Toshiba Satellite Radius 11 L10W-C-108 Notebook Review

Toshiba uses a silver plastic chassis for the Satellite Radius 11, which leaves a pretty compact and sturdy impression. The base unit can only be slightly twisted, which will cause a quiet creaking sound. The glossy lid is not quite as sturdy, and pressure from behind will cause picture distortions. The black display frame and the black keyboard create a nice contrast to the rest of the chassis. A maintenance hatch at the bottom is not available; you will have to remove the whole bottom cover to access the internals. The hinges are taut and keep the display well in position, even at wider opening angles. The power button and a volume rocker are located at the sides. They are well-integrated and easy to use.

The port variety is limited to the essentials. Besides two USB ports (1x 2.0, 1x 3.0), you also get a full-sized HDMI output and a card reader. The performance of the two USB ports is on the expected level (USB 2.0 ~40 MB/s; USB 3.0 ~100 MB/s), but the card reader is not one of the fastest modules. We measured a sequential transfer rate (read) of 29.2 MB/s and 14.9 MB/s when we copied normal JPEG pictures (5 MB each). We used the Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II memory card that according to the manufacturer can reach up to 260 MB/s.

The network connectivity is limited to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0, but the device supports the 802.11 standards b/g/n only in 2.4 GHz networks. The less-crowded 5 GHz band or the fast ac-standard are not available. We did not experience any signal issues in an apartment building with several wireless networks.

Besides the keyboard and the touchpad, you can obviously control the device via touchscreen. The latter offers decent gliding capabilities and is sensitive up into the peripheral areas, but the inputs are not always executed immediately. However, this is caused by the system performance, which can cause some delays (also see Performance) and not the touchscreen itself. It is tricky to control Windows in the normal mode, but it is okay in the tablet mode, despite the small display.

The Intel Pentium N3700 is a quad-core processor based on the Braswell platform. It is manufactured in a 14 nm process and has a very low TDP of just 6 watts, so it can be cooled passively. The four cores can still reach up to 2.4 GHz (Burst).

The performance of the Pentium processor in the Cinebench tests is roughly on par with the Atom-X5-Z8500 in the Asus Transformer Book T100HA. They manage an identical score in CB R15 Single and our review unit is around 5% faster in the Multi test. The Celeron N3050 inside the Acer Aspire R11, which is also based on the Braswell platform, keeps up pretty well in the Single test (-3%), but has a clear disadvantage in the Multi test (-64%) due to the lower number of cores (two). In this comparison the Core-M of the Acer Aspire Switch, which is between 22% (Multi) and 108% (Single) faster, is ahead of our review unit. More information about the Pentium processor is available in our Tech-section.

You quickly notice that the conventional hard drive of the review unit is the bottleneck when you use the device. Unlike the flash-based rivals, you get a much higher storage capacity, but the subjective performance impression is worse. You will be wondering about some small delays when you are already used to devices with flash storage in particular. However, in general, the system runs well when you keep an eye on the resources and the number of processes.

The Radius 11 does not stand a chance against the rivals and usually lands on the last place in PCMark 7, which benefits heavily from flash storage. Our review unit can only beat the Acer Aspire R11 with the Celeron processor in the Computation sub-score, which is focused on the CPU.

The hard drive Hitachi Travelstar Z5K500 has a capacity of 500 GB and works with 5400 rpm. HD Tune determines an average transfer rate of just 82 MB/s, which is an average result for this type of drive. The subjective impression in practice is mainly affected by the comparatively high access time of 19.2 ms. More information and benchmarks are available in our constantly growing HDD/SSD comparison.

The graphics are handled by the integrated HD Graphics (Braswell). We get the most powerful version of this GPU with 16 EUs (Execution Units) and a core clock of 700 MHz in combination with the Pentium N3700. The graphics card shares the memory with the system, so the performance also benefits from the dual-channel memory configuration.

The 3DMark benchmarks show that the graphics card is only beaten by the HD Graphics 5300 of the Acer Aspire Switch 11V, the other comparison devices fall behind. This is not a bad result, but we are still on a pretty low performance level in general. More benchmarks of the HD Graphics are available here.

The gaming performance is not one of the strengths of the Satellite radius 11. We tested the game “Tomb Raider” from 2013, but we did not manage smooth frame rates even with our low preset (1024x768 pixels, low details). You should focus on games from the Windows Store if you still want to play. These run without problems and make much better use of the touchscreen. The hardware requirements of many other games are available in our Gaming list.

Thanks to the frugal Pentium processor, the Radius 11 can be cooled passively. Therefore, the only source of noise is the mechanical hard drive. However, it is not one of the fastest drives at 5400 rpm and not too loud at 32.4 dB(A). It is also a pretty steady murmur, so it is hardly annoying.

Because of the passive cooling solution, the temperatures are obviously higher compared to actively-cooled devices. We can measure almost 35 °C (~95 °F) at the bottom while idling, but this is not uncomfortable yet. It gets more inconvenient at almost 50 °C (~122 °F) in the stress test, but those temperatures should be rare in practice.

The stress test quickly reveals the limitations of the passive cooling solution and the low TDP, because both the processor as well as the graphics card immediately throttle to 480 and 400 MHz, respectively, which does not change over the course of the test. The processor does not exceed 70 °C (~158 °F).

The Radius 11 has two speakers, which are located on the lower part of the front. The maximum volume is sufficient, but there are distortions when you exceed around 75%. The DTS Sound software is active by default, and it should stay active. But even with this improvement, the "sound" is still focused on the high tones and is only sufficient for (quiet) background music or occasional YouTube videos at best. Therefore, we suggest that you either attach headphones or external speakers, which is possible via stereo jack, HDMI or Bluetooth. You should also deactivate the DTS software in this case.

The review unit should be a pretty frugal device considering the low resolution, the low brightness of the screen and the frugal SoC. However, we were pretty surprised by the high idle measurements for the Radius 11 (5 to 8.7 watts) in particular. Only the Acer Aspire Switch 11V consumes even more power, but this is a result of the much higher FHD resolution and the higher luminance. The load consumption is also pretty high in comparison at up to 16 watts. The manufacturer included a generously-sized power adapter, because the compact 45-watt module is not really stressed at all.

The bad result in our realistic Wi-Fi is not really surprising when you consider the high consumption. We use the test to simulate web browsing at an adjusted brightness of 150 cd/m². The Satellite Radius 11 does not even last four hours, which is by far the worst result within the comparison and way too short for a supposedly mobile device.