The Toshiba Satellite P200-17C is certainly built with entertainment in mind -- from its large 17-inch widescreen display to booming Harman Kardon speakers. It'll reluctantly turn its hand to work, too and with a price tag of £700 it's not overpriced for a laptop of this calibre.
Strengths
Under the hood, the P200 sports a 1.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 processor and a generous 2GB of DDR II RAM. Running it through the PCMark05 benchmark it managed to pull in a high score of 3,730, which is impressive for a portable machine.
It's no slouch when it comes to gaming either and its ATI Mobility Radeon HD2400 chip managed to pull in a four figure score of 1,491 when running the 3DMark06 benchmark. Providing you haven't got all the detail levels turned up to 11, it should prove a decent gaming machine.
In terms of expansion, you're spoilt for choice with an overly generous six USB ports scattered around its body for plugging things in.
Its display stretches to a higher than average resolution of 1,440x900 pixels, which looks great on the vibrant glossy 17-inch display, provided you can put up with the increased reflectivity that such displays exhibit. If you'd rather hook it up to an external display, then you've got plenty of options with HDMI, VGA and S-video on offer, making it very flexible.
The built-in Harman Kardon speakers are pretty good by laptop standards, so you can pump up the volume a fair way without distortion.
The keyboard is large and pleasant to type on and Toshiba has sensibly made use of the additional space available by including a numeric keypad to the left of the Qwerty layout.
Weaknesses
While the P200 is happy enough to entertain you within the home, it's not going to be much of a travel companion, given its size and weight. It's also not brilliant when it comes to battery life, only managing to stay alive for 1 hour 9 minutes running the Battery Eater intensive test. It proved better when faced with the more leisurely reader test, managing to keep going for 2 hours 50 minutes before the battery was exhausted.
Although the overall look of the unit is quite stylish, Toshiba has perhaps gone too far when it comes to the keyboard -- from a distance it looks like the metal keyboard seen on Apple's Macbook Pro laptops, but up close it just looks like a cheap plastic rip off.
In theory the P200 would be a great machine for playing back movies on, but unfortunately there's an array of bright blue indicators on the front that could be overly distracting in low light conditions.
Conclusion
The P200, available for around £700, is a laptop born to entertain and it's well equipped for that purpose, with impressive 2D and 3D benchmark scores. However, it's not exactly built for travelling and is rather weak when it comes to battery life.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Jon Squire
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jepjepp 6 March 2013
Good: see review
Bad: see review
Comment: Had this for 3-5 years. Great for photography, films and I've used it pretty well for gaming too. Cooling system is really great and something that is overlooked far too often when deciding on a laptop. Processor is a bit slow in today's standards but performs well in normal use. Screen went off a year ago go, costing me £120 to get it fixed by a small business. That was rather disappointing when everything else has been to high standard - considering it's not new kid on the block anymore.
fatowl 9 January 2011
Good: See comments
Bad: See comments
Comment: I have had my Toshiba for just under 3 years. During that time I had a problem with the graphics cable wearing through at the hinge, replaced (£140), obviously a design fault. Then 8 months later, the graphic (GPU) has gone, I have been advised (£60) that this is not repairable item? I am currently awaiting a reply back from Toshiba to confirm this. If so, then I have a rather expensive paperweight. Note: This was used at home under what I would consider light usage.
keith pearson 19 April 2008
Good: Multitasking, video playback & games crisp and clear.
Bad: System restore feature (never known it to fail with XP)
Comment: Toshiba P200 1FC
Having aquired this laptop as a replacement fo my old HP zv5255 which had served me well. The 1st impressions were pleasing, not too heavy, nice silver keyboard, mousepad functional but I seldom use anyway as prefer conventional mouse, screen is shiny and produces a very clear display at 1440x900 pixels apart from outside use when the reflection makes viewing difficult.
Performance is brisk.
Sound is a bit tinny for harmon kardon speakers compared to my old HP.
USB connectors could have been better placed on the right hand side as too near the front and cables always running under my mouse hand.
Front line-in/headphones/microphone connectors not colour coded and difficult to see.
Wireless and bluetooth capabilities are far better for reception.
Media centre would be excellent if a TV card was included but however makes a change from windows media player being able to run a slide show whilst music is playing.
Battery life around 1hr running internet,music and word programs and the power
adapter is big the same as my HP.
Now onto the nitty gritty of moving onto windows Vista home pemium.
In the first week I used the Aero to switch between open windows but novelty soon tires and now rarely use it.
The sidebar I selected a clock, calendar and my contacts list gadgets which gave the desktop a nice finish, but noticed boot up time slowed and have since replaced it with Rainlendar2 which allows you to place reminders on the calendar.
I was continually plagued by the User account control not allowing me to do things even tho I own the PC so thats disabled now and now I have control of the PC without the darkened screen and the "computer says not allowed" syndrome.
Windows updates are a large size to download so dial up would be a nightmare, and the Toshiba Tempo application reccomended install is usefull in keeping drivers and firmware from Toshiba up to date. (so far new display,sound,bios,dvd player and movie factory) This was skipped by HP and prompted me to check their website and I missed many important updates.
The Graphics card is OK and is compatible with more games than the Nvidea I had before. The only thing I get is now and again are a series of blocks in the translucent borders of windows or at the top of the desktop but it is not permanent and as of yet no idea why.
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