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The Toshiba Portege WT20 might look like another Surface Pro competitor, and it certainly is that, among other things. More important to Toshiba is that it's the more affordable alternative to the well-received though perhaps not high volume selling Portege Z20t. In fact, the WT20 is essentially the base model Z20t minus the keyboard dock and active digitizer/pen support. Since the very capable dock and the pen were the two features that made the Z20t lust worthy, we're not as bullish on the WT20. The WT20 sells for $899 and that nets you a 5th generation Intel Core M CPU, a fanless design, 4 gigs of RAM and a 128 gig SSD. It has a 12.5" 1920 x 1080 touchscreen display. The tablet has dual band Intel AC7265 WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1, a front 2MP camera and rear 5MP camera.
Design and Ports
Standalone tablets are a hard sell when they're priced near the $1,000 mark. Microsoft has carved a strong niche with the Surface Pro line, but even that took a few generations and a screen size increase to gain momentum. Toshiba positions this as a business machine, and those tend to be priced higher while ensuring quality components and decent (as computer support goes) tech support. This is certainly not a budget Toshiba consumer product--finish and materials are excellent, the components are indeed good stuff and the magnesium-encased tablet feels sturdy despite the relatively light 1.6 lbs. weight and crazy slim 8.8mm chassis.
This is a 16:9 aspect ratio tablet, and as such it's much more comfortable to use in landscape mode. In portrait orientation it feels awkwardly tall and skinny. Ports are minimal and micro: there's a micro USB 2.0 port, micro HDMI and a microSD card slot. For the price we'd like to see USB 3.0. The tablet also has a 3.5mm audio jack and the usual built-in mic and webcam (2MP). There's a passable 5MP camera on the rear that can capture 1080p video. The $269 dock originally designed for and included with the Portege Z20t also fits the WT20, and it makes this a much more versatile machine, even if Toshiba envisions you not buying it. It adds a very usable keyboard, trackpad, secondary battery and a host of full size ports including Ethernet, USB 3.0 ports, VGA and HDMI. Of course, you could just buy the Z20t instead, couldn't you? If you did buy the Z20t you'd get a Wacom pen in the deal, which is perfect for note takers, artists and vertical market users.
Horsepower, Noise and Temperature
This is an Intel Broadwell 5th generation Core M-5Y10c 800 MHz tablet with Turbo Boost to 2 GHz (Core M spends a lot of time in Turbo Boost, unlike Core i CPUs). This is a 4.5 watt CPU vs. 15 watts for Ultrabook U series Core i CPUs, and it has Intel HD 5300 integrated graphics. Core M isn't as fast as the Core i5 in workhorse Ultrabooks, but it's fine for productivity use, playing 1080p video and editing photos from 24MP dSLRs. I wouldn't want to use it for serious video editing hours per week, and code compiles won't be lickety-split. The benefit is that it uses less power, generates less heat and doesn't require a fan. Thus the tablet is silent. The back will get toasty warm but not burning hot (it is slim and metal conducts heat).
The tablet has 4 gigs of RAM and a 128 gig SSD. This isn't an easy product to open for upgrades and we didn't chance it with our review loaner. I'd expect the RAM to be soldered on and not upgradable and the SSD to be socketed and upgradable (if you were brave enough to open it up). The 3 cell, 36 Whr battery is sealed inside. That keyboard dock we mentioned doubles runtimes and battery capacity. Toshiba claims up to 8 hours for the tablet itself, and in our tests with WiFi on and brightness set to 66% (we usually use 50% but this display isn't very bright), it averaged 6 hours in mixed productivity and video streaming tests.
Benchmark Scores
PCMark 8 (Home, accelerated): 2447
wPrime: 24.37 sec.
Geekbench 3: 2213/4556
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