Labs

Toshiba's Satellite range is a familiar face in PC Pro, but it isn't the most attractive one. There's nothing particularly offensive about the Satellite A210's looks, but put it on a desk and its dark blue and silver colour scheme is unlikely to inflame any passions.

More worrying is the light build. We applaud the twin catches, but the plasticky lid doesn't feel overly resilient. Lightly twisting or prodding the display's rear quickly caused show-through on the display itself - you'll want to carry this one about in a well-padded laptop bag.

The build quality compromises the keyboard, too. We've no argument with the full-sized keys, nor even the noisy

The A210 is the only laptop here to use an AMD dual-core processor, the 1.9GHz TK-57, and it fared well against its Intel rivals with a decent score of 0.76 in our benchmarks. The integrated ATi graphics also impressed: our Crysis benchmark was dispatched with the second best result of 10fps. Stick to lower resolution and detail settings, or older games, and it will acquit itself well.

Another of the Toshiba's strengths is display quality. The panel is a standard 1,280 x 800 affair, but the images it produces are impressive. High contrast and ample brightness go hand in hand with accurate colours and fine detail.

It sounds good, too, as it's one of the few laptops on test with above-average speakers. Music still lacks bass, but despite a little distortion at full volume sound quality is acceptable. There's even enough volume to keep quiet movements of classical pieces at an audible level.

Look past the Toshiba's questionable build and there's plenty to recommend it. But with o

ther laptops offering similar features and good build quality too, the A210 just doesn't quite hit the mark.