Gadgetory

if you want a cheap laptop Toshiba's often been the way to go but now they're shooting a little bit higher up the totem pole hi I'm Sean Hollister with CNET and we're taking a look at the toshiba satellite radius 12 it's a twelve and a half inch laptop with a 4k screen a nice thin light convertible system it flips all the way around this laptop crams a Core i7 processor eight gigabytes of memory and 256 gigabytes of solid-state storage into an all-metal body it's just 15 point five millimeters thin and weighs about 2.9 pounds on par with other thin and light laptops its size only this one has a 4k screen that's been Technicolor certified it's got a 100% Adobe RGB color gamut and from what we've seen if it's so far it definitely is a bright crisp clear and colorful display couple problems one of them is the amount of glare you'll see off of this screen it's so reflective that when the display is off it looks like a mirror and even with it on you could be watching a 4k movie on this screen and see reflections of what's gone on behind you the other problem is what you're going to watch on this screen even though it has a beautiful 4k display there isn't a lot of content out there Netflix and Amazon both have their 4k videos available but not on the web you can't view them on a PC only on a 4k television YouTube does allow you to watch 4k video on a PC but even with the fast core i7 chip in here even if you let the stream buffer a little bit let that data cache we still see a bit of stuttering and make no mistake what you're paying for here is the 4k screen not the rest of this laptops chassis some of the creature comforts artists students we'd like the keyboards a little bit mushy even though the touchpad has a brushed metal surface it's a little bit uneven as I move my finger around the touchpad some places to smooth other places it's rough for no particular reason still you do get a lot speed for your money here and the Toshiba Satellite Radio's 12 has a few cool tricks up its sleeve you can bend the screen over backwards like a Lenovo yoga system it's a trick they picked up from that line all the way back down into a tablet configure if you like there's a search button on the side so you can jump right into Cortana Microsoft's voice assistant and ask her a question if you like the 256 gigabytes solid-state drive in this machine makes it lightning fast to boot up and there's a pair of facial recognition cameras mounted right over the display that'll log you in without entering a pin or password you just have to present your face there's a full-sized HDMI socket that can output 4k video one of those fancy new USB type-c ports we've got a full size full depth SD card slot one of our big concerns with a laptop this thin with such a high resolution display is how long the battery is going to last we know that 4k screens drink up the juice like nobody's business the competitors in this space are courting 9 10 11 hours of battery life Toshiba says this one will give you 6 and a half hours for a $1300 laptop that may not be enough for you and it's something you may want to consider when you're deciding where to spend your money I'm Sean Hollister with CNET and this was the Toshiba Satellite radiused well you