Toshiba Satellite U920t-108 review

As for its performance, the Satellite U920t-108 boots Windows 8 incredibly quickly thanks to its 128GB SSD, but its 1.8GHz Intel Core i3-3217U processor and 4GB of RAM only scored 32 overall in our multimedia benchmarks. This is quite low, even for a Core i3 processor, putting it on par with the Asus VivoBook S200, a touchscreen laptop that’s roughly half the price of the U920t-108.

It’s slightly better than the VivoBook S200 when it comes to gaming, though, as its integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipset just about managed 17fps in our Dirt Showdown test on High quality settings and a 720p resolution. You’ll still have to lower the settings and disable anti-aliasing to get anywhere near a more playable 30fps, but this will be good news to anyone hoping to play something more substantial than the games currently on offer in the Windows 8 Store.

Its battery life is above average, lasting just over 5 hours away from the mains in our light use tests with the screen set to half brightness, although the Vivobook S200 outlasted it with a battery life of 5 hours and 26 minutes.

As is common with this style of laptop, the U920t-108 is a little short on I/O ports. It has two USB3 ports, an HDMI port for connecting it to an external display, a four-in-one card reader and a combined headphone and microphone jack, but you’ll have to rely on its built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi if you want to get online as it only has a Fast Ethernet port, not Gigabit Ethernet.

The Toshiba U920t-108 is a very elegant way of addressing the sliding tablet dilemma, but ultimately, the price is just too high for the hardware contained within – we’d go with the Dell XPS 12 instead. If you just want a touchscreen laptop, consider the Budget Buy-winning Asus VivoBook S200. It may not turn into a tablet, but it’s half the price and has similar performance.