Weve put several of Toshibas latest mid-level, high-gloss Satellite notebooks through their paces around here in the past few months, and the 14.1-inch Toshiba Satellite M305 is the latest model in this familiar lineup of devices to come up for review. Dishing out sizeable helpings of memory and processing prowess in the configuration we received, the M305 is a consumer-focused laptop that potentially has the power to keep power users happy. Wrapped in a love-it-or-hate-it glossy exterior, the M305 targets general users as well as those looking for a mobile multimedia device, with an upgraded audio system and a chic multimedia surface control arrangement. At once style-conscious and budget-conscious, the latest Satellite appears to do a lot of things right - if you can get past all that shiny plastic. For this review, we tested an M305-S4826 with the following specs: Styling and Design Although the rest of the NotebookReview crew was pretty high on previous Toshiba laptops with the high-gloss Fusion Finish, I was admittedly skeptical about the M305s shiny keys and super-reflective lid. If the finish is allegedly durable, in some ways it really doesnt look it. After a few weeks with the Satellite, however, Im feeling the need to retract this hasty pronouncement. While its almost impossible to keep flat surfaces on the notebook free from smudges, the general consensus seems to be correct: durability definitely isnt a problem with these computers. Even an accidental run-in with a bag zipper - the kind of scraping contact that would put a deep scratch on the surface of most notebooks - didnt faze the M305s finish. If you like the high-tech, high-profile look that it imparts, the Fusion look is svelte, modern, and very appealing. The standard array of function indicators, the M305s multimedia touch panel, and even the Satellite wordmark and touchpad surround are all illuminated with a soft glow that looks great under normal ambient light (though it can be a little bright and harsh on the eyes when working in a dark room). A shallow-inset keyboard and touchpad buttons have an equally classy, well thought-out look. A well matched grey and black striped lid just like weve seen on other recent Toshiba Satellite models rounds out the package. Build Quality and Physical Specs If youre one of those notebook users who judges the build quality of a notebook by how much metal is visible in its construction, the M305 wont be earning many high marks in your book: this laptop is all about the plastic, with glossy (and thus, highly obvious) polymers covering nearly every inch of its surface. Again, while the slick plastic can feel a little cheap, the M305 belies this idea with a tight, solid build and lots of nice details. Panel flex was largely nonexistent, save some give in the typical trouble spot just over the optical drive on the top deck. Similarly, I could induce just the slightest hint of screen ripple by flexing the fairly rigid lid. As with the last few Satellites weve looked at, the M305s battery doesnt seem particularly well anchored, with about an eighth of an inch of front-to-back free play. Hinges are a touch sticky, and with their plastic coverings and dodgy alignment look like they might be a weak point down the road; without a long term test, though, its hard to say for sure one way or another on this score. Theres no latch keeping the lid anchored shut, which makes at least one reason for the Toshibas hard-to-move hinges both obvious and appreciated. And assuming theyre more durable than they look, Ill take stiff hinges to weak ones any day. With these complaints clearly registered, the M305s generally solid construction impresses nonetheless. If it doesnt exactly show off the tank-like hull of a high-end business notebook, for a mid-level consumer laptop theres very little of consequence to complain about with the M305. At 5.25 pounds, the 14.1-inch Satellite feels just a bit portly for its size, though this density contributes to an overall feeling of quality more than it detracts too much from the M305s portability. Measuring in just over 1.25 inches thick at its widest point, the Satellite isnt stellar in terms of overall compactness either, but it certainly lives up to expectations given its price. Screen At 14.1 inches, the M305s display is obviously smaller than the recently reviewed A305s 15.4-inch version, but performance could be described in almost exactly the same terms. Backlighting is even, with practically no discernible bleed, making colors pop vividly across the gamut. As with the A305, however, while horizontal viewing angles are nice and wide before color begins to invert, theres a decided "sweet spot" on the vertical axis: swallow out your vertical angle too much and the screen quickly begins to lose all semblance of contrast. Moving in the other direction, color invert relatively quickly. This combined with the fact that the M305s display doesnt tilt as far back as those on some competitive models means that if you often work with your notebook on your lap at odd screen-to-keyboard ratios, you may have trouble finding a position that provides the best possible viewing experience. Brightness is adjustable in eight steps, with the moderate power settings working fine for indoor use under normal conditions. Overall, while the M305s glossy display isnt perfect, its vibrant colors, good brightness, and minimal reflectivity all add up to a pretty impressive performance for the Satellite in this regard. Keyboard and Touchpad Ill say up front what may be on the minds of many: the M305s glossy keys look weird, and seem like they wouldnt be pleasant to type on. As with the finish in general, and as weve discovered before in testing other similarly speced laptops, however, Toshibas high-gloss keyboard proves again to be much better than expected. Key action is fairly short - a fact which some typists will undoubtedly dislike - but the keys have a quick, positive feeling when pressed. Once you adapt to the slightly slippery feel of glossy keys, the finish has a nice tactile feeling that actually works surprisingly well for rapid typing. I did have an issue with a squeaky backspace key, and some of the larger keys (the carriage return and shift keys being the most frequently used, and thus the most obvious, offenders) didnt feel as solidly mounted as I might have liked. Still, the gloss keyboard looks great, feels both pleasant and well-constructed, and, as weve commented before, theres no concern about a matte finish rubbing off of the keys over time with heavy use. I was a little less