Toshiba’s A200: the killer portable?

Send to a friend Print

William Maher18 June 2007, 1:55 AM

Is there a notebook with decent grunt AND battery life? We think we've found it.

Sateliite A200: delivers the rare mix of Vista-capable grunt and good battery life

I've just finished testing a crop of Vista notebooks, and several of the $2,000+ machines on the market will only just make it through a movie DVD before black-screening (read the full story in the July 2007 issue of APC).

The experience confirmed for me again how difficult it is to navigate the mixed bag that is the all-purpose notebook market.

Finding one that won't break your back, with enough grunt to tackle Vista, AND with relatively decent battery life isn't as straightforward as it looks.

In testing, battery times on 13 notebooks lasted from 1hr 32minutes to around 2hr 45minutes (testing involved playing a DVD continuously under the same settings until the battery ran out).

Good looking too: apart from solid performance, the industrial design is quite easy on the eye.

Sure, the Toshiba A200 is an unassuming mid-weight notebook, but it could just be the perfect portable Vista machine. Here's why.

First, it's not gigantic.

Sounds obvious for a notebook, but you'd be surprised at what's being marketed as "portable". 17inch screen machines are bulky and heavy.

Second, it's a balanced system.

In this respect, it gives some snazzier notebooks a run for their money. It lasted just over 2 hours in our battery testing, and performance under PCMark and 3DMark was mid-range. On paper these results aren't mind blowing, but the A200 was one of the few truly portable systems with such a balanced score, and at a relatively decent value $2,299 with some nice touches like 802.11n (you might find it cheaper online).

By contrast the beefier Qosmio is being advertised online by Dick Smith for $3,399. And the Vaio G? The Vaio is a great buy for some people, it's far easier to cart around, but keep in mind what you get for $3,699. The processor is a Core Solo, versus Core 2 Duo for the Toshiba, and 1GB RAM verse 2GB for the Toshiba we reviewed. Performance is definitely not the priority.

The good news is our testing was done just prior to the launch of the new Santa Rosa notebook platform, so hopefully performance will improve with these new notebooks. In the meantime, the Satellite A200 is the "known good" configuration!