"The Satellite Click 2 has dramatically improved performance and battery life but Toshiba has to rethink the terrible design."
For
Unexpectedly impressive battery life
Sharp and colorful display
Runs image editors and light gaming handedly
Against
Ugly
Heavy for an 13.3-inch laptop
Uncomfortably awkward to use in nearly every way
Toshiba
is one of those companies that dares to experiment with the shape of
laptops. Just looking at the the company's small portfolio of
convertible laptops alone we've have the Satellite U920T with a screen that slides into place and the screen flipping Satellite Radius.
While many of these designs are novel, many of them have fallen to the
wayside being either too weird or unwieldy for its own brilliance. Now
Toshiba has just updated one of its only hybrid designs to get a second
pass with the Toshiba Satellite Click 2. Sporting a detachable screen,
the Click 2's splits into a thick 13.3-inch tablet and exceptionally
thin keyboard base. Compared to the last model, Toshiba has refreshed
its laptop-tablet with slightly news looks, and more importantly, a more
powerful Intel Pentium processor. Now the question is if this is enough
to fix the ills of the original Click or is this the Click 2 destined
to fade into obscurity like so many hybrids before it.
Design
The
Click 2 is an odd looking laptop. With a screen three as times thick as
its keyboard base, it looks lopsided compared to your traditional
notebook. A friend even asked me whether the laptop was upside after
placing it on a desk. While
the Click 2 is rather top heavy, the hinge is strong enough to hold the
screen in place - that is when it's sitting flat desk. Trying to type
with the Click 2 sitting on my lap causes the display to wobble back and
forth, though, not violently enough to cause the machine to tumble away
from me.
Compared with the previous Toshiba Click, this new model
is decidedly squarer especially on the bottom edge of the screen. This
is flat base allow the screen to stand up when its not sitting on its
base. Unfortunately the Click 2 does come with kickstand, so you'll
often look down at the screen, unless the you place the hybrid on a
particularly tall, neck-high surface. It's also awkward
to wrap your hands around the wide 13.3-inch tablet-laptop. Hold it
horizontally and your hands are constantly split at a chest's width.
Turn the device vertically and the tablet tips away from you as its
edges dig into your palms. Toshiba has also made a poor design choice by
placing the speakers on the backside of the screen exactly where you
rest your fingers whilst holding the tablet. One
of the strangest things about the Click 2's design is the majority of
its ports are located on the sides of the display including the
mini-HDMI, SD card slot, and USB 2.0 port. It would have made a lot of
sense to keep the inputs located on the laptop base, as you probably
won't be plugging in a mouse or hooking it to a TV while your hands are
busy holding the device and tapping on the touchscreen.
Specifications
Weighing in at 4.85 pounds, the Click 2 is one of the heaviest convertible laptops even compared to equally sized, 4.2 pound Asus Transformer Book TX300.
The Asus is even thinner measuring 13.30 x 9.40 x 1 inches while the
Toshiba's dimensions are 9.10 x 13 x 1 inches. Unsurprisingly the
11.6-inch Lenovo Yoga 2 11 is the smallest hybrid, measuring 11.7 x 8.12
x 0.67 inches and weighing 3.19 pounds. Here is the Toshiba Satellite Click 2 configuration given to reviewsense
Spec Sheet
CPU: 2.16GHz Intel Pentium N3530 Processor (2MB cache, up to 2.58 GHz with Turbo Boost)
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics
RAM: 4GB DDR3L 1600MHz
Screen: 13.3-inch 1366x768 LED Backlit 10-point Touchscreen IPS Display
Storage: 500GB HDD (5400rpm, Serial ATA)
Ports:1 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 3.0, mini-HDMI, headphone and microphone combo jack, Kingston lock, AC adapter, SD card slot
Connectivity: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 with Bluetooth 4.0
Camera: HD 720p webcam
Weight: 4.85 pounds
Size: 9.10 x 13 x 1 inches (W x D x H)
Like
what you see? Well, good then, because this is the only configuration
the Toshiba Satellite Click 2 comes in other than the higher-end Pro
version made with an aluminum body. The Click 2 has been on sale for a
while and as a result it can be picked for a cool $499 (about £310,
AU$569) at Best Buy. The Lenovo Yoga 2 11 for also goes for an affordable $499 (about £310, AU$569) on Amazon
as well. The Lenovo hybrid also matches the Toshiba with the same
Pentium N3530 CPU and 8GB of RAM, plus the a little speed boost thanks
to the 500GB hybrid drive with an 8GB SSD cache. Asus Transformer Book
TX300 by comparison is in a whole other class of premium; equipped with a
Ivy Bridge Intel Core i7 3517U processor and a 128GB SSD on top of its
500GB hard drive, this suave aluminum hybrid can be had for $1,099 at TigerDirect (about £683, AU$1,254).
Performance
With a Pentium processor tucked under the Click 2's thick
display we weren't expecting much performance at all. In fact, the
laptop chugged heavily when I patched in all the Windows 8.1 updates.
