Toshiba LX830-11D review

The Toshiba LX830-11D is an all-in-one PC at the lower end of Toshiba’s media hub series, but when it comes to providing a good all-round entertainment experience, this entry-level PC struggles to make itself stand out from the crowd.

It hits lots of right notes when it comes to design. With two small feet supporting the display and the hardware housed behind it, its flip-out stand around the back keeps it very compact. Its 23in ten-point touchscreen is also encased in edge-to-edge glass, and the brushed-silver speakers underneath complement the black glossy bezel.

While it may look fantastic the LX830-11D isn’t particularly powerful. This wouldn’t be such a problem if it wasn’t comparatively so expensive. As it is, similarly-priced all-in-ones from other companies are much faster.

Inside there’s a 2.4GHz Intel Core i3-3110M processor, which is dual-core, plus has two virtual cores thanks to Hyper-Threading. It’s not a desktop processor, and is more commonly found in budget laptops. Combined with 8GB of RAM, the Toshiba LX830-11D managed just 39 overall in our benchmark. This makes it one of the slowest all-in-one PCs that we’ve reviewed. It’s still fast enough for everyday applications, but at this price we expected a little more.

It fared slightly better in our graphics benchmarks, but its integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip isn’t nearly powerful enough to produce 15fps in our Crysis 2 and Dirt Showdown tests on Ultra Quality settings at its native 1,920×1,080 resolution. It managed 18.2fps in the laptop version of our Dirt Showdown test, which runs at High Quality settings at a resolution of 1,280×720. Dropping quality settings further let us get to a playable 30fps, so games are possible if you’re willing to sacrifice detail for frame rates.

The touchscreen was very responsive, and we had no trouble bringing up the Windows 8 Charms bar or switching between individual apps and windows. This means that you’re much more likely to turn to touch when using Windows 8 and can step away from the keyboard and mouse for a lot of tasks.

That’s probably a good thing, as we didn’t particularly like the LX830-11D’s bundled wireless keyboard and mouse. While the Chiclet-style keys were all very well-spaced apart and offered plenty of tactile feedback, typing often felt slow and sluggish as some keys were stickier than others. The mouse also felt a little small for our hands, as our finger tips were often hanging off the front by quite a large margin.

We found that the image quality of the 23in 1,920×1,080 screen wasn’t as good as we’d hoped. Whites looked quite grey, while colour lacked vibrancy and richness. Blacks also revealed a slight purple tinge toward the bottom of the screen. In the screen’s favour, its contrast was good, with each test photo showing plenty of detail in the all areas of each image. You can also use the screen as a monitor for external devices, thanks to its HDMI input.

For entertainment there’s a DVD drive and a TV tuner built in. Toshiba ships the LX830-11D with ArcSoft TV, which turns your PC into a Freeview HD TV and PVR. We still prefer Windows Media Center, which is now an optional add-on for Windows 8. It will cost you £50, though.

Although Onkyo-branded, the built in speakers weren’t particularly impressive. We found that they had very little bass and sounded surprisingly tinny. They’re a big step up from your typical pair of laptop speakers, but you’ll want to turn use a proper set of external speakers or headphones for anything more than a bit of basic audio.

We were pleased to see a 1TB hard disk installed. This is pretty much standard for a computer at this price, but 1TB is still a decent amount of storage, even or avid media collectors. This hard disk is definitely going to take some filling for most people.

Should you want to expand storage, you can use the two USB3 ports for lightning-fast external hard disks. There are also four USB ports, a four-in-one memory card reader and a Gigabit Ethernet port. All-in-all, it’s a pretty standard range of ports for an all-in-one.

Overall, the Toshiba LX830-11D is a great-looking all-in-one PC that’s slightly let down by its performance and screen quality. We could forgive this if it weren’t for the excellent Asus ET2220IUTI, which costs the same, but is faster and has a larger hard disk. Everything considered, the Asus is the all-in-one to buy.