ourselves floundering at closing windows and scrolling through documents, and resorting to flipping back to keyboard access in laptop mode. A thick stylus tucks into the side of the Portege and works nicely, but there is no multitouch--actions such as scrolling are accomplished with awkward flick-gestures that worked intermittently. Considering this is probably at least half of how a potential buyer would intend to use their Portege M780-S7230, it makes for a compromised performance experience.
 Juice box | |
| Toshiba Portege M780-S7230 | Average watts per hour |
| Off | 0.74 |
| Sleep | 0.96 |
| Idle | 10.82 |
| Load | 46.11 |
| Raw kWh | 48.62 |
| Annual power consumption cost | $5.52 |
Annual power consumption cost
HP Pavilion dm4-1003
$4.75
Toshiba Portege M780-S7230
$5.52
The Toshiba Portege M780-S7230 lasted 3 hours and 52 minutes on our video-playback battery drain test using its included six-cell battery. Battery performance less than three hours is usually our cut-off point for acceptability, so the M780 does edge up to a reasonable number; however, other ultraportables (to say nothing of the iPad) run laps around the Portege batterywise. An iPad is far from a fair comparison to a Core i5 laptop, but the gauntlet has been thrown: people want long battery life in touch-screen portables, and increasingly are going to expect it. Batteries that last less than 4 hours inevitably disappoints us. For business use environments such as warehouses or fulfillment centers, we could see this lack of all-day battery life becoming a hindrance.
The Toshiba Portege M780-S7230 is backed by an industry-standard, one-year warranty. Support is accessible 24-7 via a toll-free phone line, an online knowledge base, and a Web site with driver downloads.
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