Toshiba Satellite M70-343 review

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Verdict:

Dell's Inspiron may be faster, but the Satellite's great keyboard and display make it the best notebook here for use around the home.

Review Date: 30 Jun 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Our Rating 5 stars out of 5

ExpertReviews Award

Review
Specs

Toshiba's Satellite is one of the most attractive notebooks here. It also has a great high-resolution display and a wonderful keyboard.

FEATURES

The 15.4" widescreen display is excellent. Whites are clean and bright, and the glossy screen coating makes colours rich and blacks inky. Unlike some notebooks here, there's no grain to distract from fine detail in images.

The keyboard has a slightly squeezed layout as space has been used for media playback buttons. None of the keys is annoyingly small, however, and we adjusted to it quickly. The action is superb, with good travel and feedback to each key. The touch pad below is a little small, but proportioned to match the widescreen display. The buttons are cleverly built into the chassis and have a nice light click.

The speakers are almost as impressive. They lack the volume of those used by Dell, but they sound just as clear and well balanced. Toshiba has included a pseudo-surround-sound mode for watching DVDs and a volume control dial. Next to the dial is a switch for disabling the wireless networking card. There are only three USB ports but a memory card reader is provided. The 100GB hard disk is one of the largest here and there's a DVD writer for making backups.

PERFORMANCE

The Satellite uses the same 1.7GHz Pentium M processor as the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo. It scored 79 points overall, third place in this group. The Amilo scored just two points more thanks to a faster but smaller hard disk.

Like most notebooks here, the Satellite failed our Doom 3 test. It's not capable of playing modern 3D games, but its battery lasted for a commendable three hours and 43 minutes.

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