Toshiba Satellite C55-B5142 15.6 inch Laptop Review

15.6" Toshiba Satellite C55-B5142
via Amazon

Toshiba Satellite C55-B5142 (PSCM8U-004001) is a powerful and reliable 15.6 inch laptop computer with a 5th generation Intel i5 processor that is a great solid performer in usual tasks like net surfing, online shopping, working on spreadsheets and documents and more demanding tasks as well as some casual gaming. It gives you all the main features you need for entertainment, work or school (it can handle lots of multimedia, very demanding apps and multitasking with ease) at an affordable price.

Toshiba Satellite comes with the dual core Broadwell Intel i5-5200U processor (3MB cache) at frequencies between 2.2GHz - 2.7 GHz with turbo boost and hyper threading so two cores can handle four threads in parallel, 8 GB DDR3 low voltage RAM at 1600MHz for superior multitasking- solid amount of memory but is not expandable by the user, 1 TB Serial ATA hard drive at 5400 rpm rotating speed as ample storage space for videos, photos and documents but with average read/write times (fair enough at this price level) and 64-bit Windows 8.1 operating system that will soon be replaced by Windows 10 some time in 2015 if you’re not a fan.

The 15.6 inch diagonal LED-backlit HD TruBrite TFT widescreen non-touch display with 1366x768 pixel resolution and 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio is your usual regular laptop screen with decent quality as it supports 720p content- nothing extraordinary as it is not Full HD with IPS function and it comes with the integrated Intel HD 5500 graphics which should be a little better than the previous Intel HD 4400 and similar to the dedicated Radeon HD 8670M so you can play the older games at medium to high settings and resolution and some new titles are also playable at lower resolutions and at 20 frames per second but it will not be very fast at 3D applications because of lower speeds. It has a HD webcam with built-in microphone so you can do your video work meetings or chat informally on Skype and sound is adequate through the integrated stereo speakers.

Textured resin with matte black finish Toshiba Satellite C55-B5142 looks nice with its attractive sleek design with clean lines, weighs 4.8 pounds and measures 10.20 x 14.96 x 1.05 inches so it is lightweight and portable. It has a 4-cell 45Wh lithium ion battery should last about 4 hours of web browsing, a standard non-backlit keyboard with a numeric pad for easy number crunching and a touchpad with separate left and right clicks and all the necessary ports you need to connect to other devices like printer, HDTV and any peripherals: DVD-SuperMulti Optical Drive, 802.11bgn wireless, Bluetooth 4.0 to link to other Bluetooth enabled units wirelessly, 10/100 Ethernet LAN with RJ-45 connectivity for fast wired internet access, a USB 3.0 port to transfer data quicker, 2 x USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, a VGA port, 1 x headphone/microphone combo jack, a 6-in-1 Memory Card Reader, Media Card Reader that supports MMC and SD formats and a Security Cable Lock Slot.

Conclusion: Toshiba Satellite C55-B5142 is a modern 15.6 inch notebook PC with a robust Broadwell processor, generous amounts of memory and hard drive for your daily and more demanding tasks at a rather affordable price. The 2015 release ultra low voltage Intel i5-5200U has a Passmark benchmark score of 3751 on this review day so it should be as good as an average Haswell i5 processor and has a TDP- Thermal Design Power of 15 watts. The laptop comes with quite a bit of Toshiba utilities and third party software by default that you may simply uninstall (those that you don’t need). It seems to be quite a capable machine with nice set of specs, features and a good range of useful connectivity options to make your life easier- good as a beginner’s computer and also perfectly fine for those that need a bit of power and speed and generally speaking quite decent value for money. You get a month trial version of Microsoft Office 365 and McAfee internet security and 1 year standard limited warranty by Toshiba.

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