The new MacBook Air offers 14 hours of battery life and that’s a quite respectable figure. It’s better than just about any Windows-based laptops on the market. So, it’s a good thing to know that Toshiba has proven Windows laptops can compete in this category.
The Dynabook Kira V634 now runs 50 percent longer than Apple’s slim laptop and it musters a whopping 22 hours with a single charge. Toshiba could do this without adding an extended battery that juts out annoyingly on the back of the laptop. The laptop just weighs in about 1.1kg, which is again lighter than the MacBook Air. Much of this achievement is contributed to the powerful, battery-sipping Haswell processor. But unfortunately, there are some unavoidable sacrifices.
For starters, the Dynabook Kira V634 is equipped with the mediocre 13-inch (1366 x 768) display. But at least it has accurate color reproduction and good viewing angles. But surely, a higher screen resolution would be nice. One really disappointing fact about the V634 is that it will never ship outside of Japan. Toshiba is offering the laptop to Japanese consumers for about $1450. With a few hundred dollars more, users can get the Kira V834 with a more reasonable 2560 x 1440 resolution, but the more power-hungry display brings down the battery life to the same level with the MacBook Air.