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Toshiba NB550D review

in Laptops

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
5 stars out of 6

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Value for Money
6 stars out of 6

Performance
2 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

Details
Part Code PLL5FE-00M008EN
Review Date 25 Mar 2011
Price ex VAT £251
Price inc VAT £301
Overall rating 5 stars out of 6
Features & Design 5 stars out of 6
Value for Money 6 stars out of 6
Performance 2 stars out of 6
Warranty
Warranty ERROR: Script can't be evaluated
Physical specifications
Dimensions 262 x 190 x 36mm (WDH)
Weight 1.270kg
Travelling weight 1.6kg
Processor and memory
Processor AMD Fusion C-50
Motherboard chipset AMD Fusion
RAM capacity 1.00GB
Memory type DDR3
SODIMM sockets free 0
SODIMM sockets total 1
Screen and video
Screen size 10.1in
Resolution screen horizontal 1,024
Resolution screen vertical 600
Resolution 1024 x 600
Graphics chipset AMD Radeon HD 6250
Graphics card RAM 256MB
VGA (D-SUB) outputs 0
HDMI outputs 1
S-Video outputs 0
DVI-I outputs 0
DVI-D outputs 0
DisplayPort outputs 0
Drives
Capacity 250GB
Hard disk usable capacity 233GB
Spindle speed 5,400RPM
Internal disk interface SATA/300
Hard disk Toshiba MK2565GSXN
Optical disc technology N/A
Optical drive N/A
Battery capacity 5,300mAh
Replacement battery price inc VAT £0
Networking
Wired adapter speed 100Mbits/sec
802.11a support no
802.11b support yes
802.11g support yes
802.11 draft-n support yes
Integrated 3G adapter no
Bluetooth support yes
Other Features
Wireless hardware on/off switch no
Wireless key-combination switch yes
Modem no
ExpressCard34 slots 0
ExpressCard54 slots 0
PC Card slots 0
USB ports (downstream) 3
FireWire ports 0
PS/2 mouse port no
9-pin serial ports 0
Parallel ports 0
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports 0
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports 0
3.5mm audio jacks 2
SD card reader yes
Memory Stick reader no
MMC (multimedia card) reader yes
Smart Media reader no
Compact Flash reader no
xD-card reader no
Pointing device type Touchpad
Audio chipset AMD HD Audio
Speaker location Wrist rest
Hardware volume control? no
Integrated microphone? yes
Integrated webcam? yes
Camera megapixel rating 1.3mp
TPM no
Fingerprint reader no
Smartcard reader no
Carry case no
Operating system and software
Operating system Windows 7 Starter 32-bit
OS family Windows 7
Recovery method Recovery partition
Software supplied N/A
Battery and performance tests
Battery life, light use 9hr 55min
3D performance (crysis) low settings N/A
3D performance setting N/A
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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

Good little netbook

I have just got one of these, and once you take off all the crapware it runs great. Gonna upgrade the RAM now though.

By Jon2010 on 14 Apr 2011

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