satisfied with the M305s touchpad experience. The pad itself is small, somewhat oddly finished (its the only textured portion of the entire notebook), and isnt great from a sensitivity standpoint. The fact that the pad isnt recessed into the top deck or bounded by a raised border also means that I found myself frequently running "out of bounds" in trying to mouse across the screen, for instance. None of these issues even approach major concerns in my mind - more like minor annoyances at most. Ports and Drives With three USB ports, the M305 is playing about par for the course in terms of 14.1-inch notebooks, but the M305s USB slots do something unique to Toshibas latest crop of laptops: with their innovative "Sleep and Charge" feature, the ports can be used to charge USB-connected devices (your iPod for instance) regardless of whether the computer is on or not - the only requirement being that the computer has to be connected to AC power. While it doesnt necessarily solve mobile charging issues (as it wont draw power when the computers on battery), being able to use your computer as a charging station regardless of its power state is a clever idea. The inclusion of Firewire as well as an Express Card slot will make many looking to do slightly more serious computing happy. HDMI also appears to be an option for some configurations, though the port space was blanked on our test unit. On the optical drive front, the M305 features a slim tray-loading DVD-R/CD-R combo drive featuring Labelflash on-disc image burning technology. As on the cheaper Satellites, the M305s video out doesnt include any screw lugs. I guess Toshiba assumes that no one takes the time to actually lock down a video connection on a laptop anyone, given that these are often temporary arrangements; still, it feels a bit like scrimping to me, and as someone who regularly uses a second display with my notebook and doesnt like to worry about the video cable disconnecting itself when the computer is moved, Im inclined to see this as a potentially noteworthy oversight for some users. Audio Performance Wearing a downsized version of the Harman/Kardon branded system seen on other mid-level Toshibas, audio performance isnt bad at all with the M305. Bass response could be a little richer, and (to be picky) highs can be a little tinny through the M305s audio system, but the sound was natural at all volumes with distortion pretty impressively hard to come by. For mobile movie viewing or on-the-road audio, the Satellite is a perfectly competent performer and then some. I had no problems with buzzing, whining, or other signal pollution either through the speakers or the headphone out. Heat and Noise The only particularly irritating hotspot was one that regularly developed after about 30 minutes of use under my left wrist, making me perceive the entire notebook as being hotter than it actually was. Though it runs a little warmer than some might prefer, for a smaller machine heat dissipation really isnt too bad, making the M305 relatively comfortable to use directly on your lap for light computing tasks like word processing and web surfing. If the heat dissipation doesnt exactly impress, however, the M305s near-silent fan operation does. The Satellites side-exhaust fan isnt audible over typical office white noise levels when running at normal speeds. Battery Life Using Vistas "Balanced" power management setting, the M305 touts right at three hours of battery life on a full charge of its 3700 mAh pack. A light run-down test involving some web browsing and general office app work at conservative screen brightness settings yielded right at 2:45 before the system warned me to plug in. Likewise, if youre willing to use reduced brightness settings and disable your Wi-Fi while watching, unless youre planning to watch all four hours of Lawrence of Arabia on battery power, you should be able to get through most DVDs in a single charge (if only just). In short, if its not exactly class leading, being able to reasonable expect three solid hours of computing on a charge is none too shabby for a compact notebook that comes pretty close to what could be called "budget" pricing territory. Performance and Benchmarks This categorys definitely a mixed bag for the Satellite, with its success as a performance notebook largely depending on your intended use. With three gigabytes of RAM and its Intel Core 2 Duo "Penryn" chipset, the M305 sports a fairly high-power processor and memory combo. The use of integrated graphics, however, serve to hamstring much of this power where gaming and other 3D graphics uses are concerned. For the standard complement of computing tasks, up to and including working with images and light video editing, the M305 is more than fast enough. Working in Photoshop, it took a pretty involved multi-file project to overtax the M305s available RAM and several complex processes run simultaneously to noticeably outrun its processor. Assuming youre not looking for a portable gaming machine, then, the M305 proves to be fairly robust in the power department. wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, the advantage of this program is that it is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, thereby giving more accurate benchmarking measurements than Super Pi. (Lower numbers mean better performance.) 3DMark06 comparison results for graphics performance (higher scores mean better performance): Conclusion Approaching this review, I wasnt particularly excited about what the M305 had to offer: it seemed like a fairly run-of-the-mill notebook in a visual package that I found fairly unappealing. If my expectations were mixed, the Satellite has consistently impressed in almost every area, proving itself to be a powerful computing companion (assuming you dont need the resources that dedicated graphics provide) and a pleasant machine to use. The Fusion Finish remains controversial, but while Im still not keen on the looks (and cant stand its tendency to come away covered in smudges seemingly from a single touch), theres no question in my mind about the finishs durability or functionality. Likewise for the odd looking but great feeling glossy keyboard. If I was an open skeptic going in, the M305 has largely won me over with good performance, solid construction, a great screen, and a respectably strong battery. If it doesnt - beyond the visual, at least - exactly jump off the page, given its street price right at $1,000 as tested, the M305 isnt a bad deal to boot, making it a reliable, affordable choice for general users looking for style and portability.
