Toshiba Portege M400

While the Lenovo X41 ThinkPad tablet remains the best convertible available in the sub-four-pound class, the Toshiba Portege M400 is as good a hybrid as you'll find with a built-in optical drive. Toshiba delivers a strong laptop that will sometimes be used in tablet mode, but we expected a little more out of the company in terms of tablet ergonomics.

At 4.5 pounds, the M400 is very travel friendly. It's 1.5-inches thick, but it feels solid. The shock-resistant protection features absorbers in the chassis and LCD as well as the hard drive. We love the M400's keyboard layout but wish the feel was more firm. The touchpad is a bit smaller than it needs to be, given the available space.

The M400 comes fully loaded with a snappy 1.66-GHz Intel Core Solo processor and a 5,400-rpm 80GB drive. Like many tablets, the M400 would not run MobileMark 2005 tests completely, but it made quick work of most tasks on our subjective tests. Program launching and even complex image manipulation were very fast. Speed demons can choose to upgrade to a dual-core processor.

Toshiba is always very focused on the enterprise market, so our tested configuration included a suite of business-friendly software and features. The biometric fingerprint reader still relies on the finger swiping method that has given us trouble in the past, but it proved very easy to use and rendered only 1 out of about 20 false scans. We like that you can also invoke password protection at multiple levels with the bundled security utilities.

The M400 uses a simple and secure reversible latch to flip the screen and go into tablet mode. As with many convertibles, Toshiba has not optimized the tablet experience ergonomically. It weighs only 4.5 pounds, but it is fairly thick when holding it in the crook of your arm, and it doesn't have a hand grip. The DVD/CD-RW drive, which is very nice to have in notebook mode, actually gets in the way in tablet mode because it is too easy to hit the tray release button. We noticed that when the fan kicks on, the M400 can be a lot noisier than a number of slate designs we have used recently.

Beyond those caveats, Toshiba does its usual good job on the tablet amenities. Two of the four launch buttons, which sit to the left, are configurable. The mouse pad has scroll bars on the right-hand side and the bottom. The stylus is thicker than with many recent models, but it has very good hover sensitivity, so you can use gestures without touching the stylus to the display. Toshiba also includes OneNote along with a dedicated OneNote launch button on the side.

For those who like using tablets with voice recognition or to record meetings, the M400's audio capabilities stand out. The dual-array microphone was exceptionally sensitive and clear in our tests, and it offers an echo cancelation that keeps the sound you are recording from bleeding out through the speaker. The speakers are actually quite good for a tablet; we noticed a surprising amount of depth when listening to music and movie soundtracks.

The M400 had very good wireless scores of 17.2 Mbps at 5 feet and 5.7 Mbps at 50 feet. We also liked Toshiba's configuration tool, complete with network profiles that get you into each environment quickly. This utility is perfect for frequent travelers.

We can't say that the Portege M400 is without compromise, at least for tablet fans. The experience is clearly optimized for notebook mode, but the tablet functionality is better than most convertibles, with especially good audio for recording and stylus performance.

The $1,699 price is exceptional for a convertible with this speed and functionality. The Lenovo X41 tablet may be the best, most compact convertible we have used, but the Toshiba Portege M400 is faster and gives you more bang for the buck.