A revised model arrives with improved battery life and its predecessor’s good looks intact
£1,299 | $2,230
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| Toshiba Kira |
Toshiba’s new Kira is a 2014 update to last year’s model, which marked the company’s first foray into premium Ultrabook territory. With a sleek chassis and improved battery life, it joins a growing list of competing Windows Ultrabooks with high-resolution, high-pixel-density displays.
For the Kira’s entry price of £1,299/$2,230 you could bag yourself a Dell XPS 13, or a laptop/ tablet hybrid such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro or Asus UX301. In the business arena, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and Fujitsu Lifebook U904 also pack sharp screens, slim designs and the latest Intel Core processors. Can Toshiba match such fierce competition?
After years of dependable (if slightly uninspired) mid-range laptops, Toshiba’s original Kira was a statement of intent – a flash Bentley coming off a production line of three-door hatchbacks. A performance boost to an already attractive Ultrabook is welcome, but is it enough to launch the Kira into pole position?
Slick design
The Kira’s chassis measures just 23mm at its thickest point and tapers toward the bottom, making it appear even thinner. There’s an eye-catching black bezel around the screen, and the lid and base are coated in an attractive silver finish. This is complemented by a silver edge around the power button, Wi-Fi indicator and trackpad.
Build quality is decent overall thanks to the Kira’s magnesium alloy construction, which uses a honeycomb structure for strength. You’ll only notice the flex on the underside of the base if you go deliberately prodding it, but the laptop’s lid is worryingly bendable and you’ll want to avoid using it to pick the machine up.
Though it was more of a standout feature on last year’s version, the Kira’s 13.3-inch WQHD (Wide Quad High Definition) PixelPure display still makes for impressive viewing, with high contrast levels that show off its deep blacks and solid colours.
The Kira’s display is far from perfect though; despite its solid colour reproduction, the panel’s image quality is hampered by a dim backlight, which maxes out at
what feels like around 85 per cent brightness. This is exacerbated by the display’s highly reflective finish, which makes viewing its contents awkward in brightly-lit places.
what feels like around 85 per cent brightness. This is exacerbated by the display’s highly reflective finish, which makes viewing its contents awkward in brightly-lit places.
The screen features 10-point multi-touch, which is responsive and accurate. You might wonder whether you would need touch on a non-hybrid model (especially for the added cost), but it allows you to perform some tasks more quickly than a trackpad or mouse.
Despite feeling quite compact for a 13-inch Ultrabook (mainly thanks to the thin bezel), the Kira doesn’t provide a cramped typing experience. However, that’s not helped by the fact that its chicletstyle keyboard keys aren’t completely square; they’re slightly wider than they are tall, which may take some getting used to.
You shouldn’t make the Kira your main sound system for house parties, as its Harman Kardon speakers are no substitute for a dedicated speaker and subwoofer system. However, it’s fine for personal listening and you can tweak the sound settings using the DTS Studio Surround app.
Scale and polish
Like other Ultrabooks with high resolutions, the Kira struggles with Windows 8.1’s poor scaling abilities, making text and UI elements difficult to read in certain apps. Some apps cope with this better than others. The desktop version of Evernote, for example, doesn’t attempt to adjust to the higher resolution. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, sets itself to a 200 per cent zoom level by default, which makes web pages appear comically large compared with everything else (we found that 125 per cent made for comfortable reading).
Aside from playing around with individual apps’ settings, the only option is to use a lower resolution, such as 1,920 x 1,080, which defeats the point of a high-PPI display.
Powered up
Our test model was supplied with Windows 8.1, an Intel Core i7-4500 processor running at 1.80GHz, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. The Kira’s graphics are powered by an integrated Intel HD 4400 chip, which handled 3DMark 8’s least demanding benchmarks with ease, but began to struggle with increasingly complex tasks. It’s fine for playing games running Valve’s Source engine around the 40-50fps mark (if you lower the resolution to 1,920 x 1,080). However, as is expected from an integrated GPU, you won’t experience those frame rates in newer games such as Battlefield 4 or Titanfall, even if you drastically lower the resolution. Any tasks we performed in desktop mode were nippy and responsive – from opening desktop programs to snapping multiple apps side-by-side. Because of its speedy SSD, the Kira only took 10 seconds to boot from cold. The Kira’s CPU has been upgraded from Ivy Bridge to Haswell, resulting in improved battery life. The laptop ran for 11 hours using PCMark 8 Home’s battery life test, which continually opens and closes programs and loops video until the battery is completely depleted. The port selection is good for an Ultrabook, offering a full-size HDMI output and two USB 3.0 ports on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side is an SD card slot, a 3.5mm stereo headset jack and one more USB 3.0 port. Connectivity options here include 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The updated Kira’s longer battery life, compact styling and attractive looks (with the lid open) are all plus points, but some of the flaws could be deal-breakers. The most glaring one is the display’s dim backlight. It’s a shame that Toshiba couldn’t crank the display brightness up by 10-15 per cent, which would make it easier to use in direct sunlight The amount of flex in the Kira’s lid is also cause for concern for a laptop in this price bracket. Although the Kira only offers an integrated graphics setup, it’s fine for playing casual games. The speedy SSD makes sure you’re never waiting for applications to respond on the desktop, and boot times are fast too. All things considered, this is a highly portable machine with fantastic battery life, competent performance and perhaps a little more in the way of style than substance. If the Kira was a bit less expensive it would be easier to look over its misgivings, but when the competition is this strong, it is something of a hard sell.
The updated Kira’s longer battery life, compact styling and attractive looks are all plus points
The high cost of the Kira puts it at a disadvantage, but it’s a great laptop apart from the dim display
Toshiba Kira
Processor: Intel Core i7-4500 1.8Ghz
Storage: 256GB SSD
RAM: 8GB
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4400
Connectivity: 1 x HDMI, 2 x USB 3.0,
SD card, 3.5mm audio
Weight 1.35kg
Screen size: 13.3 inches
Display resolution: 2,560 x 1,440
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