As we’ve all probably heard already, Toshiba is officially out of the PC and laptop-making business. 80.1% of Toshiba’s computing was bought by Sharp in 2018 for £27m. Now, as late as August 2020 they bought the remaining stakes, which was announced in their press release. Sharp now sells laptops under the name Dynabook.
Toshiba has been making laptops for over 30 years. Its first laptop was the T1100, which was launched in 1985 in Europe only. The company was widely known for its portable computers and flourished in the 90s and 2000s because of its Qosmio, Portege and Satellite ranges. It’s uncertain what prompted Toshiba to sell its share, but it reported that it hasn’t been a major name in a while, especially with competitors like Dell, Lenovo and Apple who are soaring in the market.
Over the years Toshiba has sold millions of PCs but in 2015 the company had a full-year loss of £242m by 2016 it stopped producing laptops for consumers in the European market and decided to focus on its hardware business. In 2017 their sale rate for PCs dropped from 17m to 1.9m.
Some of Toshibas best laptops according to Bestreviews.com are Tecra A50, Tecra C50 and Portege Z30. These laptops are still available for purchase today.
Tecra A50
This is a powerful laptop suitable for any consumer at a reasonable price. Its Windows 7 pro is perfect for gamers with older games and although the Core i5 isn’t the latest it still gets the job done but updating the computer might be a struggle.
Tecra C50
This is a good choice for someone on a budget and not reliant on a computer, with its price a lot less compared to other Toshiba laptops. If you’re not too fond of Windows 10 it features the Windows 7 OS instead and a responsive Core i5 processor. A downside to purchasing this laptop though is that it has a limited storage capacity at only 4GB.
Portege Z30
A fast, durable and lightweight computer is suitable for business trips. It has a good battery life lasting about 8 hours and has 8 GB of RAM and a dual core i7 processor. Another feature of the laptop is a VGA port which is rare for portable computers. Although the laptop has a high performance rate, its screen resolution is quite low and has and inaccurate track pad that can be difficult to use at times.
Toshiba is still a big name in the computing market. They have other sectors such as Storage, Printing, energy and retail. But with that being said, its still sad to hear and we’ll certainly remember some of Toshiba’s classic designs. They will forever be known as one of the brands that pushed the growth of the laptop industry.
What are your thoughts on Toshiba leaving the PC market? Were they one of your first laptops? let us know in the comments.