We’ve just had a note from Toshiba Europe to say that the Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J is now shipping in Germany, Austria and, I believe, the Benelux area. Specs are as we have then in the database (note it’s the Satellite and not the Portege in Europe…so far) and the official spec list confirms a matt screen. (Entspiegelt) Recommended retail price is €1099 but I see a number of retailers offering it for €999. Amazon for example. (Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J 
Remember that the Z830 (holding second place in our poll ) has an upgradable memory and SSD slot. You can swap the 2GB stick for a 4GB stick and have 6GB in total (2GB are soldered on the motherboard.) Upgrades, I suspect, will break the warranty though.
Even better news is that the Z830 is on it’s way to us for some hands-on and we’re setting up a live video review for you. At some point in the next week we’ll turn on the cameras, open that chat and let you join in on 2hrs of hard testing – steered by you. Stay tuned here for an announcement. If you haven’t seen a live review before, check out the session we did with the Samsung 900X3A. It’s fun and detailed.
For more background on the Toshiba Z830 check out our resources in the database.
Note: No info for the UK market at the moment, sorry.
I hope the UK sells it. Sometimes, buying from the Uk can be the cheapest as you can claim close to 20% of your VAT at the airport when you leave the EU.
And it has the right keyboard ;-) Am trying to find.out the situation in UK with the Z830.
The price baffles me. From what I’ve seen, it’s listed at 899$ for the entry level, core i3 z830 at Best Buy in the States.
How can a 899$ machine turn into a 1099 euro retail price in Europe? Am I missing something?
The entry level Acer S3 is 899$ as well. That translates, here in Switzerland, to a 849 Swiss Francs price tag. That’s a little pricier than in the States, but turning 899$ to 1099 euros is basically slapping a 1500$ price tag on a 899$ machine.
Obviously, either we don’t have the same entry model, or something is very wrong.
Okay, wish I could edit my comment, seems I can’t.
So here’s the edit:
It’s a different model indeed, and a Best Buy exclusive at that. A real shame, considering that from what I can see, the only change is the processor, a 1.4ghz i3 instead of a 1.5ghz i5. The i5 is probably the version we’re seeing here. It’s priced 1199$ in the US.
300$ increase for a more powerful processor? Seems pretty crazy to me. Maybe the screen is glossy, I don’t know. Pretty annoyed at Toshiba right now.
Also annoying: how 1199 dollars magically turns into 1099euros – meaning 1500$. Complete and utter bollocks.
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/10/2551752/toshiba-portege-z835-z830-899-best-buy-price-release-date
Don’t compare pre sales-tax prices with post sales-tax prices though. Prices in EU are shown with consumer taxes added. Businesses don’t pay that.
True enough – But VAT in Switzerland is 7.6%. Doesn’t account for such a difference.
The fact remains that the only ultrabook Toshiba has that truly agrees with Intel’s idea of ultrabook pricing, is a Best Buy exclusive.
Nice! Are prices cheaper there than in rest of Europe?
I suppose it depends – Some retailers, such as Saturn in Germany, price stuff pretty aggressively. That said, computer hardware as a whole is quite a bit cheaper over here than in France.
I’ll provide a few examples, so you can be the judge :)
ASUS ZENBOOK UX31E-RY010X – Core i7 2677M 1.8 – 13,3″ – 4096 – SSD 256GB – Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit – 1480 CHF/1200 Euros
ACER Aspire S3 – Core i5-2467M 1600/13.3″/4096/SSD 20GB+ HDD 320GB – 850 CHF/689 Euros
I suspect it’s pretty similar. Those are prices from specialized stores though, not department stores and such, which are more expensive.
On a side note, the more ultrabooks are released, the more I lean towards that i5 Aspire S3. I know, it doesn’t have a full SSD drive, but a hybrid. The build might not be as good, and as a whole, I’m not a fan of Acer’s. But I’ve got to admit they’re the only ones pricing their stuff aggressively enough.
