The Toshiba PA3465U-1BRS Battery is a 17.3-inch media center laptop that specializes in providing consumers with a well-rounded multimedia experience. Between the Blu-ray player and powerful Core i7 processor, you'll be ready to tackle online videos and then some. Its trouble spots? No True 1080p HD, and a lid with some flexing.
Design :
Toshiba has spiced up the PA3465U-1BRS plastic enclosure by adding raised lines going across the lid and palm rest, creating a more dynamic look. The laptop weighs 6.32 pounds, which is relatively light compared with other 17-inch laptops like the 7.04-pound HP Pavilion DV9000 Battery, and 7-pound Pavilion dv3-1077ca. The discrepancy is because of the PA3465U-1BRS's smaller 6-cell 48Wh battery.
The 17.3-inch screen has a 1,600-by-900 (720p) resolution. Videophiles who are looking for True 1080p HD can utilize the HDMI or Wireless Display (WiDi 2.0) feature to stream video content wired or wirelessly (provided you have a Netgear Push2TV. If you want mobile HD at your fingertips, however, you'll have to pay for something more along the lines of the Dell Studio 1535 Battery. I did notice some flexing in the lid when I closed it. The full sized keyboard and adjacent numeric keypad, are in the chiclet style and provides a solid typing experience. The multi-touchpad supports pinch-zoom functions and one-finger touch to click. The two mouse buttons were easy enough to click. Above the keyboard is a strip of touch buttons that turn the Wi-Fi on and off, turn the lighting on the touchpad and touch strip on and off, play/pause media, mute, and control volume.
Features :
Connection options abound in this laptop: An SD card slot, 3 USB 2.0 ports, audio jacks, VGA, Ethernet, and a USB 3.0 port with a feature called "Sleep and Charge" that allows you to power-up your devices while your computer is turned off, provided the PC is plugged in. There's also a Blu-ray player, so you can watch HD movies. Aside from the Ethernet jack, there are two other ways you can tap into the interwebs on this laptop: via the 802.11 Wi-Fi and WiMAX, which is a subscription-based service that allows you to log onto the Web via a 4G wireless connection that can compete with some home DSL packages in terms of broadband speeds. Towers, to provide this service, have been erected in major metropolitan areas, in over 54 cities.
Performance :
The Toshiba Satellite a200 Battery comes equipped with a 2GHz second-generation Intel Core i7-2630QM quad-core processor and 6GB of memory. These internal components helped it garner high scores in our PCMark 7 test (2,199) for overall computing power. The Editors' Choice HP dv5-1030ep scored only 103 points higher, which isn't enough to deem one superior to the other. In more multimedia-oriented tests, the PA3465U-1BRS and HP dv5-1040ew scored the same times on our Photoshop CS5 image filtering test (3 minute 52 seconds) and Handbrake video encoding test (1:37).
The PA3465U-1BRS's lack of a discrete graphics chip doesn't mean you can't do some 3D gaming. You will be restricted to older games like Team Fortress 2, or light 3D games like World of Warcraft. Just be sure to check out the system requirements before you buy. If you're looking for something with a little more oomph to play games, the HP Pavilion dv1000 battery is equipped with an AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics chip.
The 48Wh 6-cell battery of the Pavilion dv6-1105ax helped it manage 4 hours 10 minutes on our MobileMark 2007 battery test. Other laptops in this category are usually equipped with 90Wh or 100Wh batteries like the Dell Inspiron 17R (N7110) respectively.
The Toshiba Satellite a200 is a great multimedia laptop with a lot of connectivity options, like WiDi 2.0 and WiMAX. Even its inclusion of Blu-ray will delight video enthusiast. It would have been nice, however, if Toshiba had included a bigger battery with the laptop. It may not be able to overthrow the HP Pavilion dv6-1105ax as Editors' Choice, but if you're looking for a laptop with Blu-ray and you're not a huge gamer, then the Toshiba PA3465U-1BRS can provide.
No comments:
Post a Comment