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| Introduction and Product Specifications | ||||||
Long gone are the days when the primary differentiating factors between competing laptops models were just battery life and weight. Don't be mistaken---battery life and weight are still important; but with so many folks now using a laptop as their only computer, laptop manufacturers have stepped up their efforts on the very look of their notebook designs, as well as piling on enough features to make you never miss a desktop PC. Apple, of course, leads the charge with the sleek designs and user-friendly interface of its MacBook line of laptops. Dell and Lenovo have also had success with their updated designs. Recently, long-time computer manufacturer, Toshiba, has done a complete refresh of its Satellite line of laptops, and we had the opportunity to take an in-depth look at an example of this new look and feel with the Toshiba Satellite X305-S6845. Unlike the Toshiba Satellite X205-SLi4 with its SLI-based graphics and 17-inch display, which we looked at in March, the A305-S6845 is not meant to be a gaming rig. That being said, The A305-S6845's 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 processor, 3MB of DDR2-667 memory, dual 200GB hard drives, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 GPU, and 15.4-inch screen don't necessarily preclude it from being a candidate for that market either. It has some powerful components under its hood and an aesthetic that should appeal to those looking to make the move over to a notebook and leave your desktop PC behind. In the following pages, we walk you through the design and features of the A305-S6845, and show you if its performance is strong enough to meet your needs.
The A305-S6845 is part of Toshiba's Satellite A300 series of 15.4-inch laptops. Prices range from $949.99 MSRP for the entry-level A305D-S6831 up to $1,249.99 MSRP of the A305-S6845, reviewed here. All four models come with Windows Vista Home Premium, 3GB of RAM, a double-layer DVD-/+RW drive, 802.11a/g/n wireless networking, and a built-in webcam. The differences between the models are processing power, hard drive storage capacity, and GPU power (the two lower-end models are powered by an AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core TL-64 processor, while the two higher-end models use an Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 CPU). Additionally, the A305-S6845 is the only A300 model to come with a 6,000mAh Li-Ion battery (the other three models have 4,000mAh batteries), integrated fingerprint reader, and HDMI output. While the four models represent standard SKUs that are available from multiple sources, the two top-end systems of the A300 line can be custom configured from ToshibaDirect. |
| Design and Build Quality |
| Weighing in at 7.5 pounds, the A305-S6845 could be classified as a middleweight as far as desktop replacements go, but perhaps a heavyweight if considered more of an everyday, mainstream laptop. The power brick and power cable add an additional 1.26 pounds to the travel weight. The A305-S6845's high-end system specs say desktop replacement, but its 15.4-inch screen size say otherwise--making the A305-S6845 a difficult notebook to categorize. The widescreen (WXGA) display supports a 1280x800 native resolution, further muddying the distinction--it's more than enough screen real estate for most productivity tasks, but not necessarily a high-enough resolution for dedicated gaming. The A305-S6845 measures 2.4" x 14.3" x 10.5" (HWD), and it features a glossy finish, which Toshiba calls a "Fusion finish with Horizon pattern." The unit is mostly black and gray with horizontal, silver pinstripes. Unfortunately, the glossy finish attracts fingerprints like a moth to a flame. Even the full-sized keyboard featured a glossy finish, which is just as easily marred with fingerprints. The touchpad is flush with the wrist rest, giving the front of the laptop a smooth, sleek look. Backlit hotkeys, flush across the top of the keyboard, control various A/V controls, such as mute, play, stop, and rewind. A pair of stereo harman/kardon speakers reside at either end of the top of the keyboard. A 1.3-Megapixel webcam and microphone are built into the top of the LCD bezel. The notebook is powered by a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 processor and Intel PM965 chipset with an 800MHz FSB. The 3GB of 667MHz DDR2 (PC5300) SDRAM is made up of one 2GB and one 1GB module--the system supports up to a maximum of 4GB in its two memory slots. The graphics is powered by an ATI HD Mobility Radeon HD 3650 GPU with 512MB of dedicated graphics memory. Using ATI HyperMemory technology, up to an additional 767MB of system memory can also be used by the GPU. Video can be output to external sources via VGA, S-Video, and HDMI ports. Two 200GB hard drives make up the system's total 400GB of hard disk storage. The primary drive spins at 5,400rpm, while the secondary drive is a bit slower at 4,200rpm. Both drives include 8MB buffers and communicate at up to 1.5Gbps via SATA connections. The optical drive supports 11 different writing formats, including 4x DVD+/-R double