Reviews

Toshiba Tecra R950-11F review

With an Intel Ivy Bridge chipset, mobile broadband receiver and 500GB of storage, this sub-£800 Tecra is a useful all-round Windows 7 laptop.

4 Sep 2012

Display

The 15.6in screen comes with a resolution of 1,366 x 768. This is low for a display of this size and we found quality to be mixed too. The Tecra's Gamma rating of 1.9 is close to the 1.8 target, which means the colours displayed are accurate, although the Toshiba isn't able to display the full range of shades we'd expect from a professional screen as a extremely high Delta E of 13.3 demonstrates.

Elsewhere, the 330cd/m2 brightness level is good, but it's matched by a black point of 1.97cd/m2. That's high, even for a mid-range laptops, and it results in a poor contrast ratio of 167:1 which manifests itself in poor black levels. While it's a fine screen for general office tasks, we wouldn't use it exclusively for image work.

Input

The Toshiba is fitted with a Scrabble tile-style keyboard rather than a traditional unit, but there's plenty to like. The keys don't have much travel but, when combined with that base, it makes for a very firm and responsive typing action we were quickly up to speed. Toshiba has found room for a number pad, and there are no surprises about the layout: a reasonably wide space bar, double-row Return key and indicator lights in the Caps and Number Lock buttons.

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Toshiba has included a well laid out keyboard and mouse pointer

The plain trackpad has no special features but, in line with the rest of the Tecra, it's smooth and accurate in use. The bottom pair of mouse buttons are a little soft for our liking, but that's more than made up for by the pair that sit above the trackpad, which are light and snappy. The trackpoint is decent, too: responsive, if a little lacking in prominence among the rest of the keyboard.