Toshiba Satellite P200-17C review

Gallery

Verdict:

The Satellite P200-17C isn't as powerful as the other notebooks in the group, and it doesn't have a TV tuner. But it is significantly cheaper than the rest and has an excellent keyboard, high-quality speakers and good battery life.

Review Date: 10 Oct 2007

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Alan Lu

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

ExpertReviews Award

Review
Specs

Toshiba's Satellite P200-17C is cheaper than the other notebooks here, but still compares favourably with its more expensive rivals.

Features

Unlike three of the other notebooks on test, the Satellite doesn't have an integrated TV tuner, although you could add one to one of its six USB ports. It has the best speakers in the group, though. They produce balanced sound with no distortion at high volume.

The keyboard is a pleasure to use, with keys that are well spaced, responsive and provide the right amount of feedback. The full numeric keypad makes entering data in a spreadsheet fast. An L-shaped hinge makes the display sit lower than a normal notebook's, which is useful for working in cramped conditions, although the screen wobbles more than others.

We were less impressed with the display's quality. Colours were bright, but white areas looked grey and the backlight was uneven. There was also banding and speckling in our colour and greyscale transition tests.

Performance

Despite its 2GB of RAM, the Satellite was one of the slowest notebooks here. The 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5450 processor couldn't keep up with the faster chips in the other notebooks, and its score of 134 in our application benchmarks put it second from bottom.

The Satellite's Radeon HD2400 graphics card managed less than 8fps in our Call of Duty 2 test, so it can't run the latest games. The Satellite fared better in our light-usage battery test, lasting two hours and 36 minutes, which is the second-longest in the group.

Prev Next

Get more reviews, tutorials and in-depth advice, every month with Computer Shopper.
Click here to try 3 issues for £1

< Previous Reviews : Laptops Next >

Sponsored Links

Be the first to comment on this article

You need to Login or Register to comment.