Dynabook Tecra A30-G-116
The screen and keyboard, together with enterpriselevel support, make this an attractive business buy
SCORE
Range starts at: £777 (£932 inc VAT) Model tested: £777 (£932 inc VAT) from techinn.com
There’s a certain retro charm to the Tecra A30’s design. Its forehead bezel is so thick that it reminds us of laptops from the early 2000s, which is why its chassis is as wide and deep as most 14in laptops despite the presence of a 13.3in panel.
The Tecra is relatively light at 1.2kg, however, and that’s partially due to the lack of metal casing: think textured black plastic instead. This doesn’t mean it’s fragile, with the A30-G-116 passing the MIL-STD tests for durability.
The subdued black styling reflects its business ambitions, with Windows 10 Pro in place and extra layers of data protection: note the smart card reader slot, fingerprint reader and Windows Hello IR webcam. If you were hoping that a business-class laptop would have a business-class webcam, though, move on to the next call: its results are just as noisy and smeared as most laptops.
Instead, where this machine excels is the quality of its keyboard and screen. The buttons have plenty of travel and a positive action that makes typing a speedy affair, and it’s both quiet and backlit: perfect for that time when we’re back on planes. It’s a tad
cramped in places, with buttons such as the square brackets narrower than they usually are, but you should soon get used to this.
The screen is simply excellent. It’s a Sharp IGZO panel and that means many traits to love. Top of the list is colour reproduction, with 96% of the sRGB gamut reproduced with an average Delta E of 0.43. Then there’s its peak brightness of 493cd/m2 (enough for use in sunlight) and a 1,328:1 measured contrast ratio.
IGZO panels are also powerefficient, which is just one of the reasons why the Tecra kept going for a commendable 9hrs 9mins in our tests. There’s more than enough power here for an office worker too – even if the tenth-generation Core i5-10210U and 8GB of RAM could only push it to 78 in our benchmarks. That’s quite low down this month’s table, but four cores and eight threads ensure it never feels sluggish. Its only real area of weakness is games, but what do you expect of a business laptop?
For that is what this slightly dull machine is: a workhorse. But it’s a portable one that can easily act as a main computer for years to come. Throw in all of the ports most people need, including USB-C and Gigabit Ethernet, and it’s a safe, versatile choice for business buyers.