Toshiba Satellite U300-113

Slim and lightweight ultra-portable laptops tend to be expensive, but Toshiba’s 2kg Satellite U300-113 costs a mere £669. This is a very low price for a laptop that’s light enough for regular travelling, although the Satellite is admittedly far from being Toshiba’s lightest or slimmest laptop.

The Satellite’s light weight means that it won’t strain your shoulders while you are out and about, but its slightly disappointing battery life means you may have to keep an eye out for wall sockets to recharge it. Indeed, its battery only lasts two hours while playing a DVD, so you’ll have to entertain yourself with short action movies rather than epic dramas.

It did better in our light usage battery test, lasting just over three hours, which is long enough for most short-haul European flights, but we’ve seen ultra-portable laptops last as long as six hours. At least you won’t have to wait around for the battery to recharge — it took only an hour and 15 minutes to do so.

Despite its relatively slender frame, the Satellite generally feels robust and even though we subjected it to some manly grappling, the lid remained remarkably rigid with little see through. The only place where the Satellite’s case started to flex under pressure was the area around the empty ExpressCard/54 slot. A more pressing concern is the lack of a latch or magnet to hold the lid shut, so sharp objects could conceivably slip in and scratch the display.

The glossy 13.3” display is one of the best laptop screens we’ve seen recently, especially in one this inexpensive. It’s very bright with accurate, vivid and rich looking colours. Unfortunately, the glossy finish reflects light quite easily from sources such as sunlight or overhead office fluorescent tube lighting.

Unlike keyboards found on some ultra-portable laptops, the Satellite’s is well-spaced and not at all cramped. It’s comfortable to use with responsive keys that give plenty of feedback when pressed — it’s a pleasure to type upon, even for long periods. Some keys, such as the left Shift key and the Function keys, are a bit too small for our fingers, though.

We were less than impressed with the touchpad, though. It’s just too small and feels annoyingly jittery. We noticed the cursor occasionally jumping out of position — a trait that often left us narrowly missing the button we were intending to press. It felt a little less jittery once we’d updated the Synaptics touchpad driver, but it still wasn’t particularly accurate. The touchpad buttons are stiff and hard to press, too.

As expected, the integrated Intel graphics chip isn’t suitable for playing the latest 3D games. The 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5450 and 1Gb of RAM are more than fast enough for most tasks, but adding an extra gigabyte of memory would boost performance during more demanding work.

Although we weren’t expecting an on-site warranty for a laptop this inexpensive, we were still disappointed that the one-year warranty only provides service within the UK. Even for a mere £649, we’d expect some form of worldwide coverage. And especially so for an ultra-portable laptop designed for travelling from a multinational corporation like Toshiba.

There’s a lot to like about Toshiba’s Satellite U300-113, though. It has a comfortable keyboard, a good quality display and a classy appearance. However, £150 more buys you Samsung’s Q45, which has longer battery life, a bigger hard disk, a more accurate touchpad, a faster processor and twice as much memory. The Q45 is undeniably better value, but if your budget can’t stretch that far, then the Satellite is a highly tempting and inexpensive alternative.

Specification:

Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 (1.66GHz)
1Gb DDR2 RAM, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 (358Mb shared)
120Gb SATA hard disk
DVD±RW/±DL
13.3” widescreen TFT (1280 x 800)
3x USB 2.0
1x FireWire
10/100 Ethernet
ExpressCard/54
D-sub Size 317 x 238 x 43mm
Weight 2kg
Battery life 3h 10m (Wi-Fi off) DVD playback 2h 3m (Wi-Fi off) Recharge time 1h 15m
Warranty 1 year C&R