Toshiba unloads Tecra, Portege ultra-slim laptops with Sandy Bridge CPUs

Toshiba has rolled out several new notebooks under the Tecra and Portégé brands, which happen to be “the thinnest Toshiba business laptops ever made.”
Besides the slim exteriors, all of the new Toshiba laptops mentioned here share a number of other similar specs, including:

• Second-generation Intel Core processor options
• High-speed 7200 RPM hard drives or a 128GB solid state drive
• Optional AMD Radeon discrete graphics with 1GB of dedicated graphics memory
• Intel AMT 7.0
• 802.11 a/g/n Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth v3.0 + EDR
• Connectivity: USB 3.0, eSATA/USB combo, DisplayPort *or* HDMI, ExpressCard, Gigabit Ethernet and docking connectors.
• Support Intel Wireless Display

For businesspeople on-the-go, the Portégé R830 is dubbed as the “ultraportable” choice. Built with a magnesium alloy casing with a honeycomb structure, the R830 weighs 3.1 pounds and measures about one inch thin. Toshiba boasts that this model is the “world’s lightest 13.3-inch full-performance ultraportable laptop” with an integrated DVD drive.
Continuing on, the Tecra notebooks are a bit larger but still ready for the road with a fiberglass‐reinforced casing with a honeycomb rib structure. The 14-inch Tecra R840 (pictured above) is 25% thinner and 20% lighter than its predecessor, and users can squeeze up to 11 hours of battery life after each charge with this machine. The 15.6-inch Tecra R850 (pictured right, below) also measures about an inch thin and weighs 5.3 pounds. However, this one only manages seven hours of battery time on a single charge. Both Tecra models sport HD LED-Backlit widescreen displays.
Available immediately, pricing ranges based on the configuration selected by the customer, but here’s a scale for reference:

• Tecra R840: $899.00 to $1,479.00
• Tecra R850: $879.00 to $1,399.00
• Portégé R830: $1,049.00 to $1,649.00

These notebooks are intended for business purposes, but there is a consumer edition of the Portégé R830 that starts at $888.99 with a 640GB hard drive. Most of the same specs are still onboard (including USB 3.0), but it lacks an ExpressCard slot and docking capabilities.