Toshiba Rolls Out New Tablet, Notebooks at IFA

Toshiba is joining the rush of news coming out of the IFA 2013 show in Berlin, unveiling a new notebook, tablet and touch-enabled laptop.

Among the new devices the company is showing off Sept. 5 is the Satellite Encore, an 8-inch tablet powered up Intel’s upcoming “Bay Trail” Atom processor and running Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 operating system.

Intel’s Bay Trail system-on-a-chip (SoC) will be among the first featuring the company’s new “Silvermont” microarchitecture, which promises significant improvement in both performance and energy efficiency and will span both tablets and PCs. Intel executives expect Bay Trail to make the chip maker a larger player in the tablet space, which currently is dominated by chips designed by ARM and made by the likes of Samsung and Qualcomm.

For Toshiba, the Satellite Encore will help it compete with such Windows 8 devices as Acer’s Iconia W3 and Lenovo’s Miix 8. Both tablets also are powered by Atom chips, though the Toshiba device will have the Bay Trail processor. It also will offer 2GB of memory, 32GB of storage, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera and an 8-megapixel camera in the rear. Another 32GB of storage can be added through the microSD slot.

The tablet, which is due out in November, is 0.42 inches thick and weighs 16.9 ounces, and will be priced at around $330.

The Satellite Click is a convertible that can be used as a traditional notebook or as a tablet. The display can be detached from the keyboard to create a 13.3-inch touch-enabled tablet. It’s powered by Advanced Micro Devices’ A4 Elite Mobility accelerated processing unit (APU), which is part of AMD’s 28-nanometer “Temash” family of chips aimed at smaller form factors. It offers 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive.

The system is due to go on sale later this month, reportedly starting at $599.

In November, Toshiba will start selling the Satellite NB15t, a low-priced ($380) touch-screen laptop that appears to be targeted at such systems as Chromebooks and the Sleekbooks from Hewlett-Packard. The system features an 11.6-inch touch screen, a 500GB hard drive and Windows 8, and will be powered by an Intel Celeron N2810 chip. It weighs in at 3.3 pounds.