Review: Updated: Toshiba Satellite Radius 15

Introduction

Between convertible tablet modes, touchscreens and 4K displays, laptops have been inundated with features that often do little more than hike up the price. And so when Toshiba lays claim to creating the world's first 15-inch, 4K convertible laptop, I expected it to be one of the world's flashiest laptops with little substance.

Thankfully, the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 proved to be an excellent device that combines all these disparate qualities to creating one stunning experience no matter how you're using it.

Design

For a 15-inch laptop, the Radius 15 is one sleek device. While most of these plus-sized laptops are large and blocky, the Radius comes to a relatively thin 0.79-inch thin profile when closed. Even the underside of the notebook tapers to accentuate its thinness.

Aesthetically, the Radius 15 looks modern with a dark, charcoal paint job and corners that come to hard right angles. It also helps that brushed aluminum sheets cover both the screen lid and keyboard deck.

Speaking of the keyboard, the Radius 15 features a spacious island layout. However, I have to say it offers some of the shortest key travel I've seen on any Windows laptop. The lack of key travel isn't shockingly non-existent as it is on Apple's New MacBook, but it's shallow enough to make you give pause. However, after the first odd keystroke, you eventually get used to it.

All in all, it's pretty standard keyset, save for a special Cortana key that only triggers a search command when it was originally designed to prompt the laptop to listen for voice commands.

While the trackpad isn't lined with glass, the plastic panel is smooth enough with a slight brushed texture to it. You'll never find yourself stroking your finger across the palm rests wondering why the cursor isn't moving.

One thing you'll especially like about this revision is how it drops the banana-laptop look from yesteryear, where the rear end of the machine would appear to dip more and more as it approached the hinge. From the side, the 2015 model has a much more streamlined profile that's straight from front to back.

Thanks to these aesthetic improvements, you would never take this laptop for a convertible hybrid. But, with one quick flip of the screen, you can use the Radius 15 as a massive tablet or stand it up as a portable 15-inch screen – and that's the star of this show.

Now in gorgeous Ultra HD

By far, the biggest feature of the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 is its 4K screen, offering up 3,840 x 2,160 pixels of sumptuous resolution. Aside from being extremely sharp, with 282 pixels per inch, the display panel also produces deep shadows and vibrant colors. The combination of sharpness and dynamic range enhances just about any experience you play on it.

Whether it's watching an episode of Daredevil or playing some old missions in Halo 4 with Xbox One streaming, the Radius 15's screen just makes everything look better.

To complement this visual feast, Toshiba has also fitted the Radius 15 with a pair of booming Harman Kardon speakers. Not only do the tweeters sound massive for their size, for once you can pump the volume to max with no worry about distortion.

Toshiba claims that a partnership with DTS Sound, plus an exclusive Slipstream port, allows its laptop speakers to be more precise and produce a richer, room-filling sound.

Specifications and value

The Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 weighs 4.96 pounds (2.24kg), just heavy as much as any other modern 15-inch laptop. Similarly, the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501 tips the scales at 5 pounds (2.26kg) flat, while the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 slips in as the lightest machine at slightly 4.7 pounds (2.13kg).

Thanks to dropping the optical drive for a thinner frame, the Radius 15 only measures 0.79 inches (20mm) thick. On top of the slimmer frame, it also has a smaller 14.9 x 9.6-inch (378 x 244mm) footprint than other 15-inch rigs. By comparison, Asus and Dell's laptops measure 15.08 x 10.04 x 0.84 inches (383 x 252 x 19.9mm) and 15.04 x 9.94 x 0.78 inches (382 x 252 x 19.8mm), respectively.

