Toshiba Satellite A500
With budget laptops providing a lot of and a lot of for ever-diminishing costs, mid-priced models are having to figure pretty exhausting to justify their existence. After all, after you will get a superbly capable transportable for underneath £400 exc VAT, then there appears very little reason to pay a lot of on the likes of the new Toshiba Satellite A500.
Skim through the A500's specifications and, at first, such cynicism would appear to be well-placed. With an Intel Core two couple T6500 processor, 4GB of memory and a 500GB exhausting disk, there is precious very little to line it higher than the morass of budget-priced portables. Look nearer, however, and there's one crucial difference: this Toshiba boasts one amongst the a lot of capable mobile graphics chipsets around - the ATI Radeon HD 4570.
Indeed, gaming is where budget laptops therefore typically stumble and, if you prefer nothing higher than kicking back with a game at the tip of the day, you will find Toshiba has place the additional budget at its disposal to smart use. It's still no match for the likes of the Asus G60Vx, however awaken Crysis and it puts up a valiant fight. Our medium Crysis take a look at runs through a take a look at level at a resolution of one,280 x 1,024 and medium detail - a challenge that saw the A500 manage a really cheap average frame rate of 19fps.
Design and build
It's not simply games that look smart, though, as Toshiba has gone right back to the planning stage with the A500. there is one thing unmistakably acquainted concerning the rounded edges and therefore the combination of shiny black with silver trim and pinstripes. In fact, it's nearly as if Toshiba has been taking some fashion tips from the superb HP Pavilion DV6. that is no unhealthy issue, though; it marks an explicit improvement on its somewhat frumpy predecessors.
Toshiba Satellite A500 rear
Meanwhile, it should not be the lightest laptop - weighing in at two.94kg (3.48kg with the ability adapter) - however the A500 feels sturdy and durable in all the correct places. The base, for instance, is impressively rigid, and whereas the lid and hinge feel barely a lot of versatile, it appears like a laptop designed to last.
Unfortunately, that is not the case when it involves battery life. It's unlikely that anyone can need to hold around a 3kg laptop on a daily basis, however lightweight use battery lifetime of simply 2hrs 23mins puts paid to any or all however the briefest of jaunts far from the mains. Even the HP Pavilion dv6 outlasts the Toshiba, stretching to a a lot of cheap 3 hours.
And, once you live through the thrill generated by the ATI graphics, the Toshiba does not have an excellent deal to shout concerning. Performance is pretty modest - the Core two couple and 4GB memory managing a middle-of-the-road one.01 in our benchmarks - and therefore the remainder of the specification is just par for the course.