layer and 5x DVD-RAM. The optical drive also supports LabelFlash, which uses the drive's laser to burn an image onto the label-side of a disc. LabelFlash is Yamaha and Fujifilm's version of HP's LightScribe technology. In order to use LabelFlash to burn an image onto a disc, you'll need LabelFlash media. ;) ;) ;) The left side of the system has VGA, S-Video, HDMI, Ethernet, two USB 2.0, and Firewire ports, as well an ExpressCard slot, which can accept both ExpressCard/34 and ExpressCard/54 type cards. The right side of the system has two USB 2.0 ports and the modem jack, as well as housing the optical drive, power jack, and a Kensington Security Slot. The front of the system features a toggle switch for turning on and off WiFi, a 5-in-1 media card reader slot, microphone and headphone jacks, and a volume dial. The headphone jack does double-duty as a S/PDIF digital audio output jack as well. All four USB ports support what Toshiba calls USB Sleep and Charge. Whether the notebook is in sleep mode or even powered off--as long as the laptop is getting AC power, the USB ports can deliver power to USB devices to charge them. We were unable to get any of the USB ports to charge our iPod Touch, however, when the notebook was powered down or in standby mode. Other USB devices successfully charged under the notebook's standby and powered off states in our tests. Note that the system does not have a DVI-out video port. If you are going to be using the A305-S6845 with an external display, the monitor needs to have either a VGA or HDMI connector. Alternatively, a VGA-to-DVI connector will allow you to connect the VGA-out of the laptop to the DVI-in of an external display. |
| Usage and experience |
Upgradability: The only user-serviceable components on the A305-S6845 are the two memory slots, the two hard disk drive bays, and the battery. The optical drive is a fixed drive and is not designed to be removed by the user.;) ;) ;) ;) Keyboard/Touchpad: We found the touchpad to be very responsive and worked smoothly. We liked the fact that the touchpad was flush with the wrist rest, giving the front end of the A305-S6845 a streamlined design. Even though it is flush with the wrist rest, we didn't find our fingers accidentally wandering off of the touchpad surface. The wrist rest is a smooth, glossy surface, while the touchpad is a rougher surface--making it obvious to feel when our fingers were starting to go off course. The fingerprint scanner worked like a charm, making it very easy to login to Windows without having to memorize a pesky password. The full-sized keyboard was equally responsive, with decent key travel, and minimal flex of the keyboard during key presses. We found the glossy coating of the keys a curious aesthetic choice, but even though there was a bit of a slippery feel to the keys, we had no trouble with our fingers accidentally skating off in the wrong direction. Display/Image Quality: The A305-S6845's widescreen display is bright and crisp, and is very quick to respond when viewing fast-moving videos. Because the display is glossy and therefore better able to display contrast and black levels, high-definition content looks great. A downside to the glossy screen, however, is that it is more susceptible to glare when viewed in bright areas or under direct lighting. We saw the same impressive video quality when we output the signal to an HDMI monitor. By outputting the video signal to an external monitor, we were able to increase the screen resolution beyond the TFT's native resolution of 1280x800. The image quality produced by the integrated webcam was not terribly impressive. Captured images appear somewhat blocky and setting the correct brightness, contrast, and color balance settings can be a painstaking process. Speaker/Sound Quality: Expectations for audio quality from laptop speakers is usually not that great. But by using harman/kardon speakers, however, Toshiba is able to greatly exceed such expectations. The audio is crisp and loud, with great response in the high-and mid-tones. We detected only minimal clipping with the audio cranked. As one should expect, bass response was lacking, but not nearly as bad as you typically get with integrated speakers. The integrated microphone picked up far too much background noise to be useful on a regular basis. Those itching to use the A305-S6845 for any sort of voice communication, such as with Skype, would be best served by using a headset. ;) Heat/Noise: Toshiba did a great job of engineering how the A305-S6845 dissipates heat. A large vent on the left side of the laptop, as well as a fan on the bottom of the unit help keep the chassis from getting too hot. Even with the notebook sitting on our laps for extended periods, we never felt the temperature venture into uncomfortably hot territory as we so frequently find with many of today's laptop designs. The laptop operates fairly quietly, with only a faint hum noticeable from the internal fans and the occasional click from the hard drives. |
| Test System and 3DMark CPU | |||||||||||
To start out our testing, we began with a focus on CPU performance, utilizing Futuremark 3DMark06's CPU performance module.
