Toshiba Satellite Pro A120SE-163 review

There are many models in Toshiba's A120 range.

We looked at the A120 chassis in What's New: Notebooks, Shopper November 2006, and were impressed. A number of clever design features give it a good chance of surviving common mishaps. For example, the motherboard is shaped to keep delicate components away from the vulnerable corners.

The keyboard is spill resistant and comfortable to type on, with good depth of travel and a positive action. Some of the keys are a little on the small side, however, so those with big fingers may have problems. The touch pad has big buttons with a uniform response across their width. It's unusually sensitive, but you quickly get used to it.

The display has an anti-glare coating, rather than the increasingly popular gloss type. This makes it easier to read in bright lighting conditions, but colours look a little muted and there's a mild graininess to it. It's capable of a bright white, though there is a touch of blue in it. It's a decent display, but more suited to office applications than photo or video work. The speakers are better than the usual notebook fare, with bright and clear audio. There's a dedicated volume control on the front edge of the chassis, so you won't have to scrabble for keyboard short cuts during a presentation.

There is a wide range of specifications available in the A120 chassis. This model has a dual-core processor and 512MB of RAM, so it performed well in our benchmarks, and will easily take on day-to-day tasks such as web surfing and office applications. For tougher tasks, you may want to spend £35 on an extra 512MB of RAM to put in the easily accessible free memory slot.

This notebook comes with Windows XP Professional Edition, which has useful features not found in XP Home, such as Remote Desktop access and the ability to join a corporate domain. Battery life was 226 minutes, which is plenty for occasional mobile use.

For storage, there's a DVD writer and a 60GB disk. It's big enough for most uses but will fill quickly if you hoard media files. It also has shock protection, which should save your data in the event of an accident. A memory card reader is included, but it has slots for SD and MMC cards only. There are three USB ports, but they are all inconveniently mounted on the rear of the chassis.

This notebook is ideal if you want a tough computer with Windows XP Professional Edition. However, many users will be better served by the Asus F3F-AP010H. It costs more, but has a bigger hard disk, more RAM, a brighter, glossy screen and better battery life.