Toshiba Satellite C55-A-1N0 review

Its extra size also gives you more room for ports, and the C55-A-1N0 comes well-equipped with a wide range of connections. There are three USB ports, one of which is USB3, VGA and HDMI video outputs, a multi-format card reader, a DVD re-writer, a Fast Ethernet port, and separate headphone and microphone jacks. The laptop also comes with a large 750GB hard disk for storing your media collection.

The C55-A-1N0’s only major flaw was its 15.6in display. It’s certainly no worse than other screens we’ve seen on other sub-£500 laptops, but its viewing angles were quite narrow and colours looked oversaturated and washed out in our solid image tests. This is partly due to the screen only being able to show 73.1 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, but its warm colour coverage was particularly lacking, with reds and magentas suffering the most. Whites were also very grey depending on where we angled the screen, and its high black level reading of 0.61cd/m2 meant blacks were affected in the same way.

This revealed the top half of the screen was darker than the bottom half and tilting the display created a noticeable shift in the screen’s contrast levels. At the right angle, our high contrast test images looked great, showing high levels of detail in both the light and dark areas of each image, but night scenes became almost completely obscured when we tilted the screen forward and backwards.

This shouldn’t be a problem if you’re planning to use the C55-A-1N0 as a desktop replacement, though, and it certainly doesn’t detract from what’s otherwise a great value laptop. It’s rare to find such a powerful system for less than £500 and it shows you don’t have to settle for sluggish components if you don’t want to spend a lot of money. It wins a Best Buy award.