14 DAY TRIAL // Toshiba may not have made the fastest step on the ultrabook market, but it did, arguably, take the boldest one yet, or at least this is what the price of the dynabook R631 suggests.
Right to the point, Toshiba just released, in Japan, an ultrabook that costs 139,800 Yen, which translates into $2,275 Singapore dollars and 1,798 US Dollars / 1,302 Euro.
Needless to say, this is in no way affordable, especially compared to the Zenbook UX21 and Zenbook UX31 from ASUS, which were considered pricey at $1099.99 / $1,199 (about 801 / 874 Euro).
Things aren't made any better by how the hardware isn't that much different from theirs either.
The Intel Core i5-2467M CPU (central processing unit) is fairly decent with its 1.6 GHz speed at least.
Also, 4 GB of RAM are present, upgradeable to 8 GB (probably), since it is provided by two 2 GB modules that shouldn't be hard to replace with a pair of 4 GB ones.
Of course, this would imply that users spend even more on this laptop, and thinness can only carry an ultrabook so far.
That said, the notebook boasts a solid state drive (SSD) with a capacity of 128 GB (the brand was not disclosed).
Furthermore, an SD card slot is, obviously, present, for when people want to copy photos and videos from their cameras and such.
The list of I/O options doesn't have much in the way of surprising developments, being composed of the expected HDMI port, USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 connectors, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and 802.11b/g/n WiFi.
There are a couple of perks, though, namely WiDi support and WiMAX, plus a battery life that can last for up to 9 hours on a single charge (it is charged in 3 hours).
Finally, the 13.3-inch display doesn't have Full HD support (settles for 1,366 x 768 pixels HD) and is used by the Intel GMA HD 3000 integrated graphics.