Notebook Hunter

For $1,399 the 13.3in Toshiba Satellite Z830/001 is pretty much the best of the currently available crop of Ultrabooks. There are three reasons for this: it’s affordably priced, it has good specs including a full SSD and it’s lighter than most netbooks. It also has a backlit keyboard and has an external casing made entirely out of magnesium. It’s certainly good looking, and considering what specs are included for the price its good value for money as well.

One other major tick in the Z830's is the port variety, which leaves any other Ultrabook in the dust. Where some only have one or two full-sized ports and a few Micro/Mini ones, the Z830 has a VGA port, Gigabit Ethernet port, three USB ports (2 x 2.0, 1 x 3.0) and a HDMI port. Add to that an SD card reader and it's clear this Ultrabook has a serious advantage over the competition.

The Z830 has a low-voltage 2nd Gen Intel Core i5-2467M (1.6GHz) processor that can speed up to 2.3GHz using Turbo Boost 2.0 Technology. It’s definitely got the muscle needed to run most productivity applications and other programs, and with 4GB of RAM it can run several at once without any major slowdown.

Although the 128GB SSD is on the small side, the snappy performance more than makes up for the low volume. The Z830 is also very slender at just 15.9mm, which is very impressive for an Ultrabook with such great physical connectivity.