Labs£500 laptops
Features The Satellite has the best screen, keyboard and speakers in the group. The glossy screen produces significantly richer colours than any other here and is evenly lit. The keyboard feels firm and responsive and is well laid out, and the speakers manage to make music sound vaguely enjoyable, which is rare for a laptop. However, considering Toshiba's attention to ergonomics, the touch pad is disappointing. The pointer lurches round the screen, making it hard to click on the icon or button you want. Turning down the mouse sensitivity in Windows eased the problem but
The A200's 120GB hard disk should suffice unless you plan to edit video, make music or store masses of photos. It has more ports than the other laptops bar Acer's Aspire, with four USB2 ports, S-video out and FireWire. The memory card reader supports Secure Digital, xD and Memory Stick Pro, but not the newer Memory Stick Duo cards that current Sony devices use. A padded case is included, and if you buy from John Lewis, the laptop comes with the store's standard two-year warranty. Performance The A200-1VG has the joint-slowest processor here, but with a score of 123 overall in our 2D benchmarks, there are few Windows applications that it can't handle. The laptop's 2GB of RAM will help when editing video or photos and when running multiple applications. However, the Intel graphics can't cope with recent 3D games. Battery life is average for the group at two hours and 31 minutes, but still not really good enough for use on the move. Verdict If screen and keyboard quality is more important than performance, the Toshiba is an excellent choice, but the poor touch pad prevents it winning an award. SPECIFICATIONS:
Intel Core 2 Duo T5250, 2GB RAM, 120GB disk, Intel GMA X3100 graphics, DVD+/-RW +/-DL, 15.4in widescreen LCD, 2.7kg |
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