Toshiba Satellite Radius 14 Convertible Review

It cannot be denied that the angular Toshiba Radius 14 has a certain retro charm: Its base's charcoal black upper side is made of aluminum in a brushed metal look, and a perforated grille is under the display. The lid's back and underside are made of black plastic. They also feature a brushed metal structure that makes them very slip-proof. As normal for touchscreens, the panel also covers the bezel giving it a glossy look. Fingerprints are very visible on the black surfaces.

The used metal and the absence of an optical drive might be the reason that the base can only be warped with a lot of effort. Toshiba has done a mostly impeccable job with the build; edges close flush and gaps are even. The slightly protruding edge of the side cover beside the tab key can be depressed a bit when the device is picked up. Users who want to access the innards, including the battery, will have to disassemble the base plate secured with a few screws.

Although the ports are limited to the necessary minimum standard, they are at least positioned favorably on the rear side. The Windows button for Tablet Mode and a volume rocker are situated on the left. The manufacturer could have omitted the port labeling on the underside that is hidden in normal mode. The fact that only one video-out in the form of HDMI is incorporated, and that Ethernet is not present, will likely be an exclusion criterion for some potential buyers. The Wi-Fi reception performance did not present any irregularities.

Pictures: Toshiba

The drop of the flat and mostly clearly lettered keys is very short, the moderately loud stroke is buffered slightly, and the pressure point is impeccably palpable. The layout is a bit unusual since Toshiba places some keys, such as Pos1 and End, in a row at the very right beside the return key. As so often, the left shift key is too small for the tester. The keyboard can only be dented with unrealistic force. Overall, the keyboard makes a more rigid impression than would be expected in this price range, and it will also likely satisfy prolific writers who can accept its characteristics.

The pleasantly sized touchpad does not give much reason for complaint, either. The absolutely sleek surface without physically dedicated mouse keys clatters slightly when touched due to its imperfect mount. Gestures using up to three fingers can be configured in the well-known Synaptics driver. We did not have problems with its responsiveness and accuracy. That is also true for the touchscreen. The replacement mouse keys have a crisp pressure point and are well audible when clicked.

The installed Intel Core i3-5015U from the Broadwell generation was introduced in January 2015 and has now been replaced by Skylake. It is a frugal dual-core processor that supports Hyper-Threading and has a TDP of 15 watts, making it suitable for particularly slim and compact laptops. Since it does not have a Turbo, its base clock of 2.1 GHz cannot be increased. Intel's HD Graphics 5500 that we will deal with further below is integrated. The chip is already built in the 14 nm process, which enables an improved energy efficiency especially compared with the Haswell predecessors, such as the i3-4030U (2 x  1.9 GHz, Hyper-Threading, TDP 15 W, 22 nm), without significant performance leaps at the same clock rate.

Our comparison basis is a bit thin since we have not tested any laptops based on the i3-5015U and only a few with the virtually identical i3-5010U (2 x 2.1 GHz, Hyper-Threading, TDP 15 W) to date. The performance of Toshiba's laptop is on the expected level when looking at devices based on the i3-5010U. The clock rates remain stable at the specified 2.1 GHz in a Cinebench R15 run.

The system performance analysis via PCMark 7 is a bit difficult due to the lack of comparable systems, particularly ones with the same CPU. It is, however, on par with both systems furnished with the virtually identical Core i3-5010U that also sport conventional hard drives.

The subjective performance suffers under the lack of an SSD. Consequently, short waiting times have to be accepted when opening programs that are not or no longer cached. Booting also takes longer than just 5 seconds. Apart from that, the handling is very smooth. The massive lead of the ThinkPad E460 proves what impact an SSD has on the total score of PCMark 7.

According to 3DMark 11 and 3DMark (2013) Ice Storm, the overall extremely limited performance of the CPU-integrated Intel HD 5500 places itself midfield of all to-date tested GPUs of this model. However, it loses ground in the 3DMark (2013) Cloud Gate benchmark. It is one of the slowest units here and is surpassed by, for example, the 5500 in Schenker's S405 by a whole 52%. GPUs without a dedicated graphics memory generally benefit clearly from dual-channel RAM, but our review sample is furnished with only one memory bar.

Not much should be expected from Intel's HD 5500. Even the older BioShock Infinite from 2013 at most runs relatively smoothly in minimum settings using 1024x768 despite its rather modest engine. Other 3D games have to be very old and/or have elementary graphics to run at all on Toshiba's Radius 14. However, quite a few, partly isometric games like FIFA 16, The Sims 4" or the latest World of Warships can be played occasionally.

The surface temperatures never exceed 46 °C even during maximum load. Consequently, using the convertible on the lap should not be a problem for most users. The temperatures are generally not an issue in routine use. The base's upper side is on the rear when using the Radius 14 in tablet mode. We measured a maximum of 38 °C here. Experience shows that not much load is produced in this mode.

Toshiba relies on a combination of Harmon/Kardon speakers and DTS sound driver with some tweaks and an equalizer, which made a mixed impression. A treble-heavy sound that was only fairly balanced up to medium volumes could be heard after turning off surround. It hissed and sounded piercing in some tracks. The small speakers increasingly sounded compressed the higher the volume and the differentiation of instruments suffered noticeably. Dynamics and surround were very limited but were not completely absent.

We do not have enough comparable laptops in our database for an analysis of the consumption rates. The i3-5015U and i3-5010U seem to be very rare. Simply based on all 14-inch convertibles that we have tested, the Radius' consumption is on average in both frugal idle load states (idle min., idle avg.), and slightly above them in idle max. The reason that the load consumption is below average is due to the fact that laptops with a dedicated graphics card are included in the evaluation.

A runtime of almost eight hours is achieved using a brightness of approximately 150 cd/m² in our real-world Wi-Fi test. That leads to a partial rating of 91%, which speaks for itself in the overall comparison. Matching mobile use, a normal workday will rarely exhaust Toshiba's Satellite Radius 14. Although the stronger comparison laptops in the test have similar battery capacities, they lag behind by 37 and 38% respectively.