Toshiba Portege R835-P56X review

Battery life is really where the Portege R835 shines. Last year's R705 model ran for 3 hours and 56 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, which was decent, but not spectacular. Thanks, we suspect, to Intel's more efficient new processors, the R800 series model ran for 7 hours and 1 minute, beating even the 13-inch MacBook Pro (if only by 19 minutes).

Many laptops claim long battery life in this ballpark, but that's typically under a series of unrealistic power conditions designs to fudge the numbers. That makes our results even more impressive, as our battery test can be especially grueling.

Toshiba includes an industry-standard one-year parts and labor warranty with the system. Support is accessible through a 24-7 toll-free phone line, and a customized support search page can direct you to online documents and driver downloads for this specific model.

Find out more about how we test laptops.

System configurations:

Toshiba Portege R835-P56X
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.3GHz Intel Core i5-2410M; 4,096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1,333MHz; 64MB (Dedicated)/1696MB (Total) Intel GMA HD; 640GB Hitachi 5,400rpm

Samsung 9 Series
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 1.4GHz Intel Core i5-2537M; 4,096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1,333MHz; 64MB (Dedicated) Intel GMA HD; 128GB Samsung SSD

Asus U31Jg-A1
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.53GHz Intel Core i3 380M; 4,096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1,066MHz; 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 415M + 64MB (Dedicated) Intel GMA HD; 500GB Seagate 5,400rpm

Apple MacBook Pro - Core i5 Sandy Bridge 13.3-inch - 2.3GHz
OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard; 2.3GHz Intel Core i5; 4,096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1,333MHz; 384MB (Shared) Intel HD 3000; 320GB Hitachi 5,400rpm

Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T-68U118
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 1.46GHz Intel Core i7-680UM; 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,066MHz; 128MB (Dedicated) Intel GMA HD; 500GB Western Digital 5,400rpm