At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Our Verdict
The dazzling 4K display of the P50T-B-10K is genuinely in a class of its own, and will certainly appeal to professional photographers and video-editors. It may look good value when compared to rivals such as Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina Display but its poor battery life means that it will rarely leave the office, while professional users will likely be frustrated by Windows programs that don’t work correctly with the 3840 x 2160 resolution display.
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Toshiba Satellite P50T-B-10K: laptop with 4k display
And, not surprisingly, it looks absolutely terrific, with its pin-point clarity, and also shows strong contrast and rich, warm colours. Viewing angles are good and our only minor complaint is that the mirror-like glossy finish on the screen is annoyingly reflective. Even so, the sheer clarity and rich colours of the 4K display are quite outstanding and the P50T-B-10K will be hard to beat if you need to look at ultra-high definition video or at photography
The main real problem here lies with Windows itself. As we found in our review of the Dell XPS 15, the Windows 8 desktop can scale text and graphics elements so that they are clearly visible at such high resolution. However, that’s not true of many third-party Windows programs, which will leave you squinting at tiny toolbars and miniature menus as you try to locate the tools you need.
The rest of the laptop’s design isn’t in the same league as the screen, but it’s still quite a smartly designed laptop. The aluminium/plastic chassis is light and sturdy, and the P50T-B-10K only weighs 2.3 kg. That’s below average weight for a 15-inch laptop that includes a built-in Blu-ray drive, although it’s a shame that Toshiba couldn’t slim its fat 28 mm profile down a little.
Toshiba Satellite P50T-B-10K: connectivity
Connectivity is good too, with the latest 802.11ac W-Fi and gigabit ethernet along with an HDMI 1.4 interface that supports both 4K and 3D output to an external display.
There are no less than four USB 3.0 ports, and the SDXC card slot supports the latest UHS II (ultra-high speed) memory cards, which will be useful for importing high-definition photos and video files.
Performance is something of a mixed bag, though. We reviewed the ‘entry-level’ P50T-B-10K model, which costs £1200 with a quad-core Intel Core i7 running at 2.4 GHz, 8 GB memory, 1 TB hard drive and AMD Radeon HD8800M graphics.
Toshiba Satellite P50T-B-10K: performance
The P50T-B-10K could only manage a score of 3610 points when running the PCMark 7 benchtest – a score that is bettered by numerous less-expensive laptops equipped with faster solid-state drives.
Meanwhile the Home and Work suites in PCMark 8 produced similarly mediocre scores of 2877 and 2528 points.
We also noticed the sluggish hard drive whenever the P50T-B started up. The Windows 8 ‘fast-start’ option allowed it to recover from hibernation into the Windows Start screen in 15 seconds, but that was followed by about 30 seconds of cursor-spinning before the laptop could actually start to launch programs and get down to work.
Fortunately, once it’s up and running, the P50T-B did feel fast and responsive, and the Core i7 processor provided enough raw horsepower to handle high-definition photos and video.
However, we would suggest it’s worth spending another £100 to get the ‘10T’ model that uses a 1 TB hybrid drive with 8 GB solid-state module to enhance performance.
Toshiba informed us that they plan to upgrade the graphics to a newer AMD Radeon R9 part in the near future at no extra cost.
Toshiba Satellite P50T-B-10K: battery life
Another weakness is battery life. We only managed to get 2.5 hours (150 minutes) of streaming video even when switching to integrated graphics; even Toshiba only quotes a maximum battery life of three hours and fifteen minutes.
Specs
Toshiba Satellite P50T-B-10K: Specs
- 15.6-inch (3840 x 2160 pixel, 242 ppi) TFT display, glossy, touch-sensitive
- 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4700HQ (3.4 GHz Turbo)
- Intel HD 4600 integrated + AMD Radeon HD8800M (2 GB memory)
- Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
- 8 GB DDR3L RAM
- 1TB hard drive (5400rpm)
- BDXL optical drive
- 802.11b/g/n/ac
- Bluetooth 4.0
- 1x HDMI 1.4
- 4 x USB 3.0
- SDXC card slot
- 720p webcam/microphone
- 1x headphone, 1x microphone socket
- 43 Wh lithium-ion battery
- 377.5 x 244 x 28 mm
- 2.3 kg
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