Toshiba TECRA W50 Workstation Notebook – Review

The Toshiba Tecra W50 is the first truly portable workstation Toshiba; until a short time ago who needed a machine for professional use had to turn to the configurations of the high-end business notebook.

The leap in quality of the model W50 is evident, from the Quadro GPU supported by the latest generation of one of the fastest quad-core processors from Intel. All this is offered at a very competitive price considering the performance that this machine is able to offer.

We start from the frame, which is also the component that has less impressed. Betrays its derivation from the one used on the Toshiba Tecra A50 and is quite flexible. It folds in several places under a pressure not too strong; Also the display is a little hard.

Comforted by the fact that the Toshiba TECRA W50 is certified to withstand drops from 76 cm and the keyboard is spill-immune (up to 30 ml), but we preferred a higher rigidity, even for just a psychological issue.

The keyboard on the other hand is of good quality, with large keys and robust mechanics, even the touchpad is well done and is always accurate. The weight of 2.7 kg is aligned with the media; the thickness of 3.3 cm instead is well evident and is higher than that of competitors.

The Toshiba TECRA W50 notebook is a very expandable: detach the e-SATA port for external drives, the Smartcard reader and ExpressCard expansion slot at a full width. Also good connectivity, Wi-Fi card based on Intel Centrino dual-band type.

The CPU Core i7-4800MQ operates at 2.7 GHz (3.7 GHz in Turbo mode) and is responsible for the excellent performance measured visibly higher compared to be other workstations using the Core i7-4700MQ to 2.4 GHz sample was received in evidence with a simple mechanical disk from 500 GB; for our tests, we replaced it with an Intel SSD disk as in the retail version there will be a form mSATA SSD 256 GB.

From the point of view of graphics performance is excellent, thanks to GPU Quadro K2100M that confirms the best choice for workstations 15″. Please note that the GPU of the Core i7 processor is disabled; so there is no Optimus technology, and you cannot use the engine of the GPU Intel QuickSync. The heat is dissipated properly, and the fan is noisy only in times of full load of CPU and GPU. The 16 GB of RAM standard can be up to 32 GB using two SODIMM slots available.

The IPS display 15.6″ has a Full HD resolution and an effective anti-reflective coating. Crisp and bright, has very accurate colors and also allows you to use it without too much effort on your Windows desktop without enlarging the characters. Excellent viewing angles. We did not expect much from the battery 67 W. instead we were wrong: the range is five and a half hours despite the high power of the CPU and the GPU; definitely a good value for this category of products.

We highly recommend you also buy an extended warranty because that base is limited to one year.