Toshiba Portege R835 Laptops

The Features

The Toshiba Portege R835 Series laptops are some of the best if you're looking for something you can get serious work done on and are still very portable and lightweight. They have an eight-hour battery life, more than enough for the trip to the airport and reaching your final destination. At 3.2 pounds, it's one of the lightest laptops you'll find without becoming a netbook. The problem with netbooks is they're not going to be able to hold a candle to an R835.

The 13.3" LED back-lit display is slightly bigger than the usual 10" of a netbook, and the similarity in a smaller screen is where the similarities end. Netbooks rarely if ever have a built-in DVD SuperMulti drive, which the Toshiba Portege R835 has. They won't ever have a 2nd generation Intel Core processor either. There are three models of the R835 series (detailed below), and all three have either an i3 or i5. The i3 is good enough for the average businessman, but the i5 takes it to the next step with Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0. Turbo Boost can automatically increase the speed of the processor if necessary. It is aptly named. Think of the turbo in a car. You don't always use it, but when you need to it is there. Another feature of the Intel i Series processors is Intel Hyper-Threading. This piece of technology is 4-way multitasking so each processor can work on two tasks simultaneously. Think more work in less time.

Don't think that because the Toshiba Portege R835 Series is so small and lightweight that it isn't durable. It has magnesium alloy casing and a unique honeycomb structure that provides additional reinforcement. It is ultra durable while still remaining lightweight. The laptops also have an HD Impact Sensor that guards hard drive heads in case of a drop or sudden movement. The combination of these two features means that it can provide the sturdiness of a thicker, heavier laptop without actually having to be thicker and heavier. A spill-resistant keyboard keeps debris and liquids from making their way into the vulnerable insides of the laptop. Not that you'd want to test it by shoving dust and dirt into it, or spilling soda on it, but it has added protection against it.

Each model has an HDMI port to stream content to your HDTV. They also have Intel Wireless Display Technology which allows you to stream HD content to your Internet-ready HDTV. If your HDTV is not Internet-ready there is a device called Push2TV which can connect it to your Toshiba Portege R835 laptop.

The Models

Each model is going to come with 4GB RAM and is upgradable to 8GB if you're feeling adventurous.They will all also have 640GB of hard drive space. They will all have USB 3.0 technology, and 3 MB Cache is standard on all three as well.

R835-P50X - Intel i3 processor, 2.1 GHz, WiMAX capability.

R835-P55X - Intel i5 processor, 2.3 GHz.

R835-P56X - Intel i5 processor, 2.3 GHz

Cost

The retail price is $799, but I have consistently seen it for as low as $749 on sale.

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Sources:

http://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/portege/R830/R835-P56X/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383651,00.asp