Toshiba Satellite Pro L500 1D6 review

Connectivity is decent. There’s only two USB ports, both located on the right, but to make up for this, on the left you’ll find both HDMI and eSATA, along with headphone and microphone ports and VGA and Fast Ethernet. It’s a shame the latter isn’t a Gigabit port and is limited to 10/100, but at least Bluetooth is present and Wi-Fi is the faster N standard.

On the right hand side of the machine you’ll find a DVD drive that can handle any type of disc you can throw at it save for Blu-ray, while fixed storage comes from an average 5,400rpm 400GB hard disc, which should be more than enough for most local storage needs. An old-school modem and a Kensington lock make up the ports on the rear.

In terms of software you’ll find a trial version of Office 2007 – we’d uninstall that and download the beta of Office 2010 instead. Security is also provided by a system recovery utility, which is activated by hitting F8 on boot-up.

Toshiba also offers its own power saving eco utility, which usefully integrates itself into Windows 7 as a power profile. Out battery tests use Windows standard balanced setting, so the eco setting could improve on the singularly unimpressive one hour 14 minutes we obtained from the heavy use test, and the two hours 48 minutes we achieved in the light use test. Considering the size of the notebook and the beefy processor, unspectacular battery life was to be expected, but even so, these figures are disappointing.

The Toshiba’s strength then lies as a straightforward, no frills, desktop replacement system, that’s practical as long as you don’t need to venture too far from a power plug. The highlight is the full-size keyboard, and the clear bright screen, but the low resolution and the lack of Gigabit Ethernet are low points you need to be aware of before purchasing.