Actually prices of things vary all over the world. The same item can be priced so differently in one country compared to another. In Asia for instance, The MacBook Air for instance is the cheapest in the world whilst other brands maybe more expensive. So for me, I have a hard time deciding. For example, I can get a brand new 11 inch MacBook Air i5 for US$850.
Btw the Acer Aspire S3 with an i5 is priced about $760.
I sure hope that the “Michael” posting here CONSISTENTLY about the MacBook Air is not the same person.
If it is, can he please go away and frequent some Apple forums? This one is called UltraBookNews for a reason.
Mikey, do you have a brain?
And now back to the studio where we’re talking about Ultrabooks and Ultrabooks alternatives. . .
How hot kaya? I have an MSI u230 and it is HOT ltiarelly. Performance-wise I have no problems I can do video editing in that netbook. But it puts my hands in hell, it’s so hot it shuts down at times.
any news about the disk? is it the same model that was bad performing in your last review?
No info yet. I suspect the 128GB version will be the same but note that a 256GB option (when/where available) is probably using a disk from a different range. No 256GB version exists in the low-speed range as far as I know.
Although way too far out to wait on it looks like Haswell will have a 15W ultrabook-focused SKU: http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/11/10/intel.haswell.to.lower.ultrabook.power.up.others/
Adam
It looks like Intel is going to bump the non-Ultrabook parts UP by 2 watts. 35watt parts become 37 watts, 45 watts become 47 and 55 watts become 57 watts.
Wow, I feel much better about ripping on them for claiming power enhancements at an architectural level and then not delivering them in the final total power consumption numbers now, but I’m incredibly depressed to see this still continuing even for planned parts through 2013…
Hear that sound? It’s Opportunity knocking; AMD, ARM please OPEN THE DOOR!
(Battery tech can not save us.)
Adam
Power enhancements are not measured in absolutes. Much of the enhancements are for throttling and improved idle usage, which are not reflected in the max TDP.
While you have to remember they’re also trying to provide more performance, which is hard to provide without also increasing power usage.
Also Intel is producing a range of chip offerings, not all of which are immediately available when they introduce a new chip series. Often the lower power solution is released last.
Even ARM is reaching the limits of improving power efficiency and as they produce more powerful solutions they’ll start needing higher power usage as well.
Like whether Windows 8 will be successful on ARM also depends on how much of ARM’s power efficiency methods are actually used by the OS. Since Windows is traditionally not geared for power efficiency and can potentially be much worse for ARM than running the present Mobile OS choices.
Meaning run time advantage may not be as good as people would expect, just like how running a system on constant high load produces far less run time than minimal usage.
A lot of ARM’s power efficiency comes from idle and power consumption control that may not work when running a desktop OS that isn’t designed to use those power saving features. Though MS is suppose to be working on those issues for Windows 8.
Then of course there’s performance as ARM is still only starting to produce chips capable of rivaling even Intel’s low end ATOM solutions and even if Windows 8 can be more energy efficient, it’s still a desktop OS and that puts more load on the system than running a Mobile OS. So many people should temper their expectations of how Windows 8 on ARM with how it will likely effect run times.
Remember, while Intel is learning to make ever more power efficient and better low power solutions. ARM has the opposite problem of learning how to make more powerful solutions that holds similar challenges for them.
So it’s hardly clear which will be pulling ahead quite yet.
Though of course it would be good if both ARM and AMD can continue to provide good competition for Intel.
Hopefully, we should only be about 2 more years away from noticeably better run times no matter what else happens till then.
The z835 i3 version just showed up in Best Buy in the US today. Still says pending on their website, but my store in Fresno had one on display, and presumably some for sale too. Sure looks great, and the lightness in the hand is hard to believe!
BestBuy only shows the i3 as Coming Soon and does not show any other variant so far. Price is $799 US though, which means maybe the i5 will be $100 less than expected too.
Here is the url: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=7861112834051285747&id=pcat17071&type=page&st=toshiba+ultrabook&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960
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