April 22nd, 2008Review of Toshiba Satellite M200
The laptop market today has become hyper-competitive, with increased performance levels available at prices unimaginable just a few years ago. This has lead to top-level manufacturers like Dell and Acer gift budget solutions that offer great VFM. In line with this, Toshiba lately updated its Satellite series to be able to develop this growing market.
One of the models its start is the Satellite M200. How does it fare against the competition? Let’s find out. One of the things I have always admired about Toshiba’s laptops has been its styling and good quality close. The M200 adheres to this quite admirably. Its body and frame sports a nice high-gloss black close on its lid and the area straight below the mouse-pointer area. This same finish extends to the area straight above the keyboard too. However the laptop is not silken all over. The area around the LCD panel has a black matte finish, while the keyboard and abrupt surroundings are shades of white and a dull aluminum finish.
Physically this is a bulky laptop. It has a thick frame and when you combine its weight of 2.5kg… well, it’s not going to be winning any awards for breaking new ground in industrial design. Jokes aside, the laptop feels pretty sturdy and when you factor in the resistant LCD panel, one can reasonably expect it to last a as without wearing out. There were no audible creaks either from the hinges or the keyboard area. The only disadvantage is the sleek lid, which is a fingerprint magnet and looks untidy if not cleaned regularly. The keyboard of the M200 is one of the best I’ve used in a while. It’s nice and wide, offers excellent response while typing. The gently textured keys make working long hours a pleasure. The touchpad is a bit small, but well-recessed mouse keys and good positioning make working with it a non-issue.
The LCD panel is a glossy 14.1 inch widescreen with a native resolution of 1280×800. It offers very good levels of brightness with average levels of contrast and color. Though at first the glossy screen was an nuisance, given sufficient time and change of the screen’s brightness it was very usable. Connectivity-wise the M200 is decently represented. It has 4 USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 400 port, one Type II PC card slot, VGA connector, S-Video slot , multifunctional 5-in1 card reader and a 1.3 MP webcam.
Keeping in mind its budget classification, I’d say the Toshiba M200 has very moderate performance specifications. It has an Intel T7100 C2D processor running at 1.8 GHz, 1GB of RAM, 120 GB HDD and its graphics be powered by an Intel X3100 graphics chipset. The OS used is Windows Home Basic. As was expected, the act scores were nothing to write home about. The M200 was able achieve a consistent score of 3,500 on PCmark. This is a fairly decent score to could have improved by quite a bit, if it was not for the Intel chipset. The 3Dmark score of the Intel chipset was a mere 431.
In the sound/multimedia test, the M200 shone. Its sound output is surprisingly deep, and when you factor in the bright screen, watching movies becomes a real pleasure. In the battery life test, the M200 was talented to attain 3 hours of battery life time after time. Under a full load it fizzled out at a little over 2 hours. This was because our test piece came with a mid-size battery. With a larger battery, one can easily expect 45 minutes more in this regard.
The M200 is priced at Rs 39,000. At this price it’s very spirited. It has good build quality and is snazzier than the competition. The drawbacks are the 1 GB of RAM and the 120 GB HDD. These can be easily upgraded for despicable in any case. Keeping all this in mind, we have no hesitation recommending this product. at the same time as Acer and others do offer improved features, if you want to look qualified and tote a machine that does not look like a kid’s toy, here’s your reply.