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| Futuremark PCMark Vantage | ||||
| For our next round of benchmarks, we ran the complete Futuremark PCMark Vantage test suite. This integral component of our testing toolbox provides a solid assessment of a system's overall performance. "The PCMark Suite is a collection of various single- and multi-threaded CPU, Graphics and HDD test sets with the focus on Windows Vista application tests. Tests have been selected to represent a subset of the individual Windows Vista Consumer scenarios. The PCMark Suite includes CPU, Graphics, Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and a subset of Consumer Suite tests."
The PCMark Vantage 'Memories' suite includes the following tests:
Memories 1 - Two simultaneous threads; CPU image manipulation; and HDD picture import
Memories 2 - Two simultaneous threads; GPU image manipulation; and HDD video editing Memories 3 - Video Transcoding: DV to portable device Memories 4 - Video Transcoding: media server archive to portable device  The 'Memories' test utilizes the CPU, GPU, memory, and HDD subsystems and therefore provides an excellent peek at a system's potential overall performance. The three systems compared here are all very evenly balanced, with the A305-S6845 almost imperceptibly nudging behind the other two systems.
The Vantage 'HDD' suite includes the following tests:
HDD 1 - HDD: Windows Defender HDD 2 - HDD: Game HDD HDD 3 - HDD: Importing pictures HDD 4 - HDD: Windows Vista start-up HDD 5 - HDD: Video editing HDD 6 - HDD: Media Center HDD 7 - HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player  As the name indicates, this test is designed to primarily isolate the performance of a system's hard disk. It shouldn't come as a surprise then to see the A305-S6845 with its 5,400-rpm-based primary hard drive not perform quite as speedily as that of the 7,200-rpm-based drives found in the X205 and C90S laptops.
The Vantage 'Communications' suite includes the following tests:
Communications 1 - Three simultaneous threads; Data encryption: CNG AES CBC; Data compression; Web page rendering: graphics content, 1024x768, windowed
Communications 2 - Three simultaneous threads; Web page rendering: open various news pages from IE 7 Favorites in separate tabs, close them one by one; Data decryption: CNG AES CBC; HDD: Windows Defender Communications 3 - Windows Mail: Search Communications 4 - Two simultaneous threads; Data encryption: CNG AES CBC; Audio transcoding: WMA -> WMA - to simulate VOIP  This test relies heavily on the power of the CPU and the speed of the hard drive. The C90S takes the lead with its faster processor and hard drive combination. Curiously, even though the X205 has a faster hard drive, the A305-S6845 still gives a better showing on this test. |
| Futuremark PCMark Vantage Continued | ||||
We continue our test coverage with more modules from the comprehensive PCMark Vantage suite of benchmarks.