Here is the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 configuration sent to techradar for review:

Spec sheet

• CPU: 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-5500U (dual-core, 4MB cache up to 3GHz with Turbo Boost)
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 5500
• RAM: 12GB DDR3L (1600MHz)
• Screen: 15.6-inch, 4K Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) TruBrite, LED backlit, IPS touchscreen
• Storage: 512GB mSATA SSD
• Ports: 2 x USB 3.0 ports (one with Sleep and Charge), 1 x USB 2.0, 1 x HDMI, SD card reader, headphone/mic combo jack
• Connectivity: Intel Dual-Band Wireless-AC 7265, Bluetooth 4.0
• Camera: 720p HD webcam
• Weight: 4.96 pounds
• Size: 14.9 x 9.6 x 0.79 inches (W x D x H)

Configuring the Satellite Radius 15 to the spec listed above on Toshiba's website rings up a grand total of $1,599. (Toshiba, however, has since swapped out the 5500U processor for a new Skylake 6500U chip.) That's not a bad price for what is essentially a souped-up 15-inch MacBook Pro with an even sharper display, but lacking the dedicated graphics.

It's also worth noting that this notebook starts at $799 with a more standard 1,366 x 768 display and an Intel Core i3-5015U processor with a 750GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM.

The best available spec for the Radius 15 in the UK comes priced at £699 and includes a 1080p touchscreen, 1TB hybrid storage drive, 8GB of RAM and an Intel Core i5-6200U processor. As for Australia, the Satellite Radius series isn't even available at 15 inches. The closest thing those in the AU can get is a Satellite Radius 14, which can be configured comparably with an Intel Core i7-5500U processor for AU$1,799.

The Asus ZenBook Pro UX501 comes pretty well equipped itself. For a flat $1,499 or £1,679 (about AU$2,062), this 15-inch notebook comes stock with a 4K display that's just as sharp. However, the color gamut it produces is ever so slightly duller.

Asus's own 4K laptop also has a slightly older, 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-4720HQ processor, but the UX501 makes up for this deficit with an Nvidia GTX 960M graphics chip, more RAM and one of the industry's fastest PCI-Express connected SSDs that also offers 512GB of storage.

The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 special edition is an exceptionally well-put together machine for its $999 or AU$1,499 price tag. Of course, being the most affordable alternative has it pitfalls. This laptop is limited to a Full HD, 1,080p resolution plus a 500GB hard drive. The only upside is it comes outfitted with an Intel Core i5-6200U chip right off the Skylake block.

Going by specs, the ZenBook Pro and Radius 15 are almost neck in neck with some slight variances. Where Toshiba has the leg up in memory and newer processor, Asus offers discrete graphics and PCI-express connected storage for faster data transmission rates. The 15-inch Dell Insprion is the most affordable option of this bunch, but it's the least well equipped.

Performance and features

While the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 only comes with integrated graphics, the Intel Core i7 chip barely broke a sweat while driving the 4K display. The laptop ran smoothly at its Ultra HD resolution, even under the massive load of running two tab-filled internet browsers simultaneously, chat programs, streaming tunes on Groove Music and a small window of YouTube videos in the background.

The 4K Radius 15 a solid performer – just so long as you're not playing any games. Unsurprisingly, Metal Gear V: The Phantom Pain brought this machine to its knees, running at 20 fps even after I brought the graphical settings to their lowest level and tuning the resolution down to 720p.

Rocket League also proved to be almost too much for the Radius 15's integrated graphics. Even with the lowest possible resolution setting and toning down the graphical options, the game was only able to run at a saddening 20fps. It also doesn't help that Rocket League looks like a terribly pixelated PlayStation game on this extremely sharp display.

Benchmarks

Here's how the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:

• 3DMark: Cloud Gate: 5,187; Sky Diver: 2,452; Fire Strike: 615
• Cinebench CPU: 274 points; Graphics: 27 fps
• GeekBench: 2,701 (single-core); 5,734 (multi-core)
• PCMark 8 (Home Test): 2,179 points
• PCMark 8 Battery Life: 2 hours and 45 minutes

Unsurprisingly, the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501 absolutely decimated the Radius 15 in every graphical benchmark test. Case and point: the UX501 put up a Fire Strike score of 3,669 points, almost six times the 615-point score the Toshiba laptop was able to produce.

