Toshiba has launched the all-new Satellite U505-S2930 into the teeth of one of the most competitive laptop segments. This 13.3-inch thin-and-light is up against the likes of the Apple MacBook Pro, Dell Studio XPS 13, and HP Pavilion dv3z. The U505-S2930 manages to deliver a unique look, welcome features, and appropriate performance, all in a package that’s easy to carry. Some design and component details betray that this is a budget-conscious entry, but the $799.99 price helps make it worthy of your short list.
The U505 family replaces the Satellite U405 in Toshiba’s laptop line. The understated design is appealing, and not only because it stands in stark contrast to the glossy shells worn by most other consumer laptops these days. The lid and the area surrounding the keyboard are covered in a textured finish (Toshiba calls the pattern "Matrix") that looks and feels good. The chassis comes in dark brown (so dark it looks black), white, and pink, and unlike the competition, the case is blissfully impervious to fingerprints and smudges. At 4.7 pounds, the U505-S2930 is certainly light enough to carry as a near-constant companion, though we found its thickness—1.25 inches at the front and 1.5 inches at the rear—noticeably chunkier than the 1-inch-thick MacBook Pro and Studio XPS 13.
The U505-S2930 is surprisingly well-equipped for an $800 thin-and-light. This model includes a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 CPU, 4GB of RAM, a generous 320GB hard drive with active protection, a tray-loading multiformat DVD burner with LabelFlash technology, 802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi, a 1.2-megapixel Webcam, an HDMI display output with full HD (1080p) support, a combo eSATA/USB Sleep and Charge ports (to charge mobile devices even when the machine is off), and ExpressCard/54 and memory-card slots. Granted, moving up the price ladder in the U505 family nets you such goodies as an LED-backlit screen with edge-to-edge glass, a backlit keyboard, and a slot-loading DVD burner—but none of those is essential, especially if budget is your primary concern.
The keyboard features full-size, flat-top letter keys but exhibits a bit too much flex, and the touch pad is small. We do like the backlit multimedia control buttons.
If the U505-S2930 has a weak link, it’s the keyboard. Toshiba has moved to the flat-top-style keys to keep the notebook au courant, but we noticed a bit too much flex and a bit too little plunge, giving the keyboard a somewhat cheap feel. Also, as with most touch pads in this class (with the notable exception of the MacBook's), the pad on the U505-S2930 is too small—a real shame considering the pad supports gestures for scrolling, zooming, rotating, and so on. But the Feathertouch multimedia controls, with their slick white backlighting, are a success: The handy controls are responsive and make adjusting the volume or skipping tracks a snap.
The 13.3-inch screen on the U505-S2930 features a traditional backlight, but the 1,280x800 panel was exceedingly bright nonetheless. Text is sharp, and the LCD did a good job with DVD playback, exhibiting natural colors, little motion blur, and good shadow detail. We could do without the U505-S2930’s speakers, however: While they’re fine for Web audio and okay for movie playback, music sounded strident and tinny, with noticeable distortion at top volume.
The Webcam, too, is inferior to those on other laptops. On the plus side: We like the included Toshiba Web Camera App, which docks offscreen and has 12 handy presets for a range of lighting conditions, such as Living Room, Study, Office, and Night. Selecting one from the Settings drop-down list automatically adjusts brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and other image attributes, but the camera exhibits poor low-light performance. For example, we got a barely usable image when the subject was lit by a table lamp (like you might find in a typical hotel room) and the camera set to Study mode. With some cameras, we get a usable image even when the subject is lit only by the light from the laptop’s screen.
But such details can be forgiven if a machine delivers where it counts, and the U505-S2930 delivered very good productivity performance for an $800 thin-and-light. Its scores of 3,051 on Futuremark’s PCMark Vantage and 4,256 on Cinebench 10 are right around average for the class—even though its price is about $300 below the average of that test group—and about 500 points higher on both tests than the similarly priced Pavilion dv3z we tested ($988). These numbers are significantly lower than those of the Dell Studio XPS 13 and Apple MacBook Pro, but you’d pay $300 to $550 for the difference. The U505-S2930 had a similar showing on our multimedia-encoding benchmark tests: Its times of 7 minutes and 24 seconds on Windows Media Encoder (which tests CPU performance while encoding video) and 4 minutes and 50 seconds on iTunes (which tests CPU performance while converting 11 audio tracks from MP3 to AAC) are in line with more expensive competitors (though still lagging behind the Apple and Dell units), and trounce the numbers posted by the Pavilion dv3z.
As expected from the integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics engine, the U505-S2930 can handle light 3D chores and not much else. The machine scored only 1,052 on 3DMark06 at 1,024x768 resolution, and, in our gaming tests, mustered just 15 frames per second (fps) on F.E.A.R. and 11.3fps on Company of Heroes at that resolution. More disturbing for a thin-and-light is the U505-S2930’s relatively short battery life: It lasted just 2 hours and 1 minute on our demanding DVD rundown test—about 40 minutes shorter than average for the category, and nearly 3 hours shorter than the MacBook Pro. (The Studio XPS 13 was a more reasonable 2 hours and 27 minutes.) More judicious use and the help of the handy Eco Utility (available via a hotkey alongside the multimedia controls) should net you closer to 3.5 hours of runtime from the U505-S2930's standard six-cell battery, but frequent travelers will want to opt for the available 12-cell extended battery.
As for software, the U505-S2930 comes preloaded with Windows Vista Home Premium and qualifies for a free upgrade to Windows 7 when that OS ships. Toshiba also includes a fairly extensive collection of bundled software. The PowerCinema utility sports a slick Media Center–like interface for accessing photo tools (Google Picasa, to be precise) and video- and DVD-playback applets. You also get the Toshiba Face Recognition utility (for turning the Webcam into a biometric security device), Corel DVD MovieFactory, Microsoft Works 9.0, and Toshiba's PC Health Monitor software. (The last, previously available on the company’s business laptops, warns against potential computer problems.) The U505-S2930 is backed by a one-year parts-and-labor warranty with 24/7 tech support.
The battery life, keyboard, speakers, and Webcam on the U505-S2930 could all stand some improvement, so if money were no object, in this category of laptop we'd prefer the more expensive Apple MacBook Pro or Dell Studio XPS 13 for their superior attention to detail and slimmer designs. But for those of us on a budget, the affordable Satellite U505-S2930’s shortcomings are easy to forgive.
Price (at time of review): $799.99 (list)
Key Specs
Processor: 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6500
Memory: 4GB RAM
Storage: 320GB hard drive
Optical Drive: DVD±RW
Screen: 13.3 inches (1,280x800 native resolution)
Graphics: Integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD
Weight: 4.7 pounds
Dimensions (HWD): 1.4x12.4x9 inches
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium (SP-1, 64-bit)