Buying Choices for the Toshiba Satellite M305-S4826 Circuit City | $1,014.99
Buydig.com | $963.00
Amazon.com | $1,014.99
Beach Camera | $963.00
Newegg.com | $949.99
view detailed pricing from 7 stores starting at $949.00
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(view large image) Notebook / CPU wPrime 32M time Toshiba Satellite M305 (Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.1GHz) 38.532s Toshiba Satellite A305 (Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.1GHz) 36.442s Asus M51S (Core 2 Duo T5550 @ 1.83GHz) 46.293s Lenovo IdeaPad Y510 (Core 2 Duo T5450 @ 1.66GHz) 50.184s HP Pavilion dv6700t (Core 2 Duo T5450 @ 1.66GHz) 50.480s Dell Inspiron 1525 (Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.0GHz) 43.569s Dell XPS M1530 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz) 37.485s Portable One SXS37 (Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.0GHz) 41.908s Sony VAIO NR (Core 2 Duo T5250 @ 1.5GHz) 58.233s Toshiba Tecra A9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz) 38.343s Toshiba Tecra M9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz) 37.299s HP Compaq 6910p (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz) 40.965s Sony VAIO TZ (Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.20GHz) 76.240s Zepto 6024W (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz) 42.385s Lenovo T61 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz) 37.705s Alienware M5750 (Core 2 Duo T7600 @ 2.33GHz) 38.327s Hewlett Packard DV6000z (Turion X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz) 38.720s Samsung Q70 (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.0GHz) 42.218s Acer Travelmate 8204WLMi (Core Duo T2500 @ 2.0GHz) 42.947s Notebook 3DMark06 Score Toshiba Satellite M305 (2.10GHz Intel T8100, Intel X3100) 539 3DMarks Toshiba Satellite A305 (2.10GHz Intel T8100, ATI Radeon 3650 512MB) 3,810 3DMarks Asus M51S (1.83GHz Intel T5550, Nvidia 9500M GS 512MB) 3,749 3DMarks Lenovo IdeaPad Y510 (1.66GHz Intel T5450, Intel X3100) 543 3DMarks HP Pavilion dv6700t (1.66GHz Intel T5450, Nvidia 8400M GS 256MB) 1,556 3DMarks Dell Inspiron 1525 (2.0GHz Intel T7250, Intel X3100) 545 3DMarks Sony VAIO NR (1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250, Intel X3100) 504 3DMarks Dell XPS M1530 (2.20GHz Intel T7500, Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB) 4,332 3DMarks Dell Inspiron 1520 (2.0GHz Intel T7300, NVIDIA 8600M GT) 2,905 3DMarks Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB) 1,408 3DMarks Samsung Q70 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 and nVidia 8400M G GPU) 1,069 3DMarks Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB) 2,344 3DMarks Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB 2,183 3DMarks Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66GHz Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB) 2,144 3DMarks HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400) 827 3DMarks
PCMark05 measures overall notebook performance (higher scores mean better performance):Notebook PCMark05 Score Toshiba Satellite M305 (2.10GHz Intel T8100, Intel X3100) 4,224 PCMarks Toshiba Satellite A305 (2.10GHz Intel T8100, ATI Radeon 3650 512MB) 5,622 PCMarks Asus M51S (1.83GHz Intel T5550, Nvidia 9500M GS 512MB) 4,649 PCMarks Lenovo IdeaPad Y510 (1.66GHz Intel T5450, Intel X3100) 3,749 PCMarks HP Pavilion dv6700t (1.66GHz Intel T5450, Nvidia 8400M GS 256MB) 3,386 PCMarks Dell Inspiron 1525 (2.0GHz Intel T7250, Intel X3100) 4,149 PCMarks Dell XPS M1530 (2.20GHz Intel T7500, Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB) 5,412 PCMarks Dell Inspiron 1520 (2.0GHz Intel T7300, NVIDIA 8600M GT) 4,616 PCMarks Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS) 4,591 PCMarks Sony VAIO NR (1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250, Intel X3100) 3,283 PCMarks Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100) 4,153 PCMarks Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100) 3,987 PCMarks Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB) 4,189 PCMarks HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400) 4,234 PCMarks Fujitsu N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400) 3,487 PCMarks Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX) 5,597 PCMarks
HDTune results:
(view large image) Buying Choices for the Toshiba Satellite M305-S4826 Circuit City | $1,014.99
Buydig.com | $963.00
Amazon.com | $1,014.99
Beach Camera | $963.00
Newegg.com | $949.99
view detailed pricing from 7 stores starting at $949.00
(source:http://www.notebookreview.com)
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