It’s inevitable, that Sandy Bridge has been launch, and thus we’re looking at lots of new notebooks being introduced. Toshiba just unveiled the Tecra R840 and R850 — both of which ape the R700′s slim build — along with the Portege R830, a refresh to the R700 itself.

The R830 looks the same, though it has a strip on the edge of the lid that looks like it’s made of magnesium alloy, but is actually plastic — a material that’s expected to improve the signals of the various antennae housed underneath it. Surprisingly there’s USB 3.0 despite the lack of support from Intel’s Sandy Bridge. Toshiba is saying that this new line of Tecra will be able to run for an 11 hours marathon. There’s also the R835, which has no corporate blood in it. Warranty is down from three years to one year, and there’s no Intel’s vPro technology, no docking connector, and no ExpressCard slot.

Meanwhile, the 14-inch R840 and 15.6-inch R850 are also getting Sandy Bridge CPUs, and USB 3.0. These laptops are now made with fiberglass-reinforced casing and the same Honeycomb rib structure that made last year’s R700 sturdy enough to. Of the two, the R840′s slim-down is more dramatic: it’s 25 percent thinner than the last-generation Tecra M11, as you can see in the comparison shots past the break. That’s largely thanks to Intel’s Airflow Cooling technology, which rearranges all of the heat-generating components in a row and draws in cool air from outside the notebook, instead of within.

Toshiba claims that the battery can last up to ten hours on a charge (or 11 with an SSD), which is a vast improvement over the five and a half to six hours it promised the last time around. Moving up in size to the R850 will get you a number pad, but not that cooling technology. The R830, R840, and R850 start at $1,049, $899, and $879, respectively, and are available now on Toshiba’s site, with the consumer-friendly R835 on sale at Best Buy and through the Microsoft Store.