The Vantage 'Productivity' suite includes the following tests:
Productivity 1 - Two simultaneous threads; Text editing; HDD: application loading Productivity 2 - Two simultaneous threads; Windows Contacts: search; HDD: Windows Defender Productivity 3 - HDD: Windows Vista start-up Productivity 4 - Three simultaneous threads; Windows Contacts: search; Windows Mail: Run Message Rules; Web page rendering: simultaneously open various pages from IE7 Favorites in separate tabs, close them one by one  Similar to the 'Communications' test, the 'Productivity' test also stresses the CPU and hard drive. Unlike the 'Communications' test, however, the A305-S6845 lags behind the other two systems by a large margin. The scenarios here rely more heavily on the interaction between the CPU and the hard drive, therefore giving the advantage to systems with speedier CPU and hard disk subsystems. It is important to keep in mind, however, that many of today's mainstream productivity applications require fairly minimal resources and therefore don't require much in terms of CPU or hard disk speed. It's when multiple applications are performing several functions simultaneously that the true performance potential of a system is called into action.
The Vantage 'TV and Movies' suite includes the following tests:
TV and Movies 1 - Two simultaneous threads; Video transcoding: HD DVD to media server archive; Video playback: HD DVD w/ additional lower bitrate HD content from HDD, as downloaded from the net TV and Movies 2 - Two simultaneous threads; Video transcoding: HD DVD to media server archive; Video playback, HD MPEG-2: 19.39 Mbps terrestrial HDTV playback TV and Movies 3 - HDD Media Center TV and Movies 4 - Video transcoding: media server archive to portable device; Video playback, HD MPEG-2: 48 Mbps Blu-ray playback  Sometimes the results we generate surprise us, and such as this case with the A305-S6845's performance on this test, which relies heavily on the CPU, GPU, and HDD subsystems. Not only did the A305-S6845 outperform the X205 by about 16 percent, but it was even 10 percent faster than the C90S, despite the fact that the C90S has a faster CPU and hard drive. The Vantage 'Music' suite includes the following tests:
Music 1 - Three simultaneous threads; Web page rendering – w/ music shop content; Audio transcoding: WAV -> WMA lossless; HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player
Music 2 - Audio transcoding: WAV -> WMA lossless Music 3 - Audio transcoding: MP3 -> WMA Music 4 - Two simultaneous threads; Audio transcoding: WMA -> WMA; HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player  Similar to the 'Communications' and 'Productivity' tests, the 'Music' test gives the CPU and hard drive subsystems a good workout. And like the 'Communications' test results, we saw the A305-S6845 land in the middle of the pack. It is still somewhat surprising that the A305-S6845 does better than the X205, considering that the X205 has a faster hard drive. |
| Futuremark PCMark Vantage Wrap-Up | ||||
Courtesy, Futuremark: "Gaming is one of the most popular forms of entertainment for all ages. Today’s games demand high performance graphics cards and CPUs to avoid delays and sluggish performance while playing. Loading screens in games are yesterday’s news. Streaming data from an HDD in games – such as Alan Wake™ – allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action. CPUs with many cores give a performance advantage to gamers in real-time strategy and massively multiplayer games. Gaming Suite includes the following tests:"
Gaming 2 - HDD: game HDD Gaming 3 - Two simultaneous threads; CPU game test; Data decompression: level loading Gaming 4 - Three simultaneous threads; GPU game test; CPU game test; HDD: game HDD  This test attempts to stress the CPU, GPU, and HDD subsystems; but with the greatest emphasis on the GPU. Of the three laptops compared here, the A305-S6845 shows the weakest performance on this test. The odd thing about 3D testing, however, is that you find that some 3D applications seem to favor some GPUs over others, so you should never assume that you know all you need to know about a GPU's performance from the results of a single test. In fact, on the next page, the A305-S6845 gives an impressive showing on a number of 3D tests.
