Toshiba Satellite S55t-A5277

Pros Great performance from fourth-gen Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia graphics. Touch screen. DVD drive reads and burns to disc. A sizeable 1TB hard drive offers lots of storage capacity.

Cons Display is only 720p. Battery life is a little short. Bottom Line The Toshiba Satellite S55t-A5277 offers category leading performance and a healthy feature set, but the ho-hum design and short battery life keep it from ranking higher.

By Brian Westover

Looking for a desktop replacement notebook for less than a grand? The Toshiba Satellite S55t-A5277 has plenty to offer, like a 15.6-inch touch screen, a rich feature set, and superb performance thanks to a fourth-generation Intel Core i7-4700MQ procecssor and Nvidia GeForce GT 740M discrete GPU. It may not be the most portable laptop around, but for the user who is likely to keep close to home, the blend of performance and features make it a smart buy.

Design
The Toshiba Satellite S55t weds mostly plastic construction with a layer of brushed aluminum across the lid and palmrest, adding a luxurious note to an otherwise utilitarian design. The combination of plastic and aluminum is a little thick and bulky, measuring 1.2 by 15.2 by 9.9 inches (HWD) and weighing 5.3 pounds.

The 15.6-inch display is a bit plain with only 1366-by-768 resolution, but for a touch-capable system, we wouldn't expect more without a bump in price. The HP Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook 15-4010nr, for example, offers a 1080p touch screen, but costs considerably more.

Just below the display is a speaker grill concealing two Harman/Kardon speakers. Paired with DTS Studio Sound, the overall sound quality is very good, with a wide volume range and clear sound even when turned up high. The bass was a little weaker than I'd like, but you'll still be able to enjoy a bass-heavy song. You can also tweak the sound to your liking with the DTS Sound Studio, which includes several audio optimization tools.

The Satellite S55t features a full-size chiclet keyboard and 10-key numeric pad, complete with LED backlight. Unlike the compact numeric pad seen on the Asus VivoBook V551LB-DB71T, the Toshiba keeps the same key shape and spacing as the rest of the keyboard, which should make things a bit more comfortable for anyone doing data entry or working in spreadsheets.

The accompanying clickpad has a plasticy surface, but it's responsive and the integrated right and left buttons didn't give us any trouble during testing. The touchpad also gestures like two-fingered scrolling and zoom, along with Windows 8 gestures, such as swiping in from the edges to access the Charms Bar or cycle through open apps.

Features
On the front edge of the laptop is an SD card slot. Two USB 3.0 ports are on the side, with a third USB 2.0 port featuring Sleep-and-Charge, letting you use it to power and charge your phone or media player even when the laptop is powered off. A LAN connection gives you wired Gigabit Ethernet, while the laptop is also equipped with 802.11n Wi-Fi.

A tray-loading optical drive (DVD+-RW dual-layer) is on one side, and features video upscaling to make standard definition content look better on the 720p screen or when connected to an HDTV through the HDMI output. A VGA output also lets you connect to a second monitor or projector.

Internally, the Satellite S55t is outfitted with a 1TB hard drive, offering copious space for all of your stuff, even a sizeable media collection. Toshiba regularly includes a number of preinstalled programs and apps on its systems, and the Satellite S55t is no exception, with more than a dozen proprietary and third-party apps already on the system at purchase, including regular Microsoft offerings, like Skype, Internet Explorer 10, and a 30-day trial of Office 365. There are additional 1-month trials of Norton Anti-Theft, Norton Internet Security, and Norton Online Backup. Toshiba also throws in its own app store (Toshiba AppPlace), ebook store (BookPlace), and some game extras from EA Games and WildTangent Games. Toshiba covers the Satellite S55t with a one-year limited warranty.

Performance
The Satellite S55t is equipped with a fourth-generation quad-core processor, the Intel Core i7-4700MQ (2.4GHz), paired with an impressive 12GB of RAM. The new CPU is a full generation ahead of the Ivy Bridge processors found in the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart and Dell Inspiron 15z (I15Z-4801SLV), and the extra ram will help keep performance feeling pretty speedy even after a few months, and you likely won't ever need to upgrade the RAM, though you could bump it up to 16GB.

