Toshiba KIRAbook Pro Reviews

This Haswell-class Kirabook is a big improvement over the original, but its price-to-performance ratio remains high.

On the design side of things, the KIRAbook is a handsome machine. But, as we mentioned earlier, it suffers a bit from the bevy of other laptops that look very much like it. People may comment on this machine's size, but we doubt anyone will walk up to you and say “Oooh, you have a KIRAbook.” Of course that's likely not your primary reason for buying an ultrabook like this. Though form may be a tad bland here, functionality with the KIRAbook is deluxe. As for performance, it’s a solid system and we like that this ultrabook has plenty of memory and a speedy SSD drive, instead of a slower hard drive. The lack of an Ethernet port may bother some people, but the inclusion of three USB 3.0 ports is a good move, and the sleep-and-charge port is great. In the end, the way the ultrabook feels to you when you use it can be as important as its ability to crunch data. During our review, the KIRAbook was light and easy to carry, but solid enough (aside from the occasional lid flex) to be comfortable in our laps. The KIRAbook isn’t perfect, but it’s a true ultrabook. And starting at $1599 to $1999 as tested, the KIRAbook definitely competes well with other high-end thin-and-lights from Apple and a few others.

The Toshiba Kirabook is by and large a very good ultrabook. Its screen is unparalleled in the Windows 8 market, it's light and thin and generally well-designed, and it has no glaring flaws. It has flaws, yes, but the absence of a deal-breaker is normally enough for me to recommend a Windows laptop. For $1,599 or more, though, these little flaws – a jumpy and imperfect trackpad, some performance quirks, that ugly give on the lid — give me great pause. But the Kirabook's real problem is one of timing. It's coming out just before Haswell chips are available, which promises better performance for a screen this high-res; it's also way ahead of its time for Windows, and for now there are just too many places where having a screen this good is actually a negative. I spent a week feeling like I needed glasses, because everything in Chrome was so blurry. (I did spend a lot of time in Internet Explorer as a result, though, so maybe it's not all bad for Microsoft.) Plus, for $100 less you can get a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, and that's a tough sale for any manufacturer to make. I'm hoping the Kirabook is the start of a trend for Windows 8 laptops, as one manufacturer after the next realize that building great laptops might be a sustainable business model after all. But I'm really hoping that whoever follows Toshiba's lead also does the job slightly better than Toshiba. I'm happy to pay top dollar for a great Windows laptop, and I don't think I'm the only one. I'm just waiting for someone to make a truly great one.

When Toshiba announced the KIRAbook, we were blown away by its specs, especially its high-resolution display. After playing around with it for our reviewing purposes, we’re still impressed with Toshiba’s offering, although the KIRAbook isn’t quite as perfect as most people had hoped it would be. Sure – it has a killer display, a fast processor and is deceptively light, but its battery performance and its relatively high retail price may make you reconsider if its 2560 x 1440 is worth spending at least $1,599 for its touchscreen-less i5 version. The same specs with touchscreen, called the i5 Touchscreen, will bump the price up to $1,799, while the Intel Core i7 version, the i7 Touchscreen, will retail for $1,999.

Is the KIRAbook a bad product? No, not at all, quite the opposite actually. But it's a good product that has a questionable price and poor timing, and that's ultimately where things go south. Price wise it's actually competitive with the PC market, but has a much rougher time competing with the 13.3" Apple Retina MacBook Pro, which actually starts at $100 less. That's the hard lesson PC manufacturers still haven't quite learned: you don't compete with Apple. You can make something that's ostensibly better than an Apple product, but if it's running Windows, you need to charge less for it. The best case scenario for the first generation KIRAbook is a fire sale after the Haswell-based refresh materializes, and that's a verdict I'm not at all happy to deliver for such a promising product.

There's no question the Kirabook is Toshiba's best Ultrabook to date. But is it good enough to win over wary consumers? We're inclined to say no, at least at this price. For all the things Toshiba got right (attractive design, improved keyboard, solid specs, generous warranty) there are a few important details it overlooked. There's the 2,560 x 1,440 display with the narrow viewing angles, and the noisy fan that drowns out the otherwise fast performance. Despite all that, it's still a good machine in many ways, but we'd suggest waiting for a possible price drop, and maybe even a Haswell refresh a few months down the road. In fact, we wouldn't suggest buying anything until other PC makers reveal their summer lineups. Who knows? A month from now, Toshiba might not be the only game in town for high-res Windows laptops.

The Kirabook is the most beautiful Ultrabook to pass through the PCWorld Labs, but its inability to drive a large external monitor at native resolution, a lid that flexes like a contortionist, a Wi-Fi adapter restricted to 2.4GHz networks, and a display that doesn’t deliver as much contrast as the Retina display Toshiba wants consumers to compare it to make this machine’s sky-high price tag hard to swallow.

The audience Toshiba is pursuing with the Kirabook is the well-to-do professional who is willing to pay extra for high-end hardware and services. The Kirabook is the most beautiful Ultrabook to pass through our Test Centre, but its inability to drive a large external monitor at native resolution, a lid that flexes like a contortionist, a Wi-Fi adapter restricted to 2.4GHz networks, and a display that doesn't deliver as much contrast as the Retina display Toshiba wants consumers to compare it to make this machine's sky-high price tag hard to swallow.

The Toshiba Kirabook ultrabook has a breathtaking screen. However, that screen doesn't necessarily justify the system's high price point.

In addition to Norton Internet Security and Norton Anti-Theft, the Kirabook comes with the usual tiles and links (Skype, Netflix, eBay) plus a couple of applications that can make good use of its sharp screen—Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 and Premiere Elements 11 for photo and video editing, respectively. The $1,999 configuration also comes with Windows 8 Pro instead of ordinary Windows 8, although the ultrabook itself has no IT manageability features such as Intel vPro or TPM. As we said, the $1,599 KiraBook carries a Core i5 chip and non-touch screen. We suspect most shoppers will split the difference with a $1,799 model, which offers Core i5 power and Windows 8 but includes the touch screen that makes the latter bearable. All three models come with the PixelPure display, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, Adobe Elements duo, and "platinum" service package.

When Toshiba first showed us the Kirabook in person, company reps asked my colleague and I what we thought the system would cost. We gave a couple of well-reasoned guesses, but came nowhere close to the $1,599-to-$1,999 range. But there is room for premium laptops even among today's price-sensitive shoppers. To make that leap, you really need a design that stands out from the $800-to-$1,200 crowd, and the Kirabook fails to do so, despite having a higher-resolution screen as its main selling point. That said, it's a great example of a more expensive laptop built with superior construction and materials, and feels great to use while typing, tapping, and swiping.

The Toshiba Kirabook is in many ways a great Ultrabook. The 2560 x 1440 would be impressive on its own, yet it’s served up in a package no larger than a MacBook Air that still offers excellent performance and reasonable battery life. Toshiba’s engineers have certainly earned their keep. But even the best hardware can’t reach its potential without the right software, and that’s where this Ultrabook – through no fault of its own – stumbles. The poor scaling of Windows 8 is just the tip of the iceberg, as very few developers working on PC software do so with high-resolution Ultrabooks in mind. There’s nothing on the market that takes advantage of the extra pixels. And anyone who makes regular use of legacy software will actually find the display a hindrance. The scaling issue, along with sticker shock and poor cooling, makes the Kirabook difficult to recommend. Users who just want a beautiful display would be better off with the Dell XPS 13, while those who want an ultra-portable workstation will prefer the far more powerful Asus Zenbook UX51Vz.