I saw recently that Grant Fritchey wrote a review of his laptop, the Portege Z30. I had noted Grant’s issues with laptops and waited to see what he got last year before I replaced mine. I actually had the chance to compare his Z30 with my old Lenovo T430 in Washington DC and was impressed.

With my old machine randomly failing, I decided to duplicate Grant’s efforts and get the same model. I figured we could support each other, and any issues one of us had, the IT department at Red Gate would gain knowledge as well.

Size and Shape

I used to have a MacBook Air and was thinking to go back to one, but since it wasn’t updated to contain 16GB, I couldn’t. I considered a MacBook pro, but they are a bit heavy, and the Z30 was fairly light. Here’s a shot of it.

It’s definitely thicker and heavier than the Air, but it’s thinner and lighter than my Lenovo, so that’s nice. This is actually the test I use for laptops:

Since I’m on the go, and I can be getting on and off podiums, I need to be able to easily carry this one handed. Not that I always do, but I want to. I can’t do this with a MacBook Pro and it was hard with the Lenovo. Here it seems to be OK.

The construction is metal and fairly solid. Not a lot of flex. The thin frame with rounded corners also easily slips in and out of my Everki bag, something that wasn’t the case with the Lenovo.

Keyboard

I think the keyboard is important and I wished I’d spent a bit more time on Grant’s. It’s loud, There’s a noticeable clacking when I type and the travel isn’t great. I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s mildly annoying to me, but not overly so.

the layout is good. Better than the Lenovo or Air for me. That’s the key, it’s better for me.

I used the arrow keys a lot when demoing and having them separate is good. The Lenovo surrounded them with Page Up/Down, which forever caused me issues. Backspace/delete as well placed for me and I’ve easily learned where they are.

Backlighting is automatic, as you type. Slightly annoying when I need to start typing in dim space, but I can hit a key and then backspace and be fine.

The trackpad is too large for me. My palms always hit it, so I’ve disabled it. I use the pointed (blue button in the middle) exclusively, which is OK. I haven’t gotten it tuned well for my use. It’s either too slow or too fast (hence arrow key use). However it works just like the Lenovos.

The buttons, however, on the trackpad feel cheap. They travel and click too much. We’ll see how they wear over time.

Screen

The screen is pretty nice. I didn’t notice this as being amazing, as I did with a few cell phones, but it does look good. It handles bright sunlight fairly well, and I haven’t add brightness issues during indoor use. You can get specs from the Toshiba site.

It’s a 13" screen, which works for me. The resolution is fairly good, but I’m not too picky here so you’ll have to make your own judgment.

I will say that I like the touch screen. I do a lot of reading and scrolling around, and I’ve found it handy to reach up with my right hand and scroll while I’m holding the laptop with the left hand. I don’t use it to select or press buttons often, especially as edit boxes often bring up the on screen keyboard. That’s really annoying.

On the upside, I can use VGA or HDMI as outs to a screen.

Ports

I present with my laptop, so having a few USB ports is a must. The new Air with one port doesn’t even come close for me. I often need two USB ports for a mouse and my presentation device, plus power. Plus display.

This is a good laptop for me. It has two USB-3 ports on the right side and 1 on the left. That allows me to move an adapter depending on where I’m presenting. This also has a hard Ethernet port, which has saved me in a few hotels or venues where the wi-fi didn’t work. Not a big deal, but nice.

All ports are on the sides. Nothing in back.

Power

This is one of the big things for me. We have a power brick, but it’s tiny. It’s light. It’s a few ounces, which is amazing after the larger ones that I’ve had. It’s probably lighter than the Air adapter, though it’s still the power cord plugs into the adapter, which plugs into the laptop.

One thing I’ll note is I forgot my adapter in Europe and had to buy a new one. A generic one, putting out the 19V worked fine. Nice to know I can easily find one, and now I have a US and UK adapter, which suits my work.

Overall

I’ve been using the laptop for about three months now, and it’s one of the better machines I’ve owned. The keyboard and mouse buttons are the only downsides for me. The i5 and 16GB of RAM perform great. The SSD has been fast, and I can hook up an external when I need it and still have my two ports free for other use.

I’d have to say I’d recommend this if you need 16GB of RAM. If you can get by with less, I think you have some other choices in the ultrabook range that I’d look at.