First impressions of Toshiba’s latest hybrid and world’s first 12-inch UHD screen – Satellite Radius 12

LaptopMedia.com Repere First impressions of Toshiba's latest hybrid and world's first 12-inch UHD screen - Satellite Radius 12

De la: LaptopMedia Team 22 Decembrie 2015 / 15:11 0

It’s thin, it’s light, it’s flexible, it’s Toshiba Satellite Radius 12 – a premium offering with 12-inch UHD display, flexible hinge that can be a great alternative to some of the ultrabooks on the market, but at the same time its asking price is considerably lower than other competitors like the XPS 13.

The device just arrived at our office and we are mostly eager to see how the UHD screen will perform as well as the battery life. Excellent battery life will most likely be out of the question considering all the extra pixels, but the 43Wh battery will do just fine with the Full HD variant.

You can find the notebook and its available configurations at Amazon.com.

Design

The notebook features metal build with metallic brushed aluminum on the lid and bottom piece but the keyboard tray remains plastic that strongly resembles brushed aluminum. Just like most laptops from Toshiba, Satellite S50, P50 etc. have metal-like plastic interior but luckily that doesn’t take away the rigidity.

Aside from the luxurious feel, the Radius 12 sports a flexible hinge making the notebook suitable for working in various situations. The usual tablet, tent and laptop mode are available but more importantly – the hinges feel quite solid.

The interior incorporates the usual Toshiba touchpad that we’ve already seen in various notebooks from the Japanese company – with slightly rough surface but the trackpad is accurate and comfortable to use, nonetheless. The keyboard also looks familiar, but some of the keys appear to be a bit too small. The keyboard could have been stretched a bit more to the sides.

Anyway, the notebook seems to impress with its low weight and thin profile – 1.32 kg and 15.4 mm, respectively. Despite its ridiculously compact size, the notebook doesn’t miss the important connectors like full-sized HDMI, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB Type-C connector and the rest as well – 3.5 mm audio jack, SD card reader etc.

Hardware

The premium version sports Core i7-6500U CPU that’s part of the latest 6th generation Intel processors, soldered 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and up to 256 GB of M.2 PCIe SSD storage. The most expensive variant also features world’s first 12-inch IPS UHD display for immersive multimedia experience. The GPU-intensive tasks, of course, will be taken care of the Intel HD Graphics 520 iGPU.

There are also variants with Core i5-6200U but they are paired with lower resolution IPS panel with Full HD (1920×1080) resolution and this might be the better variant if you are aiming for a more durable notebook as the 43Wh will surely struggle with the power hungry pixels of the premium model. However, we will make sure to check this out in our in-depth review.

Keep in mind, though, that the specs listed above and below (in the specs sheet section) may not apply to your region.

How it looks on the inside

This little fellow is quite hard to disassemble and there’s not much you can see inside as well. The first thing that catches the eye is the big, yet not so durable 43Wh battery, the single CPU fan and the M.2 2280 PCIe SSD with B&M edge key connector.

Specs sheet

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CPU	Intel Core i5-6200U (2-core, 2.30 – 2.80 GHz, 3MB cache) / Intel Core i7-6500U (2-core, 2.50 – 3.10 GHz, 4MB cache)
RAM	up to 8GB (1x 8192MB) – LPDDR3, 1600MHz
GPU	Intel HD Graphics 520 (integrated GPU)
HDD/SSD	up to 256GB M.2 PCIe SSD (2280)
Display	12.5-inch (31.75 cm) – 1920×1080 (Full HD), IPS touch panel, glossy / 12.5-inch (31.75 cm) – 3840×2160 (Ultra HD), IPS touch panel, glossy
Optical drive	–
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 802.11ac, a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
Features	2x USB 3.0 1x USB 3.1 (Type-C) webcam 3.5 mm combo audio jack microphone HDMI (supports 4K UHD) SD card reader Harman Kardon stereo loudspeakers LED keyboard backlight
Battery	3-cell 43Wh Lithium-Ion batttery
Thickness	15.4 mm (0.6″)
Weight	1.32 kg (2.91 lbs)