Labs

Toshiba's recent laptops are an attractive bunch. While the Satellite Pro A200 might lack some of the fancier touches, such as glossy detailing and pretty LEDs, it's still a fine-looking laptop. The matt black lid's rounded edges look classy, particularly for a budget model. It feels strong, too, and we had to really squidge it before there was any sign of show-through on the display. With two catches to keep it shut, no sharp objects are going to get near the 15.4 inches of widescreen display while in transit.

We weren't so enamoured with the keyboard. The keys are a good size and well spaced, but the hollow feel left a lot to be desired. Typing on

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the Toshiba was rather like tapping on a shoebox.

Like many of the screens here, the A200's has a glossy coating that's highly reflective. It can be a bit odd noticing your reflection staring back at you, but it does give a boost to image quality. Colours were vibrant and the Windows desktop looked bright and crisply defined. That desktop belonged to Windows XP Professional, which seems rather dated, but unless you're especially keen on Vista's new features, such as Media Center, you might be quite happy sticking with the older version.

The Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 processor turned in a reasonable performance, earning 116% in our general 2D benchmark. The accompanying Intel X3100 graphics were poor, though, and wouldn't even load up Call of Duty 2 to run our 3D tests.

On the plus side, the Toshiba managed a fine battery life of three hours and 40 minutes. There was even stamina enough to keep it going through a whole movie: our DVD run-down test took just short of two and a half hours to empty the battery.

Toshiba's Satellite Pro isn't a bad laptop by any means, but it failed to excite us. Had it been a hundred pounds cheaper, it might have been a worthy bargain, but other laptops here offer more for this money.