Toshiba KIRAbook Review

The Toshiba Kirabook is a luxurious-looking ultrabook bearing some powerful components. It comes with a brilliant 2,560-by-1,440 touch screen and fourth-generation Intel Core i7 processor, which is a notable improvement over the components we saw in last year’s iteration. Added to its appeal is the fact that it packs so much power into a system weighing less than three pounds.

It earns a top slot in our series of high-end ultrabooks that I’ve reviewed so far. If you’re looking for a luxury laptop and willing to send some serious cash, the Kirabook 13 i7s Touch should be at the top of your list, but first look at our previous reviews on the same category.

Design

The Toshiba Kirabook has a bright and clear screen, with a maximum resolution of 2,560-by-1,440. Other systems touting higher than 1080p (1,920-by-1,080) resolutions include the Surface Pro 3 (2,160-by-1,440), and others I reviewed earlier; Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (2,560-by-1,600), and the Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus (3,200-by-1,800), both of which are strong competitors.

On the Kirabook, the only drawback to the high-resolution screen is when you’re using apps that don’t scale their user interface to match the screen resolution. For example, the Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Valley benchmark interfaces look like they use 6-point type in their menus. The built-in Windows 8 apps look fine, however. Also, you may realise that the screen slightly when tapped, but it quickly settles down.

On the Toshiba Kirabook is bezel that’s is a little thin, but swiping from the edge to the screen to activate the Charms bar becomes second quickly. (I must say that some forks prefer a wider bezel, so that your finger has a staging area for off-screen swipes).

Keyboard and Touchpad

If you’re a typing enthusiast, it comes with a backlit keyboard, like the one we saw in the Apple MacBook Pro 15 retina, but it will be unfair to compare the same for obvious reasons. They have different architecture, and the MacBook 15’s aluminium background looks great when lit, and more. The Kirabook has a one-piece touchpad that satisfies mechanical click when you press the surface.

Its keys are slightly concave, but they’re much shallow than the deeply scalloped keys on the Dell XPS 13 Touch. On the top of the keyboard are Function Keys hat are primarily for multimedia functions; you’ll need to hold the Fn key to get F1-F12. Because Toshiba aims toward ultimate portability, the function keys and auxiliary navigation keys like Page Up/Page Down and Delete are tiny.

Connectivity

Even with the slim chassis, there are a decent number of I/O ports and excellent connectivity. The Kirabook gives you three USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and an HDMI port. It supports Bluetooth 4.0, dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, and WiDi are the system’s wireless connections. It lacks an Ethernet port-just like most of its competitors, but there really isn’t any room for one. The Kirabook has a sealed battery, unlike the Toshiba Portege R30-A1302 and the Dell Latitude e7440 Touch with their removable batteries.