Now that I have returned to the UK and being in absence in the past nearly 4 months I decided to purchase a powerful laptop to start working on my projects including IntelliCommands. No more desktop for me, the last one almost made me go deaf.
It took me over a month of research to decide what laptop to buy for my budget. Unfortunately, I faced some problems with my choice that I wanted to share but I would like to make it clear that this is my own personal opinion only and I will be very honest about it.
You can find the full specs of Tecra A10-112 in here.
Since the Toshiba Tecra A10 series marketed as Toshiba's business line with performance and durability I started developing a taste for it. To show off the durability there is even a demonstration video where the laptop is dropped on a table from 77cm height and it survives the fall.
The Toshiba Tecra A10 series is very new in the UK and at the time of writing this post most suppliers don't even list them. As you can figure there weren't any reviews written by known writers such as trustedreviews.com at the time I purchased Tecra A10-112. Please don't except my review to be as good as trustedreviews' because I don't do this professionally.
The Toshiba A10-112 that I got had three technical issues;
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The keyboard – Three of the keys were making very annoying click sound when they were pressed. Considering I have to use the keyboard on daily basis for very long period of time I couldn't tolerate the fault for more than 10 minutes.
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Screen Leakage – The screen frame that holds the matte let light shines through on left and right side of the frame. I believe this is called Screen Leakage. Looking at my five years old Toshiba Satellite Pro that I'm using to write this review has no screen leakage what so ever.
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The lid cover appeared to be loose – Every time I closed and opened the lid I could feel the lid's cover is moving in my hand. I'm not too sure if it was by design or yet another issue. It certainly didn't feel like the laptops that I used before.
Apart from the technical issues there are series of poor design decisions about Toshiba Tecra A10 series as well.
- Keyboard – The keyboard of A10 series are spill-resistant and that's the only good thing about the keyboard. The keyboard was so small for a chassis that holds wide 15.4” screen. Comparing to other wide 15.4” laptops that I have seen probably Toshiba Tecra A10 has the smallest keyboard. I'm guessing that to cut corners Toshiba used Toshiba Tecra's M10 series keyboard that uses wide 14” screen on A10 series. The keyboard on my old Satellite Pro M10 which has non-wide screen is way bigger and more comfortable to use.
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The screen – The viewing angel of Toshiba Tecra A10 is very poor as well. I spoke to Toshiba regarding this and they told me that the viewing angel was a design decision. Basically Toshiba decided to install a screen with virtually no viewing angel for a business line laptop because they though it was the right decision. Considering you would often invite colleagues around to show them something on your laptop I would say Toshiba demonstrated that they don't understand the business customer needs at all.
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The build quality – Toshiba markets Tecra series as "High Quality" but seeing one in flesh I certainly wasn't impressed by the build quality. In fact the Toshiba A10 that I got had very poor build quality feel to it. Being boring in design is one thing but paying for something for almost £850.00 and it didn't feel solid is another thing.
The only good thing I can say about Toshiba Tecra A10-112 is that its screen supports a resolution of 1,680x1,050 and only comparing to my old Toshiba Satellite Pro M10 I can say it was much brighter and the colour quality was brilliant. I have to leave the screen quality to experts.
Just for your record, someone else also highlighted my very concerns about Toshiba A10 series on Toshiba's European forum too. Please remember at the time of writing this article Toshiba has only sold a handful of them in the UK and I guess in other regions.
I had to arrange the laptop to be returned the following day and I called Toshiba several times regarding the issues. Toshiba never expressed being sorry for the experience that I had with their product in fact they tried to make it appear that I wasn't happy with the laptop (personal preference) and I wanted to return it which is not true. I have arranged the laptop to be returned due to its technical faults and I'm also happy to return the laptop for its poor design and poor build quality.
The Reliability Refund
As a consumer of Tecra you are promised if your laptop breaks down within the warranty they would replace and refund your money. Due to Technical faults on my laptop I have returned the laptop but that didn't constitute as a breakdown therefore the Reliability Refund wasn't applied to my case. The Reliability Refund offer ends at the end of October.
My overall experience with Toshiba is very disappointing now and unlike the past I would not recommend them to friends and colleagues anymore. I would highly recommend to you to wait for expert reviews to be published on both Toshiba Tecra A10 and M10 before making a decision.
I'm stretching my budget to buy something else now. At the moment I'm considering HP Compaq EliteBook or IBM ThinkPad T400. Please feel free to post your comments on Toshiba's Tecra A10, M10, HP EliteBook, and IBM ThinkPad T400 series for the benefits of all.