The combination of a quad-core processor and 12GB of RAM produced solid results in our various tests. It finished PCMark 7 with 4,924 points, pulling ahead of the Asus VivoBook V551LB (3,176 points) and the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart (4,720 points). In the processor intensive Cinebench R11.5, it scored 5.84 points, a dramatic improvement over the likes of the Asus VivoBook V551LB-DB71T (2.92 points) and the Dell Inspiron 15z (2.89 points). That difference also translated into dramatically improved performance in Handbrake, finishing the video transcoding test in 39 seconds, while the Asus VivoBook V551LB-DB71T and the Dell Inspiron 15z both took more than a minute to complete the same task.

Performance was also boosted thanks to the inclusion of an Nvidia GeForce GT 740M graphics processor with 2GB of dedicated memory. Thanks to the extra processing hardware, the Satellite S55t completed 3DMark 11 with scores of 3,245 points (Entry) and 560 (Extreme). In our gaming tests, the Satellite S55t eked out 23 frames per second in both Heaven and Aliens vs. Predator, when set to low detail settings. As such, we can't recommend it for any sort of serious gaming, but you should be able to enjoy less demanding games like Team Fortress 2. The graphics card includes Nvidia's Optimus automatic switching, which extends battery life by switching to Intel integrated graphics solution when the discrete GPU isn't needed.

In our rundown test the Satellite S55t lasted 3 hours 41 minutes, which isn't terrible for a smaller 4-cell 43Wh battery, but you will need to bring along the AC adapter for anything more than a long lunch. In stark contrast, the Asus VivoBook V551LB-DB71T lasted a stunning 7:47, but it easily leads the category, which averages closer to 4 hours.

The Toshiba Satellite S55t-A5277 may not be as portable as we'd like--it's a little bulky, and the battery life is on the shorter side--but the overall performance leads the competition, making it hard to ignore. The design is a bit drab, and the 720p display left us wanting more, but it does offer a decent set of features, making the Toshiba Satellite S55t-A5277 worth a good look from anybody in the market for a desktop replacement.

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Toshiba Satellite L55Dt-A5253 review: This 15.6-inch budget laptop does well on benchmarks but has some physical drawbacks

The buyers that Toshiba targets with its luxury Kirabook wouldn’t touch a Satellite L55Dt-A5253 if Neiman Marcus was giving them away. That’s too bad, because this laptop actually offers a much better price-to-performance ratio.

Toshiba selected AMD’s 2.0GHz A6-5200 APU to power this $650 notebook. That chip features an integrated AMD Radeon HD 8400 graphics processor, which helped Toshiba secure a second-place finish in the games portion of our benchmark suite. But the machine’s 6GB of DDR3 memory runs at only 1333MHz, which held its performance back in comparison to some of the laptops equipped with Intel CPUs and faster DDR3/1600 memory.

ToshibaToshiba's Satellite L55Dt-A5253 uses AMD’s A6-5200 processor, which has an integrated Radeon HD 8400 graphics processor.

Like most notebooks in its price range, the Satellite is composed primarily of plastic, but Toshiba’s attractive material does a nice job of resisting smudges and fingerprints. The computer’s lid and chassis also feel more rigid than most, though it does weigh a full pound more than the Acer Aspire E1—a significant consideration if you’ll be carrying your laptop on your shoulder for extended periods every day.

The Satellite L55Dt features a 15.6-inch, LED-backlit touchscreen display with a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels. The display is attractive enough, if you position it just so. Text appears most legibly when the screen is tilted back; but bring it even slightly forward—as you might have to do when using the computer on your airline tray table, if the passenger in front of you decides to recline—and you may not be able to read it at all.

ToshibaThe Toshiba Satellite is one of the more attractive notebooks on the market.

If your arms get tired from reaching out to stroke the Satellite’s screen, you can use its touchpad, instead. The touchpad is centered beneath the keyboard, so it’s off center from wrist rest, but that’s where it should be. It supports all of the usual Windows 8 gestures, including two-finger scrolling, zoom, rotate, and flip. And you can slide in from the right border to call up the charm bar, or slide it from the left to switch between applications. The setup lacks distinct left and right mouse buttons, but you can click the lower area of the pad to obtain the same actions.

Weight is an all-important consideration when you're shopping for a laptop.

Toshiba took advantage of the display’s width to provide a numeric keypad next to the alphanumeric keyboard. The half-size function keys in the top row have useful default actions mapped to them—including controls for such features as volume, brightness, and a media player.

