Toshiba Satellite A500

This extremely appealing apparatus designed with glossy pinstripe patterns and silver strips around the edge, is a decent enough laptop. In this design Toshiba uses the whole width of the keyboard, including a number pad on the right-hand side. The flat-topped keys are spaced far enough from one another so that you don’t hit the adjoining keys.

Touch-typing becomes frustrating because even though the keys feel crisp the bounce kills the feedback. The feeling of the case is more insubstantial than expected and the whole device sounds hollow when you tap it.

It is equipped with a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T660 processor and 4GB RAM, which makes it adequate for most office and internet applications, but it can’t handle any intense photo or video editing. The latest action games also cannot be handled with this laptop, but it does come with a 210M graphic chipset for more sedate games. HD movies do not present a problem the A500 handles them perfectly.

Colors are bright and vibrant on the 16in screen, although it is not recommend for bright overhead lighting because of the glossy finish and tight vertical viewing angles. The 1,366x768 resolution has sufficient desktop space and is perfectly suited for 720p HD movies.

The Harmon/Kardon speakers make the sound quite enjoyable, they are clear and loud enough for solo movie watching. Home movie watching and playing music is not a problem, all you have to do is connect to a large screen or AV amplifier via the HDMI output. It is also equipped with an eSATA port for external hard and ExpressCard slot perfect things such a TV tuner. 500GB is plenty of space to store all of your documents. This laptop is nothing above average and much better ones can be found at the same price.