Review: Toshiba Satellite P200 notebook

Toshiba says its new P200 series of laptops is all about ‘feature-packed value’.

In other words, it’s trying to provide good all-round performance and features at an attractive price. And, for the most part, they’ve succeeded.

There are actually half a dozen different models in the P200 range, with the most obvious common feature being their 17.1in widescreen display. The screen is a good place to start, as screen quality has always been one of Toshiba’s strong points.

The display on our review unit certainly produced rich, bright colours that worked well when playing games and watching DVDs. The screen resolution is 1,440x900, which isn’t the highest you can get from a 17.1in display (that’s generally 1,680x1,050), but most will find it perfectly adequate.

Our review unit was the P200-143, which sits roughly in the middle of the range. Priced at £999, this model uses an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 1.66GHz, with 2GB Ram and a 200GB hard disk. The healthy amount of memory and hard disk are both welcome, and mean that the P200-143 is well suited to tasks that involve working with very large files, such as video editing. Toshiba has also opted for Vista Home Premium, so you get all the Media Center features.

The processor speed does leave room for improvement, though, as the 1.66GHz clock speed is right at the lower end of the Core 2 Duo range. Our Vista test suite shows that the overall performance of the P200-143 lags quite noticeably behind similar laptops running at 2GHz or more.

To be fair, it will still be more than adequate for running business software, surfing the web, and most other day-to-day tasks. However, intensive games playing, or experimenting with more ambitious video editing might benefit from more raw horsepower.

And for just an extra £56, you can get the next model in the range – the P200-156 – which runs at 2GHz and also has a 250GB hard disk. Given the choice, we can’t help thinking that the 2GHz model represents better value for money. You could also go as low as £600 for the P200-13Z model, which has a good old-fashioned Pentium Dual Core running at 1.73GHz. That sounds like a bit of a bargain, although it only has 1GB Ram and a 120GB hard disk.

Another feature that is common to all the models in the P200 range is the Nvidia Geforce Go 7600 graphics processor, equipped with 128MB of dedicated video memory. Like the main CPU, it is a relatively modest performer, although it did achieve a perfectly playable average rate of 32fps (frames per second) in our Fear test. Hardcore gamers might want to look for something more powerful, but the P200-143 will still be able to handle occasional shoot ‘em up action.

It’s got a reasonable set of additional features too, including a built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam, S-video output, Firewire and DVD burner. Bluetooth and wireless networking are both supported, and the wireless is based on the Draft-N specification (which is backwards compatible with 802.11a/b/g).

The only problem with the P200-143 is that a big chunk of its price goes on the 17.1in display rather than the main processor. If you’re going to pay £1,000 for a laptop, another £55 for the 2GHz model would be well worth it. But if you definitely want a 17in display and your budget is already a bit stretched then the P200-143 is well worth considering.