GADGET GIZMO SPECIAL Toshiba Satellite P50t-B Y3110 review: The first 4K laptop

The only constant in technology is change. The race to be the fastest has somewhat settled down and now the focus is on other attributes. Smartphones and laptops are now competing against each other in the display resolution race. We've already seen 2K smartphones and HD+ laptops, and the next flagpole is 4K.


Toshiba has overtaken others with the launch of its 4K (Ultra HD) laptop Satellite P50t-B Y3110. It has not just demonstrated it but has also made it commercially available. It's commendable that the Japanese giant has made the device available in the Indian market soon after its international launch. Is Satellite P50t-B Y3110 a revolutionary laptop? We try to find out in our review.
Build & design
Toshiba Satellite P50t-B Y3110 looks premium with its brushed aluminium chassis that sports a satin gold colour. The device looks and feels larger than life with its big 15.6-inch panel and wide form factor. It's also not lightweight at 2.35Kg.

The lid sports a silver Toshiba logo exuding a minimalist feel. Opening it reveals the display and keyboard panels.

The keyboard panel also sports the same brushed aluminium finish and houses a frameless tile keyboard that sits between the big speaker grill and a palm rest section that features the trackpad. The LED-lit, circular Power button sits at the top right corner, located on the speaker grill. The stereo speakers are from Harman Kardon Speakers and boast of DTS Sound technology.

The backlit keyboard also features 10-key numeric keypad efficiently utilising the bigger panel real estate. The trackpad is located slightly towards the left but we have to say that it is one of the best trackpads we've used on a Windows device. It still lags behind the MacBook trackpads though. There's a dedicated key to disable the trackpad in case you want to rest your palms while watching a movie.

Just below the front edge, you'll find an SD-card reader. The front edge meanwhile, sports LED indicators for Power, connectivity and disk use. The left edge houses two USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port and an optical drive(DVD writer).

The right edge also houses two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port capable of 4K video output, and audio out and microphone ports.

4K display
Toshiba Satellite P50t's headline feature is its 15.6-inch 4K display. At this time it's the only laptop available in the market to sport a Ultra HD display, with a resolution of 3840x2160p, about four times more than full-HD.

It's one of the best looking displays we've ever seen with extremely vibrant colours, and excellent brightness levels. Text and graphics look sharp and crisp. At times it feels the clarity is equivalent to printed paper. The display is Technicolor-certified for colour accuracy. Thanks to the IPS panel, viewing angles are very wide.

The touch-enabled display offers 10-finger touch support, an anti-finger print coating and palm rejection, that make for a great touch experience. But we feel the laptop is too big to use as a handy touch device.

While the display has the same resolution as offered by 4K TVs, getting good 4K content is difficult at this time. There are very few movie titles available in 4K and streaming 4K videos on youTube is a pain unless you have a 16Mbps+ broadband connection.

We tried streaming a 4K video on Netflix and found the quality to be excellent. Having experienced the same video in full-HD, we can say the level of detail was much more

More than content consumption, we feel that 4K display is well suited for professionals for editing 4K videos and high-resolution pictures.

Having said that, the Windows 8 Modern UI is not the best thing to look at on a 4K screen. We experienced scaling issues with some Modern UI apps and fonts, and you may end up switching to a lower resolution if you use them regularly.
Software
Our review unit came with 64-bit Windows 8.1 and we updated it to Update 1, the latest version of the OS that features power and search buttons, ability to pin Modern UI apps to the taskbar, and boot directly to desktop, among others.

Windows 8.1 Update 1 offers a better desktop experience and streamlines Modern/ Windows 8 apps with desktop apps.

Toshiba also bundles additional software with the laptop, including CyberLink MediaShow 6, Chroma Tune, a video player, and customised system apps in addition to Skype, and Amazon Kindle among others. These apps can be easily uninstalled if you don't require them.
Performance
In terms of hardware specifications, the Satellite P50t is a beast. It comes with top of the line hardware including a 2.5GHz 4th Gen Intel i7-4710HQ processor, AMD Radeon R9 M265X graphics and 16GB RAM. It comes with a 1TB hybrid hard drive out of which 8GB solid state storage is dedicated to the system for boosting performance and a speedy boot. Given the large size of 4K files, the 1TB hard disk is more of a necessity than a luxury.

With so much power under the hood, you'll never encounter any delay or stutter while performing tasks like web browsing, casual gaming, multimedia consumption, using apps like office suites, and imaging editors. Thanks to the powerful graphics processor, 4K videos render without a hitch and rich 3D games run super smooth.

While we don't endorse benchmarks, Toshiba Satellite P50t scored 3801 in PCMark8 (Creative Accelerated) and 2365 in PCMark 8 (Home conventional) tests, and 1094 in Novabench. The notebook scored 5213 in Cloudgate 1.1 and 11,750 in Icestorm 1.2 tests of 3DMark. These scores are higher compared to some high-end Ultrabooks available in the market.

The most disappointing aspect of the Satellite P50t is its battery life. Perhaps the 4K display is responsible for this. In our tests, the laptop lasted about 2.5-3 hours while using Microsoft Word, a picture editor, a music streaming service and playing some YouTube videos, keeping the screen at full brightness. In our video look test, it lasted about 2 hours.

The laptop sports an HD front webcam with a stereo microphone, which is good for video chats. The Harmon Kardon speakers offer high quality sound output that doesn't distort at high volume levels. However, the speakers are not very loud.

Overall, the laptop offers high-end performance but the subpar battery life disappoints.
Verdict
At a price of Rs 86,000, the Toshiba Satellite P50t-B Y3110 seems to be a good deal, bringing together a 4K display, high-end specifications, and a premium design. More than content consumption, the real use case for the device is in content creation.

If you're a multimedia professional and deal with high-resolution files, then it's the best device to edit on the go, without the need to connect a secondary screen.

However, the below-average battery life is a big dampener. It won't even last a Delhi-Mumbai flight and you'll always need to lug a charger with you.

For 4K media consumption, we'd recommend buying a 4K TV.

If you're not finicky about a 4K screen (there are not many reasons to be) and just want a high-resolution display-equipped laptop, the MacBook Pro with Retina display is your best bet. It offers a much better battery backup with its jaw-dropping pixel rich display. It's worth pointing out that a large number of multimedia professionals use Macs and they won't need to switch to an alien ecosystem if they have already invested in it.

Anupam Saxena,TOI Tech

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