Toshiba Satellite A210-11P review

Toshiba has built up a reputation for producing solid and reliable laptops that won't break the bank.

This stylish desktop replacement model seems to keep that trend going as it packs in plenty of features while keeping the price down to an affordable £699.

Strengths
Straight out of the box this is an attractive machine. The glossy black lid slopes down at the front and rear to give the laptop a pleasingly sculpted look. Once you open it up you're met by a great keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard is spacious and a joy to type on.

The trackpad is even better. The right hand edge acts as a scroll wheel and if you tap at the top right hand corner the whole pad lights up to reveal icons that you can use to adjust the laptop's volume or quickly launch applications like the Windows Photo Gallery or Windows Mail.

Any desktop replacement machine needs a decent helping of ports and this laptop certainly won't be caught short in that department. You get four USB sockets along with a mini FireWire port, which will come in handy if you've got a digital camcorder and want to put footage on the laptop's ample 200GB hard drive. There's also a useful memory card reader tucked under the front lip of the machine.

What really sets the A210 apart from the competition, however, is its blistering performance. It made good use of its 1.8GHz AMD Turion 64X2 processor and 2GB of RAM to record a score of 3,824 in PC Mark 05, which is an impressive result for a laptop.

The meaty ATI HD2600 graphics chip, which fully supports DirectX 10, means it's also a good option for gamers. It ran up a score 3,181 in our 3D Mark 06 test so it'll handle the latest gaming titles with most of the detail cranked to the max.

Weaknesses
Although the design is for the most part very attractive, it's let down somewhat by what Toshiba has done with the speakers. They are encased in clear Perspex grills, which look exceptionally naff. They also lack poke, so they don't go very loud and never deliver much bass.

Another issue is the size of the laptop. It's 362mm wide and tips the scales at 2.7kg, and as it also uses a monstrous power supply you're not going to want to have to carry it around too often.

The battery life isn't exactly top drawer, either. With our Battery Eater test it ran out of puff after an hour and 10 minutes. However, we think most people will use this type of desktop replacement machine at home so neither of these issues are such a big deal.

Conclusion
The A210 is a slick-looking desktop replacement laptop with a good screen and a spacious and comfortable keyboard. The category where it really succeeds is performance -- it's great for both for games and day to day tasks. If you're looking for a laptop to use mostly at home, the A210 is a seriously fine option.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday