Toshiba Portege Z30t-B1320W10 Notebook Review

Communication

The Portege Z30t leverages the ubiquitous Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 WLAN adapter, which is a 2x2 adapter featuring speeds up to 867 Mbps and Bluetooth 4.0. We did at one point experience problems with the network connectivity; however, a simple update to driver version 18.21.0.2 corrected the problem permanently.

To help qualify the Portege as a true business companion, there’s also a Gigabit Ethernet adapter on board, crammed tactfully into the right side of the Z30t, right where it’s always been.

Accessories

The Z30t ships with a small (232 g) AC adapter and a microfiber cleaning cloth to help keep the touchscreen fingerprints at bay.

We measured an overall average brightness of 284 cd/m², with a good brightness distribution of 90%. That’s comparable to most other competitors in this market segment, and it’s luminous enough for comfortable use in all but the brightest of environments (specifically, outdoors). Contrast is also very good at 961:1, thanks to a black value of 0.308 cd/m².

The panel manages to cover nearly all of the sRGB spectrum (97%) and 62% of AdobeRGB 1998. Only the most demanding users will require better performance than this; it’s enough to produce vivid, deep colors and an attractive picture.

Further measurements using an X-Rite spectrophotometer reveal superior calibration from the factory as compared to the aforementioned Z30t-A-10X, even in spite of the fact that both notebooks use the same panel. We recorded grayscale and ColorChecker DeltaE values of 1.61 and 3, respectively, as well as a near-perfect Total Gamma of 2.18. That’s in contrast to the Z30t-A-10X’s 7.79 (grayscale ΔE), 5.64 (ColorChecker ΔE), and 2.48 (Total Gamma), all of which are quite far off the mark.

Outdoors, the panel proves challenging in all but heavily shaded environments, thanks in part to its decent (but not terrific) brightness, as well as its only partially-matte display finish. Viewing angles are also very good, as is expected for an IPS panel—though the anti-glare filter does diffuse the brightness to some extent when viewed from moderately off-axis.

Portege Z30 units can be equipped with CPUs ranging from the low-end Core i3-5015U all the way up to the Core i7-5600U (included in our test unit). All of these CPUs, as previously mentioned, are Broadwell chips, which means they’re manufactured using a 14 nm process and carry a TDP of 15 W. The biggest advantage here is power efficiency, though these CPUs have also shown a small yet significant performance premium over their Haswell predecessors. The i7-5600U in our review unit is a dual-core, ULV CPU clocked at 2.6 – 3.2 GHz (2 cores: 3.1 GHz). Check out our dedicated CPU page for much more information on this particular chip.

As for comparisons to other notebooks with the same CPU, the Portege holds its own quite well. In Cinebench R15 CPU Multi 64-bit, its score of 296 points fares favorably against rivals such as the ThinkPad X250 (301), ThinkPad T450s (302), and Elitebook Revolve 810 G3 (289). Meanwhile, the Portege widens the gap with a respectable lead over the field in wPrime 1024m, where its score of 482 is much faster than the ThinkPad X250 and T450s (534 and 525)—but superPi 32M once again grounds expectations with a result of 636 seconds (versus 631 and 617 from the ThinkPads, respectively).

Boiling it all down, however, the bottom line is that the Portege is more than equipped to handle the rigors of everyday processing loads—even heavier ones—without buckling.

Of particular interest is the general system performance of business machines, as quick-draw office use of all varieties is arguably more important to the typical business user than is raw processing prowess. Here again, the Portege Z30t succeeds, with a very good score of 4330 points in PCMark 8 Work Accelerated v2 and 4966 in PCMark 7. The PCMark 8 result just barely trails the competition (as shown in our graphs below), whereas in PCMark 7 the Portege turns the tables and beats out most of the others by a 3 to 7 percent margin (the Elitebook Revolve, on the other hand, wins with a 7% lead and 5322 points). The Dell Latitude E7450 is the sole exception here, thanks to an artificially hampered write speed of the Samsung PM851 SSD which our review unit happened to include.

These are all great scores regardless. None of these machines will disappoint in everyday office tasks, no matter how demanding.

Much has been said of the Toshiba Z30t’s integrated Intel HD Graphics 5500 already; see our dedicated page for a slew of benchmarks specific to it.

As compared with other notebooks sporting the same CPU and GPU, results are mixed. The Portege fares well in 3DMark 11 (1220 points), but generally comes in around 10—20% lower versus the T450s and Elitebook Revolve 810 G3 in the 3DMark (2013 edition) tests. The full breakdown can be found below.

During our CPU stress test, the Portege Z30t generally maintains frequencies of 2.9 GHz (both cores), but does occasionally waver to 2.6 GHz on a single core (the other remaining at 2.9 GHz) in order to obey TDP constraints. These values are below the 3.1 GHz turbo max for the CPU, which the Z30t can’t achieve. It’s merely a matter of TDP; thermal issues are not a concern, with maximum temperatures reaching 75 °C and the case temperature never becoming uncomfortable.

During the GPU stress test, the integrated GPU pushes the CPU package power demands to nearly 20 W for a short introductory period (during which interval clock rates are 950 MHz) before eventually succumbing once again to TDP and dropping the GPU core clock permanently to 800 MHz. Once again, temperatures are not a factor as they only briefly touch the 72 °C mark.

Predictably, with both CPU and GPU stress imposed, the machine buckles immediately (once again, due to TDP), favoring the GPU with a core clock rate of around 750 MHz and CPU frequencies locked at 1.5 GHz (both cores). Temperatures never exceed 72 °C. These conditions are maintained even when running unplugged, so performance on battery power should not be a concern.

One area in which the Portege merely survives is that of audio output. It’s passable for mainstream business use, but the drivers are tiny, and the shape of the sound is predictably thin and devoid of any bass whatsoever. DTS Studio Sound post-processing software does help somewhat, but regardless, when compared side-by-side with, say, a Dell Latitude E7450 (which has surprisingly good audio output despite the size of the speakers), it’s sorely lacking.

The Portege Z30t makes few strides in the area of battery life over its predecessors; fortunately, it was never bad to begin with. The Haswell-driven Z30t-A-10X (which featured the same screen) managed just under 20 hours while idle, whereas the Z30t-B1320 adds nearly another hour to make it 20 hours, 40 minutes. Load runtimes are shorter at 1:59, but the Z30t-A-10X also was given to heavy throttling, so that may be correlated.

Our Wi-Fi Surfing test has evolved to become more taxing since the 2014 model was reviewed. The Z30t-B1320 earns 7:46 in our new Wi-Fi Surfing v1.3 benchmark, which is very good. This can’t be directly compared with the results from the Z30t-A-10X due to the testing differences, but we can compare it to more recent models—and it fares incredibly well here, with only the HP Elitebook Revolve 810 G3 and Dell XPS 13-9350 directly competing with very close results overall. One last item to note is that if screen quality truly is of little importance to the user, the Satellite Z30-B-100—which is nearly identical except for a slightly lower-powered i5 CPU and 768p screen—clocked over 12 hours in the same test—which is over four hours longer.