Toshiba Tecra Z50 A-12K Notebook Review

[Redaktion]

Fit for the office. A good-looker has entered the office dubbed Toshiba Tecra Z50 A-12K. It is slim, and always stays cool. Should the bosses give it an open-ended  contract as soon as possible? We will clarify that in this review of the business laptop.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Toshiba-Tecra-Z50-A-12K-Notebook-Review.121070.0.html

[stefan]

Hallo. Tiny correction: In review you talk about IPS display, but in right parameter column you talk about TFT screen. One of them is probably incorrect :)
Feel free to remove this message.

[Allen.Ngo]

It should now say IPS to be more specific. Thanks!

[alexxampl]

89% for not ergonomic keyboard with ugly number pad, seriously?

[Gary]

89%, I don't get it either, overpriced, woeful GPU scores, average display... until you explain your ranking criteria for different notebook groupings I can't give your ratings any creedance.

[Gary]

Ahhh, I just realised, value for money is NOT one of your evaluation criteria. That explains a lot

[Cu]

"We had to place our ears quite close to the laptop to be sure that the fan was spinning at all even during absolute full load."

That comment prompted me to give a try to a Tecra Z50-11V, the only Z50 sold in Spain. I hope it was just poetic license, otherwise you need an appointment with your audiologist. The fan is not overly noisy, but can be heard perfectly and it doesn't seem very efficient, it takes its sweet time to bring the temperature down.

Furthermore, the chiclet keyboard is not apt for serious typing (programming, documentation) and I found the touchpad hard to control.

Couple that with a dead pixel near the center of the screen and the thing was back in its box with a RMA slapped on it one hour after unpacking. At this price point and after this review (89%, huh?) I expected much, much better.

It was light and very good looking, that much is true. The trackpoint works well too.

[John Mun]

The reason they gave this laptop an 89% score is because frankly there is no other 15.6" laptop available with all the features it offers and the extremely light weight and portability. Remember this is a 15.6" laptop. Look around and tell me there is a better 15.6" system out there for a business user. This means it has to have Windows 7 Pro. 

Back in April I did tons of research looking for a laptop for my girlfriend to meet her stringent requirements: under 4.5 lbs(this one is 4.1lbs), matte 1920x1080 IPS screen, RJ45 ethernet built in, VGA port built in(some clients have old projectors), HDMI, SSD, fingerprint reader, at least 4 USB ports(mini-hubs not an option), Windows 7 Pro, bluetooth, SD card slot, backlit keyboard and more

There wasn't a single thing she wanted this laptop doesn't have. For a business user this thing is a dream. Specifically is how incredibly light it is and that was huge for here given her sub 100lb frame. She couldn't be happier and surprisingly she gets a lot of compliments on the Z50 which is icing on the cake.

Of course this was all done in April 2014. A new crop of laptops have come out with very impressive features. Still, things like Windows 7, the low weight requirement and a matte screen were all non-negotiable and for a business user they make tons of sense, and that is who this review is for, the business user.

[cucio]

Obvious competitors are Dell Latitude E5540, HP 850 G1,  Lenovo S540... Toshiba's model is a fine one, but I don't think the keyboard or the touchpad are good enough for business users.

[StillLooking]

Obvious? Seriously? All of them have TN screens with crappy viewing angles + Dell is a King Kong with 29.7 mm height. And that's for starters. I agree with John Mun, I'm doing a similar painful research right now and it's hard to find anything acceptable within reasonable price range. I will probably go with the Z50, just have to check out that keyboard. Hope it's not gonna be a deal breaker.

[af]

johnm wrong

[bes]

I have 2 of these now. Both are great - i5 and i7 versions.

Only 2 negatives I would mention.

1. The keyboard travel is pretty shallow so there isn't great feedback. It is fine and perfectly accurate but just not the best. The keyboard surface is also a bit flexible so the case depresses and moves a bit - again, annoying but not really a problem in everyday use.

2. The track pad is accurate but the surface is not as smooth as I'd like and the buttons at the bottom are terribly designed - very thin strips integrated to the touch pad with just a thin ridge separating them. Please Toshiba - give us some dedicated mouse buttons! They even have a chrome base strip that contains the fingerprint reader which has no other use. Why not put the buttons there?!

That's it. Otherwise it is a stunning laptop - if you can get hold of it anymore. Seems to be very hard to find now.

The lightest and most beautiful 15" laptop currently in the market.

[Sydney]

I've had my Tecra Z50-A for 18 months now and I won't be buying Toshiba again for a long time.

[Sydney]

Here are my complaints:
Build
1) Some keys started coming loose after 6 months, and I've had to fix around 8 of them.
2) The hinges started loosening badly after about 4 months, which was annoying and shoddy in the extreme.
3) The warranty support in Sydney, Australia, for minor issues like these is dreadful. It would have cost me the equivalent of probably $600-800 worth of time, effort, inconvenience and out-of-pocket costs to deal with UNDER WARRANTY just to deal with these issues that, for a technician, would probably take around 5-10 minutes to deal with. Among other things, I would have been without my laptop for a couple of weeks. Completely unacceptable. In the end, I had to take the risk and fix these things myself. This involved breaking off the plastic hinge covers which I couldn't get replaced because I did the repair myself. Get real Toshiba!  >:(
4) The finish has almost completely worn off around the edges even though the laptop is taken care off and operates in a clean office environment (legal office).

Software
5) The unit crashes / freezes around once every second or third day. Very poor in this day and age. (I'm running Windows 7 Pro.)
6) The unit has recently, inexplicably started running super hot on around 3 occasions. Whereas it is normally very quiet, suddenly you can hear the fans running at 50m away and the unit is almost too hot to touch. WTF!?
7) Similarly, there have been a few occasions recently where the laptop, having been put to sleep, spontaneously bursts back into life without warning. This is potentially dangerous and so the only truly safe way to leave the laptop alone is to shut it down completely.

One might consider trying to get Toshiba to look at these issues, but given the gross inconvenience of the repair process in Sydney, where I'd rather have my fingernails pulled, I'm probably better to just put up with these issues and then buy elsewhere from now on. AUD2,900 not well spent. :-(

[Radu]

I was in the search for a second hand laptop and decided to buy this one. I just want to say that you made a mistake in describing it's touchpad (clickpad): it doesn't have only 2 buttons above it but also 2 buttons beneath it. They can be seen in the photos you posted. Hope this helps somebody :)