Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/03/29/review_notebook_toshiba_satellite_t130/

Toshiba Satellite T130

Slim sensation

By Tony Smith

Posted in Personal Tech, 29th March 2010 08:02 GMT

Review If Toshiba's svelte Satellite T110 was too small for you, the next model up, the T130, might not be. Both are part of the company's "thin, light and mobile" line-up, but while the T110 - reviewed here - is an 11.6in laptop that likes look down on netbooks, its bigger sibling is a 13.3in notebook that promises to be more fleet of foot than more mainstream machines.

Toshiba Satellite T130

Toshiba's Satellite T130: not quite as skinny as the photos suggest

And it succeeds. It's been designed to appear as lean as possible in much the same way the MacBook Air - reviewed here - has, hiding its girth well away from the edges so as to appear nice and skinny. Girth there is, mainly thanks to the battery, which bulges out from the base, but not so as to impede the laptop's portability.

Like the Air, the T130 dispenses with an optical drive and makes use of ultra-low voltage processors, ranging from the feeble Pentium SU2700 and Core 2 Solo SU3500 - single-core stuck-in-the-muds both - to the more sprightly, dual-core Pentium SU4100 and Core 2 Duo SU7300, which is the one we have here.

Integrated graphics are standard across the line: Intel's GMA 4500MHD doing the honours - if you can use that word with a graphics core that delivers a 3DMark06 score of just 590. So no serious gaming on this boy, but it plays 1080p HD video with no difficulty.

Toshiba Satellite T130

The clean lines and carbon-fibre styling make for a natty notebook

Toshiba is a past master at playing the game of mixing and matching components to hit price points, so while some models, like the review unit, come with 3GB of memory, others have 4GB, and not necessarily the ones with the better CPUs. Ditto, some have 320GB hard drives, while others make do with 250GB.

All of them, however, come with Windows Home Premium in its 64-bit incarnation and Toshiba gets a thumbs-up for that. Incidentally, Toshiba also offers the Satellite Pro T130, which matches the Satellite T130's spec with the exception of an extra gig of Ram on some models and the inclusion of 64-bit Windows 7 Professional across the range.

Toshiba Satellite T130

The keyboard's fine to use, spoiled only by the ill-advised paint job Toshiba has given it

And for coming up with what is a very attractive look. The T130 sports chrome-look trim which extends to the touchpad buttons at the front, and a carbon-fibre like texture beneath smooth gloss that's rather fetching when done up in black. That's applied the to the lid and wrist rest areas/keyboard surround, but the base is a sober matte black.

It's good to see the T130 doesn't suffer from 'where the heck is the touchpad' syndrome, which afflicts the T110. Here, the widescreen aspect ratio pad has a vaguely rough texture to mark out its extent and is ever so slightly recessed. It's good to use, especially since you don't have to look at it to do so.

The keyboard, though, is another matter. It's reasonably firm of footing and not at all unpleasant to type on, but Toshiba has chosen to paint it silk black and then dab on the characters in grey. The upshot is that if you glance at it from a certain angle the reflected light entirely matches the colour of the letters so you can't see what they are. That's the Pro model - the 'amateur' Satellite uses bright white paint for the characters.

Toshiba Satellite T130

Specification for machine as reviewed
Other range members have different specifications

With no optical drive, there's room to space out the T130's trio of USB ports - one doubles up as eSata - and an array of connectors that will disappoint only DVI and ExpressCard fans. There's no DisplayPort, either, but the T130 does have HDMI.

Toshiba Satellite T130

With no optical drive to fit, there's plenty of room for the port array...

Wireless connectivity ticks the right boxes: 802.11n Wi-Fi and, should you need it, Bluetooth 2.1.

Before turning away from the T130's features, we have to again point out Toshiba's very extensive selection of bundled software which, anti-virus trialware aside, is one of the most impressive I've seen.

It provides a wealth of utilities for adjusting this, formatting that and monitoring t'other. And it includes its ReelTime UI, which lists files, apps and web pages you've accessed in chronological sequence. BulletinBoard, meanwhile, is a virtual alternative to the fridge door: a place to keep notes, frequently used files and so forth.

So, the T130 ticks all the right boxes for features, for software and for styling - how about performance?

Toshiba Satellite T130

...which brings no surprises, as you can see

As you can see from the PCMark Vantage charts on the next page, the T130 puts in a decent performance that shows the clear benefit of a dual-core processor over a single-core part, though interestingly, the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ's Pentium Dual-Core processor - reviewed here - isn't far behind the T130's Core 2 Duo.

PCMark Vantage Results

Toshiba Satellite T130
Toshiba Satellite T130

Longer bars are better

PCMark Vantage Battery Life Test Results

Toshiba Satellite T130

Battery life in minutes
Longer bars are better

Battery life? Not at all bad. Reg Hardware's test stresses the battery by running PCMark Vantage continually, keeping CPU, GPU and hard drive thoroughly active. The Wi-Fi radio is always on and associated with an access point, and the screen is set to maximum brightness. Windows' power conservation settings are disabled.

Toshiba Satellite T130

The inevitable choice of colours

Under such conditions, the T130 ran for four hours, putting it just behind two 11.6in CULV notebooks - and one of those has a feeble single-core processor. In the real world, you'll get around eight hours' use out of the T130's battery - a good number in anyone's book.

I wouldn't consider a single-core T130, either in its Pro or vanilla forms. That leaves the T130-11J, T130-16W and T130-170 from the consumer range and the Satellite Pro T130-15F. The latter costs around £700 for just 1GB more Ram than the £599 T130-170 has, and most users will be as well off with Windows 7 Home Premium as Windows 7 Professional.

But given there's not much difference between the performance of the 1.3GHz Pentium SU4100 and that of the Core 2 Duo SU7300, I'd suggest the Pentium-based T130-16W (£530) or T103-11J (£450) are definitely the best-value options. The 16W is black, the 11J red, and their Ram and HDD specs are, respectively, 3GB and 4GB, and 320GB and 250GB.

Verdict

If not having an optical drive is a killer, you can forget this machine, but if you're after a long-running laptop that delivers a decent mainstream computing performance but doesn't restrict you to a netbook-size screen, it's well worth a look. ®