Toshiba Portege Z830 Hands-On: Light Weight, Great Looks

Toshiba’s Portege Z830 ultrabook has been everywhere at this year’s Intel Developers Forum. On day one, we spied a Z830 sitting on stage during CEO Paul Otellini’s keynote. During day two’s keynote, Intel VP Mooley Eden brandished the Z830 as an example of a good-looking ultrabook. 

We caught up with the 13-inch system in the IDF Ultrabook Pavillion, where it was being used to demonstrate Intel’s new Pair and Share media streaming technology. We didn’t get a chance to do any real work on the demo model, but we were struck by the system’s sleek, business-first looks and its svelte 2.45-pound, 0.63-inch thick design. 

Unlike the ASUS UX31 we saw, the Portege Z830′s screen is just the standard 1366 x 768 resolution, and the SSD we saw on the demo model was a miniscule 32GB, though we doubt this small of a capacity would be used on a real shipping product. Another key difference between the Z830 and the UX31 is the former’s traditional touchpad, which features two discrete buttons with a fingerprint reader in between them as opposed to the buttonless clickpad on the UX31.

We look forward to doing a full review of the Toshiba Portege Z830 when it comes out later this year, but for now check out our brief hands-on video and gallery below.