While it might seem like the Radius 15's 3DMark scores puts it on par with an Ultrabook, this is largely because of its 4K resolution display. Driving that many pixels is a huge tax on the processor and, unlike the Radius 15, the UX501 has an extra helping hand by way of its discrete graphics card.

Driving 3,840 x 2,160 pixels naturally drags on processor performance, and so it's fitting to see that the Radius 15 also has a fairly underwhelming PCMark 8 score of 2,179 points. That said, the Toshiba UHD laptop's performance isn't lagging behind too badly compared to the 2,239 point score put up by the Dell Inspiron 15 7000, which is running at a much less grueling 1,080p resolution.

Life with a giant convertible

Convertibles any larger than 13 inches are hard to justify because of their unwieldy and large screens. By this measure, holding up a 15-inch tablet should be ridiculous, and you would be right to think that. However, in my own time using the Radius 15, I found it's 2-in-1 features to make a lot of sense.

While laying back on the couch, I could still use the laptop when I laid the screen at a 180-degree angle, thanks to its hybrid design. While the notebook's large form factor doesn't make it a practical handheld tablet, it makes a lot of sense when you have the display propped up in presentation mode or using the device as a large touchscreen on your lap.

Quartered battery life

Unfortunately, one of the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15's biggest shortcomings is battery life. After running down this notebook multiple times, I found that the longest run time you can get is roughly four hours, and that's with the daintiest workload of opening five Firefox tabs and editing a Microsoft document, all at less than 50% screen brightness and turning off the keyboard backlight.

Even with our lightweight movie test, the Radius 15 lasted for a paltry 3 hours and 15 minutes. Our other PCMark 8 battery test yielded an even shorter 2 hours and 45 minutes of run time. By comparison, the Asus UX501 ran for 3 hours and 20 minutes, while the Inspiron 15 7000's ran for an additional 20 minutes longer.

As for why the Radius 15 has a shorter battery life, we can look at the laptop's poor benchmark scores. They allude to the processor being stressed regularly to drive the 4K display, and as a result, drawing more power. In short, you shouldn't expect to use the Radius 15 for an extended period away from the power plug.

Bundled software

Users spinning up their system for the first time will find their program list already cluttered with non-essential applications. All the usual suspects are here, including Candy Crush Saga, iHeartRadio and shortcuts leading to TripAdvisor and Booking.com's respective websites.

The only real exception is the bundled Chroma Tune program, which lets you switch to multiple predefined color grading schemes. Some of these screen presets are more green, while others are warmer or cooler. They should come in handy when you're trying to accurately edit colors in Lightroom and other programs.

Verdict

By and large, 4K laptops haven't really worked from over-promising UHD gaming laptops, like the Razer Blade, to the extra pixels choking the performance out of the Lenovo Yoga Pro 3. The Satellite Radius 15, however, is one of the first few cases in which a 4K screen makes sense, and the 3,840 x 2,160 resolution only helps to make it an even stronger machine for media consumption and creation.

We liked

For its $1,599 price tag, the quality of the hardware inside this 4K laptop is practically a steal. The colorful Ultra HD display alone more than justifies the price tag you'll pay for this machine. Though this notebook does not come sporting dedicated graphics, it has no trouble running Windows 10 at Ultra HD, just so long as games aren't part of the equation.

We disliked

Although Toshiba doesn't have any aspirations to make the Radius 15 a gaming machine, the 4K screen still hampers its ability to run any graphically intense task. It's fine for image and video editing, but users will inevitably run into a performance ceiling when they try to run modeling programs and other more complex creative pursuits. Similarly, this machine simply can't stay away from power outlets for long, thanks to its short battery life.

Final verdict

Thanks to the combination of a great price and stacked hardware, the Radius 15 is one of the few successful UHD laptops. It joins a small pantheon of 4K laptops, with the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501 being its closest exemplar. In some ways, the Radius 15 is a better overall system with a more vibrant screen, a sharper design that's also thinner and smaller to boot.

The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 is still one of the 15-inch best laptops we've ever reviewed and an incredible deal if you're on a budget. But if you're ready to make the resolution jump into 4K, you can't go wrong with the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15.

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