Toshiba Satellite A500 review

Japan manufacturer has inovated multimedial notebooks and now there is a description of a new 16'' A500. Inside is Centrino 2, dedicated ATI graphics card and alot of equipment - connectors, numpad,..

Description

Toshiba Satellite A500 is very similar to older models. There is alot of glare plastic in black color with silver decoration.

Cover has got rounded corners, glare black surface made of plastic with a big logo in the middle. Maximum angle of the cover is 130 degrees, cover is held by magnet when closed.

Notebook has got overall durable construction and the design is modern. The glare surfaces are not the best option because your fingerprints will remain on them clearly visible.

Connectors are on the sides, on the rear sire is nothing because of the cover opening patent. In front is only memory card reader (SD/MMC/MS/xD). On the right side are optical drive, two USB ports, power, Kenigston lock. On the other side are two audioconnectors, wide expresscard slot, eSata/usb port, HDMI output, Ethernet, analog D-Sub and one more USB port

There are really alot connectors, missing is only FireWire.

As i have written the design is mostly durable and robust, nothing is bent when manipulating. Worse is only the cover durability - it is soft and when pushed there are waves on the display.

Notebook is bigger size 384x259x41mm and has got a bigger profile. Weight almost 3kg is just for casual wearing if you add the 90W power source which is bigger than i expected.

Due to the bigger display the keyboard has got numeric part. The better step from tha older models came with dull keyboard which is much better that previous glare surface keyboards.

HW parametres

Notebook is running on Centrino 2, processor Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 having 2.1Ghz, this one has only 800MHz FSB and 2MB L2 cache. There are 4GB RAM but those are older type DDR2-800

Single-Thread mode

• Fixed point unit test: 25 762
• Floating point unit tes: 16 439

Multi-Thread móode

• Fixed point unit test: 51 519
• Floating point unit test: 32 881

Cinebench 9.5

• Rendering (Single CPU): 379
• Rendering (Multiple CPU): 704
• Multiprocessor Speedup: 1,86

Windows Vista – CPU

• Index CPU: 5,1
• Index RAM: 5,0
• HWiNFO32: 2973 MB/s

The processor is not the fastest on the market but for usual work is more than suitable.

Optical drive is LG brand and it is standard DVD Super Multi type

Display and graphics

Display 16", having HD-ready resolution (1366x768) has glare surface. Angles of sight are not very well, colors are above average.

Graphics card ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 has 512 MB DDR3 800MHz. The weird is that there is no option to switch between dedicated and integrated graphisc card although the integrated one is inside.

Tests 3D Mark

• 3DMark 2001: 18 090
• 3DMark 03: 10 843
• 3DMark 05: 7819
• 3DMark 06: 4091

Cinebench 9.5

• Shading (CINEMA 4D): 440
• Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting): 1695
• Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting): 4091
• OpenGL Speedup: 9,29

Performance of the graphics will let you play newer games, but sometimes you will have to adjust to lower details and resolution. But for the price of this model is the performance good.

Cooling system

System is very well adjusted when working the cooler is barely running and only source of noise is HDD. Even when you need maximum performance the loudness of the cooling system is very good.

Battery

Battery 43 Wh can run 2 hours 46 minutes. The v=battery is old style - is not able to show the remaining time - just percents of battery life. There is a button with ECO option but that one uses just software options to lower the consumption.

Conclusion

Toshiba Satellite A500 is good for everyone who is looking for a multimedial notebook with modern design and they do not plan to take it outside often.

+ good reprodustors
+ equipment

- glare surfaces
- soft LCD cover