东芝Tecra R950-192笔记本测评

Matte surfaces, dark colors: The optics of the Tecra R950 corresponds to the typical subtle standard of a professional notebook. Following the principle of “form follows function”, the focus of the design clearly follows the rule of ergonomics and practical use. According to the manufacturer, the case, which is coated with fine grooves and made of high-strength artificial resin, also shines with exceptional durability – a promise, which we surely cannot test in this review.

Directly compared to its competitors, the R950 surprises with a relatively slim case. A maximum thickness of 25.4 millimeters (1 inch) and a weight of nearly 2.5 kilograms (~5.5 pounds) let the Tecra appear significantly more delicate than an EliteBook 8570w (35 millimeters, 3.25 kilograms/~1.4 inches, ~7.7 pounds), for example. However, it needs to be mentioned that HP also offers this workstation model with Quad-Core-CPUs and by far stronger graphics cards – but the ProBook 6570b is also noticeably heavier with its 2.8 kilograms (~6.2 pounds).

But what effects does the slim design have on its stability? The base unit turns out to be quite sturdy, though there is still potential for improvement. Under local pressure the chassis slightly gives in above the DVD drive and around the keyboard – this is not the case for some of the competitors. The display, which is held in its place by two tight and extremely precise metal hinges, could have also withstood our deformation tests a little bit better.

In terms of workmanship, there is not much to criticize. Nothing rattles or wiggles, all material transitions were well processed and sharp edges rounded thoroughly – however, this should be expected in a notebook for nearly 1,500 Euros (~$1967). Altogether, the Tecra R950 has earned a good but not very good overall grade in this discipline.

Warranty

The purchase price includes a 2-year manufacturer’s warranty including Bring-In-service, which can be extended for a relatively small price. An extension for a total of 3 years costs about 60 Euros (~$79), for 4 years 100 Euros (~$131). Furthermore, Toshiba guarantees the following: In case of defect during the first year, the notebook does not only get repaired, but the customer is reimbursed with the full purchase price ("Toshiba Double guarantee").

The combination of an anti-glare display surface and high maximum brightness – which is held steadily when running on battery power – allows using the R950 outdoors. Annoying reflections are very rare and often so weak that they do not affect the user. The display has only to surrender under direct sunlight – a problem that could only be reduced by an even stronger backlight.

Many displays based on TN-technology struggle with picture quality at large image angles. The display of our test object is no exception – on the contrary: Especially vertically, the screen falsifies the image quickly, which causes a constant need for readjustment of the display hinges. In comparison to other TN-panels, the display of the R950 performs below average.

Since the presentation of the new Haswell-processors is expected for June, thus ending the Ivy-Bridge-era, Intel has injected new life into its current CPU-platform with a series of so-called “speed-bumps”. The Core i7-3540M represents the new top model of the dual-core-class succeeding the i7-3520M processor.

The clock rate of 3.0 GHz and the turbo-settings of 3.5 (2 cores) and 3.7 GHz (one core) do not give reason to expect a big performance leap in comparison to the 100 MHz slower predecessors. Owing to the meanwhile fully developed 22-nanometer assembly, Intel managed to keep the TDP at 35 Watts and was not forced to make substantial changes. Also on board are features like Hyperthreading-technology, for a better multi-threading-performance and a four MB L3-Cache.

Like all mobile spin-offs of the Ivy-Bridge-series, the Core i7-3540M has a DirectX-11 capable graphics card, which is not used in the Toshiba Tecra R950-192, though. Instead of the HD Graphics 4000, a dedicated Radeon HD 7570M comes into use for the image calculation and is constantly active during 2D- and 3D-mode. Pity – a flexible graphics switching via AMD’s Enduro-technology could have lowered the power consumption during idle and increased the battery run time.

Depending on the configuration, the R950 is available with SSDs or HDDs of varying capacity. Our test candidate has a common 320 GB hard-drive, which makes it 200 Euros (~$262) cheaper than its 256 GB flash memory equivalent. Furthermore, eight GB DDR3-RAM were built in, in dual-channel-mode (2x 4 GB DDR-1600).

