Toshiba Teases New Notebooks, Tablets
by Dustin Sklavos on April 11, 2012 3:59 AM ESTWe recently had a chance to take a meeting with Toshiba representatives in San Francisco, California, where we were previewed their upcoming releases for 3Q12. Toshiba is essentially targeting the back-to-school crowd with their refreshed notebook lines, while their new tablets aim to take both a more aggressive and a more out-of-the-box approach to the market.
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Fusion X2, Begone
As far as notebooks go, the news can essentially be distilled down to "almost every line refreshed, Fusion X2 is gone for good." Toshiba will continue to offer notebooks with hardware from both AMD and Intel, and their new machines will sport Ivy Bridge hardware from Intel and Trinity hardware from AMD, as expected. The action going on under the hood is expected and unsurprising, but in this editor's opinion, the bigger news is the death of the Fusion X2 finish in favor of what Toshiba simply calls "Fusion II."
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I've mentioned in multiple reviews that the bulbous, glossy design was one of the big things keeping Toshiba back compared to the competition, and I'm pleased to report their Satellite and Qosmio systems have been radically redesigned with a much sleeker, more attractive, more modern shell. Gloss is mostly gone, replaced with textured matte finishes. The new Qosmio in particular continues its gentrification with what Toshiba calls their "Black Widow" finish, which takes a page out of HP's Beats Edition playbook by using a keyboard backlit with red LEDs.
Weeding through the press releases for the more interesting notes beyond what's expected, Toshiba will apparently be offering the Satellite S800 series with AMD's Trinity APUs...and optional discrete Radeon graphics. Hopefully this means that either AMD's current APU/GPU Crossfire technology is getting some much needed refinement, Trinity will be potent enough on the CPU side to warrant a dedicated GPU, or both.
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Meanwhile, the new Qosmio line will be running Ivy Bridge alongside NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 670M with 3GB of GDDR5; the GTX 670M is essentially a rebadged GTX 570M, but that's not a terrible thing as that GPU still offers excellent performance at the high end. Qosmio will be offered in a 17.3" shell with either a 1600x900 screen or a 120Hz 1920x1080 screen and NVIDIA's 3D Vision 2 glasses.
As for pricing, the Satellite P845 (14") and P855 (15") will start at $799 while the P875 (17") will start at $849. These models will be available at the beginning of 3Q12. The Satellite S800 series will start at $699 and is planned to be available beginning on June 24, 2012. The Satellite L845 (14" value) will start at $449, the L855 (15" value) will start at $499, and the L875 (17" value) will start at $599. The Satellite C800 (14" through 17") extreme value line will start at just $399. Both of these lines are planned to hit at the beginning of 3Q12. Finally, the Qosmio X875 line will start at $1,299 and is planned to be available at the beginning of 3Q12.
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Visual - Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - link
Yeah, seriously... I am getting really pissed with manufacturers by now. Been waiting for a good x86 tablet or convertible for so long now, and noone wants to make any... is there some conspiracy against me?I do know that I am not buying a non-convertible laptop though, and i'm not buying useless ARM crap at anything over $250 as well. Eventually some manufacturer will grow a brain and release a reasonable product... right?
Why is it so god-damn hard? We've been so close to the goal for some years now...
The HP tm2 nearly nailed the sweet spot back in the day, except for the ultra-crappy display trying to keep the price low. I bought it anyway, and don't regret as I am still using it. But I've been looking for a better option ever since, and can hardly believe there has been none worth considering. You'd think that now, two and a half years later, display technology should have improved enough so it should be a simple thing to release a similar budget tablet with similar relative performance with a way better display, no?
In the higher end, the T901 was a close call as well, perhaps too overpriced but somewhat understandable considering the lack of competition in the segment. Some brain-dead product manager still succeeded to ruin its potential by deciding not to offer the dedicated GPU option in Europe, not to mention the complete unavailability of the whole model in Bulgaria, but who cares about my neck of the woods, right? But come the Ivy Bridge launch they have a chance for a second try... why aren't there any news, announcements, promises, even rumors?
