Sleek good looks, fine screen, fast processor, Solidly built, good battery life
Expensive, noisy fan, not significantly better than rivals
Toshiba's new Kira range is designed to bring a bit of class back to the company's sometimes rather lacklustre Ultrabook offering. At quick glance at its slim lines and metallic casing show that it's on the right track, but can it justify its exceptionally high price?
Chassis and screen
Toshiba claims the pressed magnesium alloy casing is not only light but extremely strong. At 1.4kg it checks out for the former, and it certainly feels like a tough piece of kit, easily repelling our (admittedly not very determined) attempts to scratch it.
It's slim too, barely touching 20mm at its thickest point and tapering to just under 10mm at its thinnest. This has inevitable consequences since despite the magnesium's alleged strength, there's still a fair bit of give in the casing, especially when you try to flex the screen. At less than 1.4kg it's also no trouble at all to carry or balance on your lap, even for long periods (the battery kept going for a solid nine hours in our test).
There's a good range of connection opportunities, with three USBs (only two are 3.0 though), HDMI and an SD card reader, though there's no Ethernet connection.
The 13in screen delivers a full-HD-and-then-some resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, which looks stunningly sharp whether you're viewing HD movies or trying to read teensy tiny text. It's not quite as high a resolution as the Samsung ATIV 9 Pro's 3200x1800 but really, at this level you'd be very hard pressed to tell the difference. Still, that ultra-high resolution means that some apps may appear just a bit too small, and you'll find yourself reducing the resolution at times, particularly if you're in desktop mode.
Processor and performance
At this price, you'd expect the Kira to be powerful, and it is.
The 1.8Ghz Intel Core i7 processor proved to be very pacy in practise and delivered a PC Mark score of 5139, which puts it right up there with the powerhouse that is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch. It also converted our test 10min movie in just 2mins 48 secs, which is way ahead of most Ultrabooks we've tried. However it struggled a little with HD gaming, and it could only manage frame rates of 70fps when playing Portal, for instance.
It's certainly powerful, but a bit like an F1 racing car, it lets you know it with the noise. The fan tends to kick in at seemingly random moments and can be almost startling with its intensity -- this certainly isn't the quietest laptop you're likely to encounter.
However, the Kira more than made up for this with its extensive battery life. It managed a little over nine hours in continuous tests, which is one of the best we've seen. And its fast-charge capability means you'll get about a third of that with just a half hour of charging.
There isn't a huge amount of software preloaded that you couldn't pick up yourself for free, such as eBay and Evernote.
There's a trial version of Microsoft Office 365, which is nice, but you'll be expected to pay the subscription after a month.
Conclusion
The Toshiba Kira is a beautiful looking lightweight slab of an Ultrabook. It also has a terrific screen and fast processor but it's price very much marks it out as an exceptional device, and it's performance only places it among the best of its (less expensive) rivals, like the Samsung ATV 9 Plus or the Macbook Air 2013, not significantly ahead of them.
Software: Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
Processor: 1.8GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 8GB RAM
Display: 13.3in touchscreen display with 16:9 aspect ratio and LED backlighting, 2560x1440 pixels
Hard Drive: 256GB SSD
Graphics: Intel HD 4400 Graphics
Webcam: HD webcam (1,280x720 pixels) with built-in microphone
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth
Ports: 1x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, HDMI, headphone/microphone jack, power connector, SD card slot, Harmon Kardon speakers
Blu-ray player: No
Size: 316x207x20/10mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
