Review: Toshiba Satellite Pro T130 laptop

Toshiba's Satellite Pro T130 is a slimline business laptop designed for mobile professionals who want a stylish, portable system with a decent battery life at a price that doesn't break the bank. The T130 arguably meets all these needs, the only compromise being its somewhat lacklustre performance.

Announced last year and available now, the Satellite Pro T130 is a compact laptop with a 13.3in wide-screen display based on Intel's 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo ultra low voltage processor, to which Toshiba attributes its longer than average battery life. It ships with Windows 7 Professional as the operating system.

We found the T130 pleasant to use thanks to its large keyboard and impressive screen, with the slight drawback that the screen does not push back very far, so that it tends to face towards your chest if you are sitting with the system on your lap. At 1.76kg, it is also fairly light for its size.

Our review system came with 4GB of DDR3 memory (upgradable to a maximum of 8GB) and a 250GB hard drive. It supports 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but does not have the option of a 3G mobile broadband connection and lacks an optical drive.

Battery life
While Toshiba quotes a battery life of up to 11 hours for this system, in reality it lasted for less than half this time in our tests. Using the Battery Eater Pro benchmark, the T130 ran for four hours and 28 minutes, which is still impressive but far below Toshiba's claims.

Toshiba's choice of a Core 2 Solo processor for the T130 means that its performance is not going to match that of a system with a dual-core processor. The overall Windows Experience Index score for the T130 is not actually too bad at 3.2, with the lowest score coming from the Intel graphics, but it feels somewhat sluggish when opening applications despite having a large 4GB of memory.

In design, the T130 has a wedge shape that slopes from 34mm at the rear to 22mm at the front. Our review unit appeared glossy black from a distance, but up close was revealed to be covered by an eye-twisting chequered pattern both inside and out.

We liked the keyboard of the T130, which has large flat keys that make typing a breeze, save for the cursor (arrow) and function keys that are about half the size.

Just in front of this, Toshiba's trackpad bears the same pattern as the rest of the casing and supports multi-touch, which enables gestures such as pulling apart with two fingers to zoom in. The mouse buttons are made up of a single bar which we found had a somewhat dead feel rather than a nice responsive click action.

The T130's 13.3in screen also impressed us with its brightness and clarity, making it easy to read in various lighting conditions. This is based on Toshiba's own TruBrite LCD technology with an LED backlight, and has a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels. Higher resolutions up to 1,920 x 1,200 are possible on an external display.

Connectivity options
Toshiba has provided a typical range of connectivity options, including a VAG port and two USB ports on the left side of the case, one of which supports the charging of devices while the laptop is suspended or in sleep mode.

To the right side of the case is an Ethernet port, two more USB ports, audio jack sockets and what Toshiba calls a Bridge Media slot. This is a 5-in-1 Flash card reader supporting SD Card, Memory Stick, MS Pro, MMC and xD formats.

As well as Windows 7, our review unit came pre-loaded with the almost obligatory 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office 2007, plus McAfee Internet Security with free updates for 30 days.

There was also a bewildering array of Toshiba tools and utilities pre-installed, including Toshiba Assist to provide help and troubleshooting advice, plus a Toshiba webcam tool.

Several of these, including its HDD Protection monitor, Eco Utility, PC Health Monitor and Bluetooth Manager, also appeared to load and remain resident whenever the computer boots, which could help to explain the T130's apparent sluggishness and may also affect battery life.

Overall, we found the Satellite Pro T130 to be a decent enough system for office tasks, and it should appeal to users needing a full PC rather than a netbook.