Despite its strong performance, the tacky design and inflated price leaves the Toshiba Tecra R10 behind the competition.

Design
If you end up buying a Tecra R10, we hope you like grey. This laptop is grey on grey. The case is grey, the keypad is grey, even the trackpad is grey. The trackpad keys are a silvery grey, and between them is wedged a tiny fingerprint reader. The only respite is the bezel around the screen, which is black.

Speaking of the screen, it's a matte display, meaning that you won't see reflections if you use it outside. At 14.1 inches, it's a good size without being huge or impressive. Likewise its 1280x800 XGA resolution isn't disappointing, but neither is it impressive.

While the R10 only features two USB ports, the eSATA port doubles as a USB port. The addition of eSATA is always a plus, as it gives you that extra bit of speed when dealing with external HDDs and other eSATA-supporting peripherals. Other notable features include an SD card slot on the front and an ExpressCard 54 slot on the right-hand side.

For some bizarre reason, Toshiba decided to squeeze the power and shortcut buttons on a bar to the left of the keyboard. This means the keyboard is both shifted right slightly, and somewhat smaller than it otherwise would have been. This results in a keyboard that is usable, but just a bit too small to be comfortable.

Features
While the design of the R10 isn't all that exciting, we were impressed with what was under the hood. The R10 runs on Intel's new Centrino 2 mobile platform, which means a raft of improvements including a better chipset, better power management, and dual-band 802.11n wireless as standard.

It also came with 4GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM. However, because Windows Vista Business 32-bit was the pre-installed OS, the system couldn't recognise the entire 4GB. If you get this system with the same specifications as we did, an upgrade to 64-bit Windows Vista Business should give a performance boost. The Windows Vista licence covers both the 32- and 64-bit versions, so anyone with a 32-bit version can upgrade for free.

At the heart of the R10 is an Intel Core 2 Duo SP9400 running at 2.4GHz. This is near the top of Intel's mobile Core 2 Duo range, with a low power consumption of only 25W. Together, this platform creates a very high performance business machine. The PCMark05 benchmarking suite produced a score of 5552.

Graphics performance on the R10 is also good, thanks to a discrete Nvidia Quadro NVS 150M GPU with 128MB of memory. This isn't a gaming GPU; Nvidia's Quadro line is specifically designed for CAD and multi-display graphics. The 150M falls at the lower end of the Quadro range.

The R10 has an average sized battery, 5100mAh, which in a mid-sized laptop like this, results in very average battery life. In order to test it, we set screen brightness to 50 per cent, turned off the sound and played a DVD until the machine went dark. This gave just over two hours of battery life (129 minutes). If you're planning to purchase this laptop, an additional six-cell battery is available. We recommend you get it.

While most businesses will likely image new laptops, we still hate pre-installed software. Unfortunately, the R10 comes with a lot of it. Infamous inclusions include a trial of Office 2007, Google Desktop, Google Earth, Adobe AIR and Google's Picasa 2.

Verdict
At AU$3,300, the Toshiba Tecra R10 fits firmly into the premium business laptop space. We think the performance of the R10 reflects this price, but we don't think either the features or the look of this laptop does. The R10 comes with a three-year "pick up and return" warranty. This is good, but not unusual for business laptops at this price.

While the R10 isn't a bad machine, the competition is offering a lot more.

If you don't need all the grunt provided by the R10, and want to save some cash, we would recommend a Lenovo ThinkPad. We reviewed the SL500, which will give you three quarters of the performance of the R10 at only AU$1,900. The SL500 also has a better battery life.

Alternatively, we would also recommend the HP Elitebook 6930p over the R10. While it's a little slower, a RAM upgrade should bring it up to speed. Side by side, the EliteBook squarely beats the Toshiba on looks, and has around 30 per cent more battery life. It also comes in at AU$2,000, which is a lot cheaper than the R10.

If you're looking for something with a flashier design, Dell's new Latitude line-up is another excellent choice. Both the E6500 and E4300 feature backlit keyboards, ambient light sensors and a vast array of ports. The 15.4-inch E6500 is a little more expensive than the R10, but it's faster, flashier and features the same GPU.

At this price point, you can also get a 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro. While it'll be a tad slower than the R10, its aluminium casing will certainly look better, and OS X is a plus.