portege-a600

Toshiba with its new range of portable laptops intends to make a statement in the business laptop category. New Portege A600 is built for the frequent traveler businesspeople who want a bit more performance than the netbooks. We have made a review of this laptop to find out if they really satisfy their needs. Find out the details of the below listed topics and decide if the claims really meets the facts or not.

Processor, RAM

The A600-S2201 has Intel Core 2 Duo SU9300 1.2 GHz CPU with 3GB DDR2 SDRAM which can be upgraded to 5GB max. The processing speed of the Core 2 Duo is really on the lower side if compared to notebooks of its class. The SU9300 is an ultra low power processor sitting between the Intel Atom and regular Core 2 Duo CPUs in terms of performance per Watt. At nearly the same price you can get at least 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The laptop can only reach a performance level of upto two thirds of average business notebooks.

Hard Disk

Storage on the system was provided by a 160GB SATA 5400 RPM Drive. The storage capacity is not massive by any means although a 250GB upgrade is possible which is sufficient for a system of this size. The A600 also comes with an accelerometer that parks the HDD head when in motion to protect the HDD from vibration. After parking it will give you a warning but you can turn off the warning dialog for convenience.
toshiba-portege

Graphics

The S2201 Model had Intel GMA 4500MHD Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0 with Video Memory of 128 MB. You should not expect a high intensive graphics application in a integrated graphics environment but the graphics is fine and well performing any office work and most rich web application.

Display

The 12.1 inch diagonal widescreen backlit LED display at 1280 X 800 native resolution (WXGA) looks a bit muddy when playing movies from CD/DVDs. The screen is non-reflective so that there is no problem reading the screen in fluorescent light falling from any angle. The viewing angle is more than sufficient. Overall the display is average.
toshibap

Design & Weight

Toshiba’s Portege A600 is tiny, silver and all plastic. It’s extremely light at 1.46Kg and at first may be mistaken as a children’s toy. Despite being lightweight as a netbook it’s size is larger than a netbook measuring 11.3X8.8X1.2 inches. The design is all business in the Titanium Silver finish: the brushed silver chassis is by no means flashy and there’s nothing shiny except the mouse button area. We are a little skeptic about the durability for the all plastic design. And at a low weight like this one there is a tendency to throw it a little around quite a lot of times. So, durability is an essential thing to check for in a laptop of this kind. The screen flexes noticeably when pushed. The all silver coloring and plastic keys does not give the impression of a quality product.

Optical Drive

It has a built in DVD Super Multi Drive with Labelflash supporting 11 formats. DVDs and CDs play smoothly on this notebook.
toshiba-portege-a600

Ports

It has 2 USB Port on the left and one eSATA/USB Combo with USB Sleep and charge. The eSATA port allows to connect HDDs without having to worry about speed and performance. There is a VGA Monitor out, DC in, headphone jack, microphone jack and the volume control live on the left side of the notebook. On the right side, other than the optical drive, it has an Express Card slot, SD Card reader, 10/100/1000 Ethernet port and a security lock slot.

Keyboard, TouchPad and fingerprint reader

The keyboard has a normal 85 key US keyboard layout. The keys have a decent travel and good response with a very pleasant type feeling, even if the keyboard bends through slightly under pressure. The touchpad below the keyboard is responsive and there is a fingerprint reader between the left and right mouse keys. The fingerprint reader works well with the Infineon TPM software Pro package.
a600_keyboard1

WebCam

It is now a standard for a business notebook to have a in built webcam. The A600 has a 0.3 MP webcam above the display.

Sound

There is a single speaker next to the power button on the top left of the keyboard. The sound quality is rather disappointing. The sound is barely audible in noisy situations even at full volume.

Battery Life

The A600 has a 6cell Lithium Ion Battery with capacity of 5800 mAh. It can run the laptop 4 hours on normal operation and on high workload it will run at least 2 and a half hours. We are really impressed at the battery performance of this thin and light portable notebook. The 45Watt AC adapter is also extremely small and portable and charges the notebook very fast.
toshiba_a600

Software and OS

The A600 comes with Microsoft Windows Vista Business(32/64 bits) with Windows XP professional downgrade option. And it comes loaded with thousands of pre-installed softwares like a trial version of MS Office 2007, Adobe AIR, Acrobat, Flash Player, Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Toolbar, Picasa 2 and Silverlight, and a legion of Toshiba tools. Some of the softwares may be useful but to be honest, if they are really useful you could get them yourself. isn’t it?

Wireless Connectivity

The built in 802.11n Wi-Fi has a very good range and also has a good speed.

Price

The model has a base price of around $1300. The higher model will cost more. If you consider only the performance of this notebook it may seem very high. But portability and battery life compensates for the performance deficit.
toshiba_portege_r500

Verdict

If you think that you need a good portable notebook which you would use for surfing the net and doing some office works, buy a netbook rather than buying this well-priced notebook which offers only a little improved performance at the cost of a thousand dollar. But if you want to pay that amount for the performance without losing the portability and battery life, the Toshiba Portege A600 is a good choice. If you want some classy sleek design you may also opt for MacBookAir but keep in mind that it does not have the optical drive.