The Toshiba Satellite P505-S8010 is an 18-inch laptop classed by the manufacturer as a “media center.” To this end, it packs a suitable amount of processing and graphics power into its large frame. Can the P505-S8010 meet the needs of the most demanding videophiles, or does it end up being a letdown?
Positives
For the most part, Toshiba’s Satellite line of notebooks are known for their sleek design and high portability, but the P505-S8010 is understandably a different case. Although it has a similar finish to smaller Toshiba laptops, the P505-S8010 is a mammoth, featuring an 18.4 inch widescreen, and weighing over 9 pounds. It’s got some of the hardware necessary to take advantage of those dimensions too, including an NVIDIA GeForce 310M graphics card, which should be enough to handle any sort of multimedia-related tasks as well as gaming (at moderate detail settings).
The P505-S8010 also packs an Intel Core i3 2.13GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. This is probably about what consumers would expect from such a large machine, but some may be pleasantly surprised to find that the price isn’t so large. The P505-S8010 retails for around $950, which is very reasonable considering its specs.
Negatives
Unfortunately, there are some frustrating aspects of the P505-S8010’s design. Although it’s targeted at people who intend to watch movies regularly on their laptop, the P505-S8010 lacks some things that should have been no-brainers for this purpose, including a full HD display (rather than this model’s underwhelming 720p screen) and a Blu-ray player. Also, the P505-S8010’s usability is harmed somewhat by the poor design of some of its interface features. The gesture touchpad simply doesn’t work very well, and the media touchpad, located to the left of the keyboard, is overly sensitive, to the point that it’s hard to avoid activating it while typing.
The Bottom Line
The Toshiba Satellite P505-S8010 is a decent value at its price, and makes a good entry-level multimedia notebook. On the other hand, it’s frustrating to know that it could have been an even better value if Toshiba had made some better design choices.
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