Hands-on with the Intel Skylake laptop

Hands-on with the Intel Skylake laptop
Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Toshiba Laptop Battery
Toshiba's Tecra line of laptops has long offered a selection of reliable, if unexciting, business notebooks.
The new Tecra A40-C, then, could probably have gotten away with being more of the same. However, with a feature-packed, enterprise-friendly design and a new Intel Skylake processor, this machine - a rare addition to Toshiba's under-represented 14in lineup - was quick to grab our attention. Although this latest Tecra won't be out to buy until early 2016, and pricing has yet to be revealed, we got a sneak preview.
Design
Besides some chunky bezels around the screen, we're quite fond of the Tecra A40-C's looks with battery like Toshiba PA3612U-1BAS Battery, Toshiba PA3612U-1BRS Battery, Toshiba PA3614U-1BRP Battery, Toshiba PABAS176 Battery, Toshiba Dynabook SS Battery, Toshiba Portege A600 Battery, Toshiba Portege R500 Battery, Toshiba Portege R600 Battery, Toshiba PA2451URN Battery, Toshiba PA3062U-1BAT Battery, Toshiba Tecra 750 Battery, Toshiba Tecra 780 Battery. It measures 340x244x23.8mm and weighs 1.8kg, which for a traditional notebook isn't too bad at all. Plus, despite being thick enough to accommodate an optional DVD R/W drive, it's surprisingly sleek, and there's a lovely matte black finish throughout. This is all on top of a sturdy, rigid build quality, particularly around the lower keyboard segment.
Speaking of the keyboard, it's more than capable for full-time typing. The keys are a bit shallow but spaced well apart, allowing for accurate but quick strokes, and there's enough room for extra Delete, Home, Page Up, Page Down and End keys in a column along the far right.
There are plenty of connection options as well: three USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, VGA and HDMI connectors and an Ethernet port. That's a good range for a device of this size, with more than enough space for multiple peripherals or removable storage while allowing for an external display to hook up.
Like Lenovo's ThinkPad series, the Tecra A40-C also includes a little textured mouse nub in the keyboard's centre as an alternative to the trackpad. While it does enable cursor control without moving hands away from the keyboard, it's quite unwieldy without practice, and can be safely ignored if so desired. A much more enticing inclusion is the fingerprint scanner, which sits near the bottom of the chassis, just below and to the right of the trackpad.
We didn't get a chance to test battery life but it's commendable that the Tecra A14 includes a removeable battery while staying reasonably slim; many lightweight notebook keep their batteries integrated, making them impossible to quickly replace if they run dry. The Tecra A14, on the other hand, can be kept going with a spare pack.
Display
The 14in display runs at 1920x1080, with a pixel density of 162ppi. That means decent, if unspectacular, clarity - there can be fuzziness around small text and images, but we had to actively search for it before noticing.
Colours, on the other hand, are spot-on; balanced without looking dull, vibrant without looking garish. They aren't compromised by the anti-glare coating, either. Some devices, like the HP ProBook 455 Ubuntu, use coatings which add a mildly distorting, grainy effect to the display, but the Tecra A14 successfully avoids this while minimises reflectivity.