Performance
Of the budget laptops we've looked at recently, the Toshiba's specification is certainly not the best. The Intel Celeron M430, which runs at 1.72GHz, has a decent amount of grunt to deal with the normal day-to-day stuff, but the laptop only has a half a gigabyte of RAM and this really isn't enough to cope with the demands of Windows Vista. With a couple of applications running at the same time, such as Windows Mail, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, hopping between the open windows can feel a tad sluggish. This was reflected in the machine's lowly PC Mark 05 score of just 1,597.
The machine's graphics duties are taken care of by the onboard Mobile Intel 945GM Express chip. Unfortunately the laptop refused to run our 3D Mark 06 test, but its poor performance in Far Cry was enough to tell us that it's not going to interest those who want to be able to play the latest games at a decent frame rate.
The other big downer is the relatively small hard drive. Most other budget machines come with 80GB drives, but the Toshiba is saddled with a 60GB model. It seems very stingy to us, especially as even the larger iPod has more storage space.
Thankfully things are better when it comes to battery performance. In our test it managed to keep going for 1 hour and 42 minutes. The best score we've seen from a budget laptop recently was the Mesh MSI M670, which managed to run for 1 hour and 54 minutes under its own steam, so the Toshiba isn't too far off that time.
Conclusion
The Satellite Pro is by no means a bad machine, but it's not a great one, either. The best thing about it is the sumptuous design, which is a surprise on a laptop with such a low price.
Sacrifices have been made elsewhere though, especially in terms of the memory. With just 512MB of RAM it doesn't really have enough space to allow Windows Vista to stretch its legs and this really compromises the overall performance. If you're tempted to buy this machine, we'd seriously advise you to upgrade its memory to 1GB, which will cost you an extra £60.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield
Android App 
RSS Feeds 
iPhone App 
Newsletters