Toshiba Satellite M200 (Core 2 Duo Processor T5250 1.5GHz, 1GB RAM)

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By Alex Kidman, CNET.com.au
Mar 03, 2008

Who wouldn't love an easy-to-remember name like the PSMC3A-04P008? Sure, it sounds like an all-in Star Wars android orgy, and rolls off the tongue as easily as a rusty razor blade, but we digress. That rather painful sounding product name thankfully refers to the specific version of the Toshiba Satellite M200 that we were sent for review. As it's available in various under-the-hood technical configurations, it carries that kind of unintelligible suffix so product vendors can keep track. Just to confuse consumers even more, Toshiba's already had an M200 on its books, the tablet Portege M200. That unit now has more than four years on the clock, so if you get offered one, don't pay Satellite M200-type money for it.

Editors' note :

This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com.au. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Please check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design

The suffix is actually one of the few really unattractive things about the M200, which is an otherwise shiny and attractive 14-inch semi-portable laptop. We say semi-portable because it weighs in at 2.26kg, which will tug on your shoulder reasonably fast. As with most 14-inch laptops, the keyboard is naturally a touch compressed, with no number pad and the home and page keys pushed against the right-hand side of the keyboard. The exterior casing is in glossy black, which brings with it the ever present risk of fingerprint smudges when carried around.

Features

The M200 submitted to CNET for review featured an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5250 running at 1.5GHz, with 1GB of onboard memory. Graphics are provided by the inbuilt Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100, which will consume up to 251MB of the onboard memory. Thankfully, the memory can be upgraded up to 4GB; a single slot is occupied out-of-the-box by the inbuilt 1GB. The M200 features a super-multi DVD recorder with support for every format you'd care to throw at it, and it ships with Windows Vista Home Premium edition. In connectivity terms, you're looking at a single PC card slot, four high-speed USB 2.0 ports, media card reader, a single FireWire port, 10/100 Ethernet and V.92 modem and a single D-Sub video-output port. Speaking of video, the M200 also features an embedded 1.3-megapixel Web camera at the top of the display screen. The M200 uses Intel's 802.11g wireless Centrino solution, so those looking for speedier 802.11n wireless will have to invest in an adapter.

Performance And Battery Life

At a physical level, there's a lot to like about the M200. The keyboard has excellent response and tactile feel--Toshiba has long offered good notebook keyboards, and the M200 is no exception. The use of a scroll wheel rather than buttons for volume control also scores high marks with us; too many laptops use buttons (and all too often combinations of the function buttons) for volume control, which can make things tricky if you need to mute in a hurry. The display screen showed off multimedia files with good clarity, and the speakers likewise marked this as a decent entertainment machine--within certain limitations.

Toshiba's asking price for the M200 PSMC3A-04P008 is A$1,399 (S$1,819.97), which in the current notebook market doesn't automatically make this a budget machine. The advent of ASUS' highly popular Eee PC has seen a slew of new sub-S$1,000 (US$735.29) laptops flood the market. As such, it needed to draw every last erg of power out of its architecture to truly impress us. Its PCMark score, sadly enough, wasn't that impressive, coming in at 3,341. We're never going to expect much out of Intel's inbuilt graphics solutions and, indeed, the Intel GMA X3100 managed a score of 388; not bad if you're looking for a basic productivity machine, but pretty much dead in the water for gamers.

The M200 managed a healthy enough 1 hour 36 minutes in our DVD playback test, with screen brightness at full and all other power-saving measures switched off. For basic productivity work you could certainly expect more battery life than that, as the DVD test really does work the entire machine rather harder than most people will on a regular basis. Its uptime was essentially neither spectacular nor terrible. This certainly isn't anywhere near being an all-day portable machine.

Service And Support

Toshiba offers a one-year international carry-in warranty for this machine, with options to upgrade the coverage period at the point of purchase. For greater convenience, you can register the warranty online instead of mailing it in. Prompt assistance is available through a toll-free number for over-the-phone support and troubleshooting. An online support database called IRIS (Instant Response Information Service) features a search engine for solutions to commonly encountered problems. If the issue still cannot be resolved, the unit will have to be brought down to a Toshiba service center for repair. A list of service centers can be obtained from Toshiba's Web site, which also hosts updated drivers and utilities.