Toshiba unveils ultra-thin laptop Z830

Toshiba has unveiled what it says is the thinnest notebook yet, the Z830.

The 13.3in notebook – which falls into the "ultrabook" category recently defined by Intel for very thin, light laptops – was shown off at the IFA technology show in Berlin on Thursday. Toshiba also launched a new Android tablet, the AT200.

Andy Bass, Toshiba's sales and marketing chief for the EMEA region, claimed that the company has been "launching ultrabooks for many years now", in that it has always tried to make its laptops thin and light. However, he said, the Z830 was the thinnest and lightest yet.

The Toshiba ultrabook is 15mm thick, despite which it offers three USB ports along with HDMI, VGA and Gigabit Ethernet ports. It weighs 1.11kg. Intel's specification for an ultrabook says it must be 20mm thick at most, and weigh a maximum of 1.4kg.

The AT200 is also fairly thin, at 7.7mm. Running Android Honeycomb 3.2, it weighs 558g and has a 10.1in screen, putting into the same size category as the majority of Android tablets out there, as well as the iPad.

Analysts at Nomura have expressed severe doubts about the viability of the ultrabook category, at least at the price point it seems to currently entail.

Analyst Richard Windsor said in a briefing a week ago that Apple, whose MacBook Air laptop may be said to have spurred on the category, would be very difficult to compete with, given the control it has over its supply lines.

"Here the magic price seems to be $1,000, but it appears that the PC makers are really struggling to make this price point and still preserve a modicum of profit for themselves," Windsor said. "This is the major reason why we do not believe that the ultrabook segment is really going to take off until next year."

Windsor suggested that the advent of Windows 8, which allows the use of ARM's architecture instead of Intel's, would make devices cheaper, as would the availability of low-cost flash memory.

"Just as it is with tablets, non-Apple PC makers will need to be very price competitive before they are likely to see any real traction in that segment and the pieces to allow them to do that are still not really in place," Windsor said.

Toshiba has said it is aiming to have the Z830 come in at under $1,000, but has not announced final pricing.