Toshiba Satellite C55-B5200 15.6 inch C50 Series Laptop Review

15.6 inch Toshiba Satellite C55-B5200
via Amazon

Jet black Toshiba Satellite C55-B5200 is a 15.6 inch entry level C50 series notebook with a fairly low price and mid-range technical specs offering decent performance- speed and power with its 4th generation Intel i3 processor and 6GB of memory, generous storage space- 750GB hard drive, a DVD Burner and a variety of useful connectivity ports. It is suitable for work and entertainment to use on a daily basis and should last a while with its solid build and Toshiba quality.

Toshiba Satellite has the dual core Haswell Intel i3-4005U processor (3MB cache) at 1.7GHz speed with no turbo boost but hyper threading for the two cores to handle up to four threads in parallel, with a Passmark benchmark score of 2474 on the day of this review, 6GB DDR3L SDRAM at 160MHz for proper multitasking, 750GB Serial ATA hard drive at 5400rpm spindle speed and the English Windows 8.1 64-bit operating system. The i3 CPU is an ultra low voltage one with a max power consumption of 15 watts and is designed to handle the multimedia and office tasks and many applications smoothly- it is much more powerful than the entry level Celeron processor you’ll find on the cheaper C50 series Satellites, and you have 50% more memory for a bit better multitasking.

15.6 inch HD Trubrite LED backlit TFT widescreen non-touch bright display with 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio and 1366 x 768 max pixel resolution for crisp and clear- decent images with vibrant colours but not like a Full HD and IPS display with larger viewing angles. The integrated Intel HD graphics 4400 with shared memory allows you to play even some of the latest game titles at lower resolutions and settings and older games at higher. Sound quality is fine through its two stereo speakers- again good but not spectacular like you get on much more expensive models, it could be louder. And it has a 720p resolution HD webcam with a built-in microphone for live Skype chats or work related video conferences.

Jet black and textured resin finish Toshiba Satellite looks pretty good for its price, weighs 4.85 pounds and has the measurements of 10.20 x 15 x 1.10 inches- quite portable (15.6 inch screen, 4.85lbs weight and 1.1 inch thin). It comes with a full-size standard non-backlit solid feeling keyboard with a 10-key numpad for easier entry of numeric data and a multi-touch trackpad with separate left and right click buttons. It is an Energy Star qualified laptop, has a 45Wh 4-cell lithium ion battery and no info is provided on battery life but going through the specs, our guess would be up to 5 hours for standard internet and word processing kind of use. Connectivity options are DVD±RW/CD-RW Optical Drive, 802.11b/g/n WLAN wireless, 10/100 Ethernet LAN with RJ-45 connectivity, an HDMI port, a VGA port, 2 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x USB 3.0 port, 6-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader, a Headphone jack (stereo) and a Security Cable Lock Slot.

Conclusion: Toshiba Satellite C55-B5200 is a budget but modern and capable system with decent performance and features- a better and faster CPU that can handle more complex tasks faster than the entry level C55-B5201 and B5202 models, 50% more memory (not user replaceable) and storage space as well as the Intel HD 4400 graphics card that is much better than what you’ll find on those models and this one also includes a DVD drive. Screen is not touch enabled and the quality is fairly decent- standard for a regular 15 inch laptop. There is no Bluetooth but you can get a USB dongle very cheaply with the purchase of this PC. It is designed for performing daily tasks quickly and smoothly but with also light to medium gaming. It could be nice to have a touch screen to use with Windows 8 but at this price level that would probably mean having less memory and hard drive space. You get the Adobe Reader installed and a 1 month trial of Microsoft Office and Norton Internet Security. Warranty is the standard 12 month limited for parts and labor by Toshiba. Toshiba C50 series B5200 is a great computer overall for its price tag- looks good and works well!

Click here for a closer look on Amazon