Toshiba Satellite E200 Review

Toshiba’s new line of laptops include this Special Edition Satellite E200 running an Intel Core i5 processor and comes complete with all the bells and whistles. Check out our full review below.

The Satellite E200 is supposed to be under the category of thin-and-light notebooks and though I agree with the thin part, I don’t think the 2.24kg weight is something we can call light.

The laptop has a glossy finish all over, from the lid cover to the body and the palm rests with some pattern underneath. The body is a bit thick at the base and tapers off towards the front giving it somewhat of a clam-shell look.

The full-sized keyboard features large island-type keys and is a bit flushed to the left leaving a small area on the right side for a touch panel to control volume and LCD brightness. The keyboard is also back-lit and automatically activates when typing on the keys.

Its got a wide enough trackpad with a textured surface to separate it from the palm rest. The click buttons are positioned at the front edge and also tapers off which makes it a little harder to use at times.

The numerous ports are peppered around the sides but barely fits due to the thin design — an HDMI port, eSATA, USB ports and multi-card reader.

The 14-inch transflective display is bright and crisp with a resolution of 1366×768 pixels. The glare and fingerprint smudges that’s attracted by the screen is very common to glossy displays; that and the entire surface of the laptop too.

The specs on this rig is above average to great, depending on where you are coming from — starting off with the trio of the CPU + GPU + RAM. See complete specifications below.

Toshiba Satellite E200 specs:
Intel Core i5 520M @ 2.4GHz (2 cores, 4 threads)
4GB Dual-Channel DDR3 RAM
NVidia GeForce 310M 512MB RAM
500GB SATA HDD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1
HDMI port
eSATA port
2 x USB 2.0 ports
DVD+RW
5-in-1 card reader
6-cell Li-Ion battery
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

The thin design might have also prompted Toshiba to use a slot-loading optical drive to fit the body.

Performance is impressive with the Core i5 520M getting a sub-score of 6.7 on Windows Experience Index. The system got an over-all base score of 5.0 taken from the graphics card.

Results of PassMark benchmarks are as follows:

PassMark Performance Test:
CPU Mark: 2751.9
2D Graphics Mark: 271.0
3D Graphics Mark: 285.0
Memory Mark: 1024.2
Disk Mark: 396.8
PassMark Rating: 938.5

Been using the unit to play Starcraft 2 and I’m doing just fine with medium to medium-high settings. As for battery life, I am able to pull off close to about 4 hours on this unit running on Eco Mode but regular use can easily drop that to just over 2 hours. BatteryBar gives it a 3 and three-quarters of an hour rating.

The Toshiba Satellite E200 Special Edition comes in a nice, attractive design, good built and pretty decent specs. It’s not something you’d like to carry around because of the weight but it will pass as a good workhorse machine. I’m just not sure if a lot of people will be willing to shell out the funds once they discover the price tag that comes along with it.

Estimated retail price in stores is about Php75,000. A bit way above the usual price of other brands in this configuration but Toshiba’s additional touch in the design and built of the unit might convince a few folks to pick this one over the others.