However, once I got the laptop running up to speed with the latest
software, it was smooth sailing from there. The hybrid proved to be
spunky and did a fair job of running Adobe Lightroom as well as playing
Hearthstone on medium settings. As ever, here's how the Click 2 fared in
our usual battery of benchmark tests.
Benchmarks
3DMark: Ice Storm: 20,652; Cloud Gate: 1,583; Fire Strike: DNF
Cinebench CPU: 153 points; Graphics: 6.65 fps,
PCMark 8 (Home Test): 1,432 points
PCMark 8 Battery Life: 5 hours and 31 minutes
Sadly
the Click 2 performed the terribly even with the simplest 3DMark Ice
Storm test only scoring 20, 652, which falls behind the Lenovo Yoga 2
11's 21,438 and the 29,117 points put up by the Asus Transformer Book
TX300. The Click 2 did slightly better with the Cinebench CPU crunching
Cinebench test with marks 153 points. The Yoga 2 11 completed the same
benchmark test with 147 points and, as expected, the Intel Core i7
equipped TX300 crushed it with 580 points.
Ready for the long haul
Where the Click 2 lacks
in performance it makes up for with astonishly good battery life. Thanks
to the low-power Intel Pentium N3530 processor plus a fanless design,
the 13.3-inch laptop was able to last a respectable 5 hours and 31
minutes on our PCMark 8 battery test. The
Click 2 was also able to see me through a full day of working on
documents while streaming music, editing photos in Lightroom, streaming
the last half of GI Joe Retribution, and two rounds of Hearthstone. All
of this was done with the screen set to a quarter screen brightness and
speakers set to 20 and the laptop still lasted 6 hours and 29 minutes. Keep
in mind this excellent battery life is coming from an budget hybrid.
This extended run time is something we'd more expect from an energy
sipping Chromebook
or meticulously engineered ultrabook. The only competitor that came
close to matching the Click 2's battery life was the Asus TX300, which
lasted a shorter 5 hours and 6 minutes on the PCMark 8 battery test.
Excellent display, for the price
Another
pleasant surprise was the Click 2 excellent display panel. Equipped
with an IPS panel, the laptop's display presents some very good colors.
It also renders some actual blacks, whereas many TN panel-equipped
machines would produce washed out grays. That said you can't expect
perfection with a budget price and the Click 2 lacks a fair amount of
contrast, which causes most detail in the shadows to be lost to dark
pixels. It's decent enough to watch streaming movies and edit your
vacation pictures with, but I wouldn't suggest doing any professional
photoshopping on this display.
Bundled software
The
Toshiba Click 2 comes with an infuriating amount of bloatware
preloaded. 15 items in total, but here's the most important software
you'll want to keep around.
DTS Sound - Well don't delete your sound system software.
Hard disc recovery - In case of accidental spills this software will hopefully help you restore your data.
Intel® Wireless Display - Share your display to another device wirelessly.
TOSHIBA Maintenance Utility - Just in case you need to troubleshoot your machine
Verdict
The Click 2 is definitely not a stunner from Toshiba, but
it's a big improvement from the original convertible hybrid. Thanks to a
more capable Pentium processor I never ran into any of the performance
issues on the original Click and its AMD CPU. What's more, the new Intel
chip also seems to have fixed the short battery life, which also
plagued the Click 2's predecessor.
We liked
Going
Intel was a boon for the Click 2. Not only has the new chipset
dramatically improved the performance of this hybrid laptop, it's also
drastically extended the battery life to over six hours. Toshiba hasn't
sacrificed processing horsepower for more power sipping performance
either. I was easily able to run all of my typical, resource intensive
applications without any hiccups. The great screen, meanwhile, is just
an extra bit of icing to go with the Click 2 surprisingly excellent
performance. Recently Microsoft and its computer manufacturing partners have been in search of affordable, power-efficient Windows 8.1
laptops to compete with Chromebooks and the Click 2 offers a glimpse of
that future could be. Plus the screen detaches to become a tablet.
We disliked
While the Click 2 has fixed many of
the ills that plagued its predecessor, Toshiba's hybrid is still far
from being perfect. The most glaring flaw of the Click 2 is its
absolutely dreadful design. It's shape is lopsided making it just as
awkward to balance on your lap as it is unwieldy to hold. The design as a
whole just seems backwards and while that might its characteristic
signature, it's really not working here Toshiba.
Final verdict
The
Click 2 is a step in the right direction and Toshiba has improved
greatly from the originally Click, which in general was a borked machine
in every way. Still it's not a notebook I would easily recommend,
especially when the Lenovo Yoga 2 11 has can be had for the same
affordable price. Plus the two machines share very similar specs. Sure
you're sacrificing some screen real estate, but Lenovo has nailed its
hybrid design and a 11.6-inch tablet might actually be more comfortable
in your hands. With the Click 3 I can only hope Toshiba
will go back to the drawing board to create a slimmer, lighter and
easier to hold laptop hybrid. Once it does that, Toshiba could have a
very hot convertible machine on its hands.
