Toshiba Satellite M70-144 review

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Verdict:

With great speakers and the ability to play 3D games, the Satellite will appeal to some people. Its screen isn't great, though, and its battery life is terrible

Review Date: 17 Mar 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Seth Barton

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The Toshiba Satellite looks stylish and sounds great. It performs reasonably well, but its battery is particularly poor.

FEATURES

The Satellite is the best notebook in the group for audio. Its speakers are well balanced and fairly loud, and there's a useful pseudo-surround-sound option for watching films and a handy volume control dial on the front.

Some of the vital keys on the right-hand side of the keyboard are a little small for our liking. Fortunately the keys are good, with plenty of depth and feedback. The touch pad is small but accurate. The buttons below merge into the notebook's design, but they work well once you've found them.

The 15.4" display isn't bad, but there are better ones in the group. Its whites aren't quite bright enough and colours look similarly muted, but it passed our greyscale tests. The gloss coating makes blacks look dark and inky.

The chassis feels sturdy, and five blue indicators on the front edge add to its stylish looks. There are only three USB ports, but a memory card is included that supports SD, MS and xD cards. The Satellite ran for just 82 minutes in our battery life test, so it's useless for working on the move.

PERFORMANCE

Like many notebooks in this group, the Satellite uses an Intel Pentium M 740 processor and 512MB of RAM. It scored a respectable 78 overall in our tough new benchmarks.

It comes equipped with an ATI Mobility Radeon X600 SE graphics chipset. This ran our Doom 3 test at 11fps. The Satellite will play modern 3D games at reduced detail settings, but keen gamers would be better off with Mesh's Dynamo.

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