// Home / Reviews / Laptops

Toshiba NB550D review

in Laptops

1 of 2

Gallery

Verdict

The first Brazos netbook excels at graphical tasks, and battery life is immense. If only it had arrived last year

Review Date: 25 Mar 2011

Reviewed By: Sasha Muller

Price when reviewed: £251 (£301 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Value for Money
6 stars out of 6

Performance
2 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

With Flash 10.2 installed, the Toshiba handled YouTube 1080p video at more than twice the frame rate of the Atom, and it also played our 1080p MKV clips at the full 24fps – the Atom managed only 11fps. If you’re regularly watching video on a netbook, AMD clearly has an edge over Intel’s integrated graphics.

Crucially, Brazos manages to improve on the Atom’s graphics performance without crippling battery life. Our light-use battery test scrolls through a series of websites, occasionally closing and reopening the browser – everyday internet usage, in other words – and the NB550D kept motoring for a massive 9hrs 55mins. Few netbooks we’ve seen can top that.

The NB550D is about more than just the internals, and Toshiba has got the design basics right. The 1.27kg chassis feels sturdy, and the ergonomics are refined. Squeezing a usable keyboard into such a tiny chassis is always a challenge, but by shrinking the less important keys and keeping the alphanumeric keys as large as possible, the Toshiba succeeds. The trackpad is excellent, too, and we particularly liked the positioning of the wide, individual buttons on the chassis’ edge.

The glossy 10.1in display offers good contrast and colour reproduction, right up with the best we’ve seen. And the Toshiba is equally skilled when it comes to audio: the pair of harman/kardon speakers in the wristrest deliver enough volume and clarity to enjoy music without reaching for the nearest pair of headphones. There’s also an HDMI port, 802.11n wireless, Bluetooth 3, a 250GB hard disk and an SD card reader.

Despite its unassuming exterior, AMD’s new hardware makes the Toshiba NB550D more interesting than your average netbook. Its raw application performance isn’t quite up with an Intel Atom N550 (which Toshiba sells in the otherwise identical NB520), but it’s a trade-off that many will accept for the far superior graphics power at Brazos’ disposal. To get the same from an Atom netbook you’ll need Nvidia Ion, too, and that will ensure you won’t get anything like the same battery life.

In fact, our only complaint is that it’s taken so long for AMD to produce something competitive that Intel has barely had to innovate. The Brazos invasion should change that.

Author: Sasha Muller

1 2

Subscribe to PC Pro magazine. We'll give you 3 issues for £1 plus a free gift - click here

From around the web

Comments

User comments

This seems like the prefect netbook. All I have to do is wait for my AA1 to die.

By JamesD29 on 25 Mar 2011

and work out how to get it without paying the windows tax.

By JamesD29 on 25 Mar 2011

I love the sound of the netbook, however i'm guessing the 2 out of 6 stars for performance that it gets is comparing it to full power laptops.
Are there any plans to make a completely separate netbooks category, or is the reasoning behind not doing that the popular theory that netbooks are a dying breed?

By khellan on 27 Mar 2011

Toshiba NB550D

This is a superb multimedia netbook ideal
for traveling with the
digital camera and Camcorder. Toshiba beat
Asus to the Draw, their
equivalent using the same
processor and HD graffics
card is only coming out in USA in April.
This is a superb machine!

Snobbie45

By Snobbie45 on 29 Mar 2011

Toshiba reliably rip you off!

£80 to £120 more for a Netbook with a much slower CPU and better graphics is a joke unless you need it for media; the mentioning gaming support is pointless for such a slow CPU.

I'd only consider this Netbook if:
* the CPU had a much higher maximum clock speed e.g say 1.5GHz.
* demand scaled variable CPU speed for the same battery life.
* was much cheaper, say max. £250, inc. VAT!

As is, if I was buying a new netbook I'd still opt for a £180 to £220 (VAT inc) Atom one, for the faster CPU, given £300 is a rip-off, but hardly surprising given it is Toshiba!

For just media playing, my Advent Vega is far more portable than any netbook, and can drive HDMI TVs (unlike the crapple iPad2), and is still cheaper at £250, or less for business.

I've travelled with my devices, so this is not just hot air.

By Schematrix on 31 Mar 2011

Too late for netbooks and not ready for tablets...

AMD missed the train. Everyone bought a netbook with Atom previous years, Intel sold Atom without any competitor to every netbook. Now Apple set the trend favoring Tablet, and I see no hope for AMD. They may prepare a Nvidia Tegra competitor 2 years later...

By HopeLESS on 1 Apr 2011

maybe a little too pessimistic...

Yes ideally both consumers and amd would have liked it out a lot sooner but you're either missing the point or engaging in silly hyperbole.
It's a scalable architecture aimed at low power all round performance. In fact equally clocked it is a more powerful cpu than the atom and the better alternative for 'portable productivity' to use a silly buzzword. There is plenty of potential in the fusion series, expect to see it in plenty of laptops. I'm interested.

By Hmmmm on 5 Apr 2011