Toshiba equipped the R950 with a 320 GB hard-drive from its own company. The MK3261GSYG (2.5 inches, 9.5 millimeters height) runs at 7200 rpm and has a 16 MB cache. The result is quite impressive: With its average sequential transfer rate of 93.4 MB/s, the hard-drive belongs to the fastest of the currently available ones. The access time, which profits from the fast speed of rotation, is 16.7 milliseconds, according to HD Tune.

The available 256 GB SSD is Toshiba’s HG5-series with a flash controller from Marvell. You can find benchmark results for this hard-drive here.

The Radeon HD 7570M is based on one of the older 40 nanometer chips, which has been on the market for over two years and is also used for some of the models of the HD-6000 series. By now, the computation power of the 400 VLIW5-shader units is ranking at the low end but still exceeds the integrated HD Graphics 4000 by a small margin. Another reason for the low performance is that Toshiba clocks the graphics card at 500 MHz for the core and 600 MHz for the one GB GDDR5-memory, which is slightly lower than allowed by AMD. We could only reach a score of 901 points at the performance preset of the 3DMark 11.

As the results of the SPECviewperf-11 benchmarks prove, the HD 7570M is at least conditionally suitable for professional CAD-applications. Those regularly using these kinds of programs should instead choose a FirePro- (AMD) or Quadro-card (Nvidia) with their specially optimized drivers. The GPU can still be used for general computations via OpenCL-interface – a feature that is also available for the slower HD 4000. In conclusion, we would like to point out that the graphics driver does not support a resolution of 1366x768 pixels ex-factory; we explain how to add it manually here.

Although gaming is not one of the main applications of this laptop, we would still like to take a look at the performance for some of the current titles. This confirms what we had mentioned earlier: Even though the Radeon HD 7570M is slightly faster than the HD Graphics 4000 is, it can only reach acceptable frame rates at low settings. Very complex games like Battlefield 3 or Crysis 3 do not even reach the important 30 fps mark at minimal detail settings.

The heat generation of the device stays low for common use: During idle, we measure an average of 30 °C (86 °F) at the top and bottom. This allows usage on the thighs without restrictions. Under full load, the temperature jumps up to 40 °C (104 °F) around the air outlet while most parts of the case stay at slightly higher values compared to idle. 

Toshiba seems to be able to handle the temperature management of the notebook – but does this also apply to the hardware inside? After stressing the processor for one hour with Prime95 and FurMark it levels off at an uncritical level of 82 °C (179.6 °F), but only clocks at the base frequency of 3.0 GHz. The theoretically possible Turbo Boost of 3.5 GHz can only do his work for a few minutes at the beginning of the stress test; this behavior cannot be observed with real applications, though. The graphics card heats up to 66 °C (150.8 °F) and constantly keeps its maximum clock rate of 500/600 MHz (core/memory).

What is essential for a good business notebook? Features like reliability and quality but also low emission rates are probably top priorities for the buyer. The Toshiba Tecra R950-192 shows promising approaches in those disciplines but lacks when it comes to the final touch.

This can be observed for the slim and carefully processed case, which cannot keep up with the best laptops of its class in terms of stability, though. The connectivity and input devices of the laptop do also perform well but without being tremendously better in comparison to its competition.

One of the biggest advantages of the R950 is its outstanding application performance, owing to the fast hard-drive and the higher-clocked i7-processor. Sadly, the cooling system barely copes with the waste heat of the CPU and GPU causing the background noise to rise strongly, especially under full load. Those able to take a pass on a few percentage points of performance should instead choose a model with i5-core and integrated graphics card. The same advice goes for the battery runtime, which suffers greatly because of the missing graphics switching. Thanks to its anti-glare and high-brightness display, its integrated UMTS and low weight the notebook commends itself as a mobile companion for everyday business life.