Review: Toshiba's Tecra A11 Hits Performance Heights

The Irvine, Calif.-based notebook manufacturer has used its decades of engineering, design and electronics expertise to bring to market a system with a bright, backlit 16-inch display and comfortable keyboard, positioning it as a solid production machine and desktop replacement. At 5 pounds, 14 ounces (as weighed on our scale) it's not a system you'll be racing with through airports; Toshiba has ultraportables in its lineup for ultramobility.

The Toshiba Tecra A11 came to the CRN Test Center lab with an Intel Core i7-620M, dual-core processor at 2.66GHz, 4 GB of memory and a 320-GB HDD. It was preloaded with Windows XP Professional 32-bit. Using Primate Labs' Geekbench 2 benchmarking software, the Tecra A11 scored a rating of 4,706 -- making it the highest-performing dual-core CPU system we've ever evaluated in the CRN Test Center lab. Performance, frankly, just felt much faster than other notebook systems.

The integrated Nvidia NVS 2100M graphics processor also provides smooth performance, and Toshiba has nicely integrated the GPU.

Running our standard battery test -- disabling power-saving settings and running a video from the hard drive until the system shut down -- the notebook provided about 2.5 hours of life; that's about average for a notebook in this class. In terms of thermodynamics, the system ran mostly cool to the touch except for the expelled air at its vents, which measured about 95 degrees.

Like many other Toshiba systems, a key feature of the unit is Toshiba's own engineering and design. The full-size keyboard with number pad is one of the most comfortable laptop keyboards we've experienced. Its built-in Webcam is crystal-clear and its on-board microphone is exceptional. While the on-board speakers sounded a little tinnier than we would have liked, the audio is generally OK.

And while Windows XP Professional is a fine operating system, we wanted to take a step to check out how the PC migrated to other OSes.

We upgraded the system to Windows 7 Ultimate N and found it was a simple migration that needed just two driver updates (for Ethernet and Wi-Fi) to get up and running. We also upgraded the system to the beta for the forthcoming Ubuntu 10.04, and that was even smoother; no driver updates were needed and the Tecra A11 ran with that OS phenomenally as well.

This is a terrific business notebook which, as a desktop replacement, delivers a lot of value even at prices that are above industry norms for this class. The Tecra A11 line starts at $949 for a unit with an Intel Core i5-430M and scales to the A11-S3540 with an Intel Core i7-620M, which is priced at $1,349. It's a production-level PC.

The bottom line: Toshiba has delivered a terrific notebook with top-notch performance and engineering. The CRN Test Center highly recommends it.