Toshiba Satellite T130-11H review

Toshiba’s T130 is a slim ultra-portable laptop that uses one of Intel’s new Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage (CULV) processors, giving it a battery life of almost eight hours.

There’s no optical drive and it has fewer expansion ports than a typical laptop, but it makes up for this in portability at only 1.8kg. Its glossy, attractive case makes it look a class apart, even if it’s hardly more sophisticated than a netbook.

Along with the low-voltage processor, the T130’s long battery life is largely due to the big battery that bulges from the bottom of the case. This has the advantage of tilting the keyboard at a slight angle, making it more comfortable to type on. The 13.3in screen means there’s enough room for a full-width keyboard, and we were glad to find that no keys were out of place. There’s even a double-height Enter key.

The keys are flat, but have bevelled edges that keep the typing surface of each key far enough apart from the next so you don’t miss-hit adjoining keys. The wide touchpad has a slippery surface that gives fine control over the cursor. The touchpad’s buttons consist of a wide see-saw strip below the touchpad, but it’s so stiff that only a centimetre at either end has any travel, making it frustrating to use.

Although the SU2700 processor conserves power, it has only a single processing core so isn’t very good at multitasking. Its abysmal score of 3 in that section of our benchmarks dragged down the overall score heavily. It scored 43 in the image-processing test, so when it’s focused on one task it’s far nippier than a netbook. The integrated Intel graphics can’t handle 3D-intensive games, but can play HD video with no problems. You’ll want to connect a set of headphones or speakers, as the internal ones are typically poor laptop affairs.

The 13.3in screen has a native resolution of 1,366×768. It’s not as bright as we’d like and vertical viewing angles are tight. The glossy finish reflects strong light sources, too, which is hardly ideal if you’re trying to work on the move. The screen can only tilt back to 45°, so it could be awkward if you’re resting the T130 on your lap. There’s an HDMI output, so you could plug into an HD TV if you wanted to show off some photos or watch video clips. Other ports include three USB, plus the usual LAN and VGA connectors.

Toshiba has sacrificed an optical drive and multitasking performance in the T130, but delivers a light and slender laptop with a long battery life. It’s far quicker than a netbook in day-to-day tasks, and the bigger screen makes it much more pleasant to use. The only niggles are the glossy display and the stiff touchpad buttons, but they don’t detract enough from our overall enthusiasm to stop us awarding the T130 a Best Buy award.