The overall PCMark Vantage score is a weighted average of all of the modules in the Vantage suite calculated in total "PCMarks." Here are the results:
 The A305-S6845 puts in a surprisingly strong performance, compared to the X205, which has a faster HDD and GPU. Despite the configuration differences, both T8100-based systems performed exactly the same in terms of their overall performance as measured by PCMark Vantage. |
| 3DMark06, Prey and Company of Heroes | ||||
One of the notebooks that the A305-S6845 is being compared against in this article is the Toshiba Satellite X205 SLi4. The X205 is designed to be a gaming rig, and as such, it features two GPUs in an SLI configuration. For the sake of the following 3D performance comparisons, however, we chose to use the X205's non-SLI performance numbers--utilizing only a single GPU--so as to keep an even playing field as possible with our performance comparisons. In reality, most users would leave the X205's SLI enabled and would therefore see significantly higher frame rates than those presented here--the X205's single-GPU 3D performance results below are provided for comparative purposes only.
 Once again, the A305-S6845 pleasantly surprised us with its performance, tying with the non-SLI configuration of the X205 on the overall score, and easily besting the C90S by a sizable margin. In order to compare the A305-S6845's 3D performance to that of the X205 and C90S, required setting the A305-S6845 to resolutions not supported by its 1280x800 screen. So in order to get the A305-S6845 to achieve the 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 resolutions we required, we tested the A305-S6845 connected to an external display with the 3D titles running at these higher resolutions. The only active display during testing was the external monitor.
 * Note: The Toshiba Satellite A305-S6845 was tested using an external display in order to achieve the test resolutions ** Note: The Toshiba Satellite X205 SLi4 was tested using a single GPU
 * Note: The Toshiba Satellite A305-S6845 was tested using an external display in order to achieve the test resolutions ** Note: The Toshiba Satellite X205 SLi4 was tested using a single GPU
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| Battery Performance: MobileMark 2007 | ||||||
Rounding out our testing, we ran MobileMark 2007 to assess the notebook's overall battery life while running a series of applications through a testing script. We are using the standard benchmark settings from BAPCo, along with a few other minor system tweaks. The screensaver was disabled and the volume was set at approximately 20%. MobileMark 2007 utilizes the following applications:
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| Performance Analysis and Conclusion | ||
Performance Analysis: The A305-S6845 surprised us in a number of our benchmark tests, performing better than expected. Of particular note is the A305-S6845's impressive battery life of almost three and a half hours. Also noteworthy is the system's 3D performance, which saw respectable frame rates on Prey and Company of Heroes, as well as making a strong showing in 3DMark06. The A305-S6845's robust PCMark Vantage performance indicates that the system should be more than capable for most mainstream application needs. Toshiba has done a very good job of putting together a quality system that performs well and looks good. It features a powerful Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 processor, with more than enough memory to suit most needs, and plenty of hard disk storage space to spare. The A305-S6845's unique design and smooth contours should appeal to many users. Its vivid display and great-sounding speakers make the laptop an excellent candidate for watching movies, playing games, and other rich multimedia experiences. The USB Sleep and Charge feature offers a convenient way to charge many USB devices without having to power on the laptop. The fingerprint reader and face-recognition add an extra-level of convenience and fun to what might otherwise be mundane tasks. While the glossy design should appeal to many users, its propensity to attract fingerprints will be a big turn off for many. Like many vendors, Toshiba pre-loads the system with what we feel is too much, less-than-useful software; as much of the bundled software is free or free demos, interested users can easily fetch the applications themselves. The glossy screen is great for dark spaces, but some may find it a hindrance in brightly lit areas as the display tends to throw back lots of glare. Gamers might also find the 15.4-inch display and 1280x800 native resolution too constraining. Including a built-in webcam is a nice touch, but the image quality the 1.3-megapixel camera produces leaves something to be desired. We were also somewhat disappointed that the standard configuration of the A305-S6845 does not include Bluetooth. Selling for $1,250, the A305-S6845 is an excellent value for its performance, battery life, looks, and features. Because of its powerful processor, respectable GPU performance, 15.4-inch display, and 1280x800 native resolution, the A305-S6845 can actually fit many varied needs and is therefore difficult to classify as belonging to a particular class, such as mainstream laptop, desktop replacement, or even gaming rig. Suffice it to say that the A305-S6845 might very well meet the needs of users seeking a notebook that does any of those things. 
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