For close call options forgoing a dedicated GPU, Asus scored the dumbest blunder with their EP121, timing their launch date with that of Sandy Bridge so closely and yet not using it. It would have sold so much better... as would an Ivy Bridge refresh now if they were to make one. Personally, I would probably still prefer one of the above for their dedicated GPU despite a bulkier form factor, but I have to admit the Ivy Bridge GPU will be reasonable for a lot of users. And if they launched earlier than the cometition, I would probably not want to wait and go with it anyway. Or maybe even buy both a smaller tablet without GPU and a larger one with one.
The final close call was the AMD Brazos... Both Acer and MSI chose to cut corners and skip an active digitizer though, and that killed their products for me. Now it is high time for a second attempt with an update to the platform and hopefully less clueless product managers.
Who will be the first with a product to get my money?
markbanang - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
I agree, I looked at this article was hoping that there would be something to replace my ageing Toshiba M400. But yet again, I'm sadly disappointed.I'm not asking for much, I just want a convertible laptop with a decent battery life, an i3/5 processor rather than a Core2, support for >4GB of memory, SATA III rather than SATA II storage, USB3, multi-touch as well as pen support and a screen which is no worse (i.e. at least 1680x1050).
These aren't huge leaps in technology, and certainly nowhere near high end laptop specs, but no-one seems to want to fill this little market niche.
nathanddrews - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
"Qosmio will be offered in a 17.3" shell with either a 1600x900 screen or a 120Hz 1920x1080 screen and NVIDIA's 3D Vision 2 glasses."Obviously the display will refresh at 120Hz, but will it connect at 120Hz? In other words, can I use VSYNC @ 120Hz or is it just another 120Hz panel that doubles 60Hz input?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
To my knowledge, nearly all of the PC 120Hz displays are true 120Hz displays. For laptops, they use what amounts to dual-link DVI connections for the LCD. Now if you're talking about hooking up to a 120Hz HDTV, that's where you don't actually get a 120Hz signal, particularly with some variants of HDMI.nathanddrews - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
OK, I know external 120Hz monitors are typically the "real deal" but I don't know much about laptop displays. Thanks for clarifying.yannigr - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
$500 again? They will never learn.....Toshiba keep your tablets. I am going for sub $300 tablets. If I am going to give $500 for a tablet I will go and buy an Apple.
aranyagag - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
that was exactly the thought that entered my mind -- for near 500$ why would anyone take the lackluster screen of Toshiba vs the retina display if apple. fanboys asideImpulses - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
But regardless of whether it's true or not, they HAVE to be priced lower if Google wants any significant tablet market share. Toshiba's designs still look like also-ran to me, at least ASUS is doing some innovative stuff with the 1080p panel on the revised Prime (and the original will have beat Toshiba to market by several months), they're also going sub $300 (possibly $200 if the Nexus rumors are true) with their 7" model... Which is probably the smartest thing Google can encourage.Frankly I don't see how a 7" tablet can possibly cost half as much as a 10", I think they're just cutting their losses and hoping volume > profit margin (see: Kindle Fire); but it's not a terrible strategy to attack Apple on the low end with smaller cheaper models while still maintaining more profitable/premium 10" models.
Impulses - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Mini SD? Wasn't that deprecated? Did you mean micro?Visual - Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - link
What is wrong with these people...As if the Ivy Bridge delays weren't enough already... they add yet more delay for no good reason? Are they waiting for Windows 8? That would be stupid even for tablets, but for normal laptops it is absolutely no sense.
If there was any kind of real competition, these extra months of delay would mean absolute death for their brand... but I feel like instead of competing, all the manufacturers are conspiring and just agreeing to milk us with old tech as long as possible, delaying everything newer as long as possible.