Published: Tuesday 7th October, 2008 | Author: Tarinder Sandhu
Products: Satellite A300D
Companies: Toshiba (All Toshiba content), AMD (All AMD content)
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Toshiba's Satellite A300D-15B mid-range laptop ships with an
etail price of £620 and is based around AMD's Turion X2 Ultra
processor and discrete Mobility Radeon HD 3650 512MB graphics card.
Tipping the scales at almost 3kg, the good-looking laptop has an
excellent 15.4in WXGA+ (1,440x900px) screen, decent gaming credentials,
above-average multimedia features, and, surprisingly, room-filling
sound.
The downsides, however, are more numerous. A mock carbon fibre-like
finishes smudges way too easily, the Turion X2 Ultra CPU is found
wanting when compared to Centrino (2), the glossy keyboard is hard to
write quickly upon, and the battery-life is poor, not helped by the
small-capacity battery. Equally as irksome is the first-instance
loading/configuring time for Windows Vista, which amounts to some 40
minutes.
The Satellite A300D looks fantastic on paper but the reality is
somewhat different. Toshiba needs to address some of the more pressing
concerns by bundling in a larger battery and ensuring that users can
begin using their brand-spanking new machine within 10 minutes of first
switching it on, rather than wait close to an hour.
Bottom line: £620 buys you considerable graphics power that's
compromised by a relatively poor CPU and below-average battery life.
There's better value to be had elsewhere, we reckon.
The good
Good-looking
Great screen
Above-average sound
The bad
Relatively poor battery life
Poor CPU performance
Easily-smudged finish
40-minute first-load time
Loud optical drive
Glossy, hard-to-type-on keyboard
Relatively heavy for a 15.4in laptop
The Toshiba Satellite A300-15B can be purchased for £622, including VAT, at Laskys.
At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any Toshiba representatives choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
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If the Toshiba A300D was £499 then it would be a serious competitor, which was the impression i got on the price range, when Puma was annouced; I'd rather go for a Centrino 2 for that price.
Yeah Centrino 2 is generally a lot more efficient power wiseQuote
Thanks in advanceQuote
I've not seen any recently, sorry.Quote
Have to say I agree with almost all that is noted in this excellent review....some of it on the downside.
Was unimpressed with startup from O.O.B....45 mins and constant powerdown & reboot, but overcame that once I had my new toy up and running.
Optical drive is on the noisy side, although it does come with a quirky little program called "CD/DVD Drive Acoustic Silencer" (supposed to reduce noise by spinning at a lower speed that is auto calculated..).....Have to say I could not tell the difference, but one thing I did find out.....as your review states, transcoding and burning DVD's......OMG ..took an age!!!!!
On the whole, I do not regret making my purchase.....but I do wonder what things would have been like with Intel/Centrino chip...sigh!!Quote
Animons,
I've not seen any recently, sorry.
Thanks anyways.
I will just have to find an older model with these for sale somewhere
Now if only I could find which toshiba laptops were the last to have the hd dvd drives included...Quote
Reply