Toshiba Satellite S50D-A-10G review

The S50D-A-10G’s main weakness was its 15.6in screen. We don’t normally expect budget laptops to have particularly great image quality, but the S50D’s 1,366×768 display left a lot to be desired. Our colour calibrator showed it was displaying just 59.2 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, which is around average for a laptop of this price, but its severe lack of red, blue and magenta coverage meant that colours looked very oversaturated and almost white-washed.

This was certainly the case with our subjective image tests, as our solid colours were all lacking in depth and richness. Whites were also quite grey and its high black level of 0.72cd/m2 meant that solid blacks appeared almost grey depending on how we angled the screen. Our solid blacks also revealed that the lower half of the screen was lighter than the top half.

The screen’s contrast levels were more promising. Despite recording a poor contrast ratio of 318:1, we could still see plenty of detail in our high contrast test photos as long as the screen was set at the right angle. However, if we tilted the screen further back, the screen’s narrow viewing angles kicked in and obliterated the entire image. This shift in contrast wasn’t so noticeable when writing text documents, but you’ll need to keep the screen in a very tight sweet spot when viewing photos and watching films.

The S50D-A-10G’s battery life was also disappointing. It lasted just 3h 59m in our light use test with the screen set to half brightness, which is below average for a laptop of this price. This shouldn’t matter too much, though, as the laptop’s bulky weight of 2.4kg means it will probably spend most of its time tied to a desk.

The Toshiba Satellite S50D-A-10G is a decent laptop with great graphics performance, but there are much more powerful laptops available for the same price such as the Best Buy-winning Asus X552CL.