The island-style keyboard has short-travel keys that nevertheless provide a desirable amount of tactile feedback while remaining nearly silent. I wouldn’t have minded the half-size arrow keys if they hadn’t been located so close to the edge of the wrist rest. The entire keyboard is recessed in a well, making it nearly impossible to tell whether your finger is tapping the up arrow or the down arrow without taking your eyes off the screen to look.

Benchmark performance

The Satellite L55Dt-A5253 finished third in our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 benchmark suite, a scant 2 points behind Lenovo’s Intel Core i5–powered IdeaPad Z400 Touch, but 16 points behind the Intel Haswell–powered Acer Aspire E1-572-6870. The Toshiba’s 750GB, 5400-rpm hard drive helped it grab a second-place finish in the PCMark7 Productivity component, but the faster CPU in the Acer Aspire more than compensated for that computer’s smaller drive.

Our Notebook WorldBench 8.1 suite includes a broad array of benchmarks for evaluating a notebook's performance.

Given the amount of hay AMD has made over what it describes as its superior GPU/CPU integration, I had expected to see this A6-powered notebook clean up on the gaming benchmarks. It did reasonably well, but fell 5 fps short of equaling the performance of the Intel-powered Acer Aspire E1.

Connectivity and conclusion

Toshiba provides the usual three USB ports on its Satellite: Two of these are USB 3.0 and you can use the one USB 2.0 port to charge your smartphone (or other USB device) even while the computer is sleeping—a very handy feature. The media card reader in the front of the PC supports only SD media.

Aan HDMI-out supports digital display connections, and VGA handles analog. I don’t want to see HDMI go away, but I’d like to see laptop manufacturers include DisplayPort 1.2 ports on their consumer offerings. A DisplayPort 1.2 connection would let you daisy-chain displays, and you could buy an adapter to handle just about anything else, including VGA.

Like the Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch, the Toshiba Satellite L55Dt-A5253 provides a single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter that limits you to accessing overcrowded 2.4GHz networks; worse, the Toshiba’s Realtek RTL8188SU supports a maximum physical link rate of just 150 mbps, whereas the Lenovo’s Intel adapter delivers a 300-mbps maximum link rate and support for Intel’s WiDi media-streaming technology.

Though the Satellite bears a DTS Sound logo, I found its audio capabilities wanting. Music sounded thin and flat, with very little of the oomph I crave from bass response. Stick with headphones, and you should be fine. Finally, this may reflect my right-handed bias, but I found it odd to access the Satellite’s DVD burner on the left side of the computer. The hardwired ethernet port—100 mbps max—is located here, too.

The Satellite L55Dt-A5253 is a well-built laptop that delivers good performance, but many of its drawbacks don’t show up in its benchmark numbers: It’s weighs 5.6 pounds, its off-axis viewing is abysmal, and it has third-rate wireless networking capabilities. Clearly, it’s not the best notebook in this collection, but it’s still a decent value.

Editor's note: This notebook was reviewed as part of a roundup for back-to-school season. You can read that story, along with reviews of the five notebooks we compared it to, here

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
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Massive Delta IV rocket launches spy satellite

IDG News Service - A powerful Delta IV Heavy rocket launched a classified reconnaissance satellite into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Wednesday.

The launch took place under clear skies at 11:03 a.m. Pacific Time (18:03 GMT) and everything appeared to be going to plan up to the point at which the second stage of the rocket ignited six minutes into the flight. At that point TV coverage was ended at the request of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which will operate the satellite.

No details on the satellite have been released except that it will be operated by the NRO. The office is charged with providing "innovative overhead intelligence systems for national security," in other words: spy satellites.

That's one of the clues to the satellite likely being the newest member of the NRO's Keyhole spy satellite network.

Other clues lie in the warnings sent out to mariners that detail three areas of the Pacific Ocean into which the spent rocket stages will fall back to Earth.

The drop zones provide an indication of the rocket's launch trajectory and that, combined with the launch time, can be used to establish the likely orbit. It's one that closely aligns with the four Keyhole KH11 satellites currently in space, according to Robert Christy, writing on his respected Zarya blog.

The satellite will apparently be launched into a sun-synchronous orbit -- one that's favored for intelligence gathering because it brings the satellite over any point on Earth at the same time each day. That makes it easier to compare images from one day to the next.

Once launched, it will be up to amateur satellite analysts like Christy to confirm its orbit. U.S. Space Command does not include domestic spy satellites on its Space Track service that catalogs satellites and other man-made objects in orbit.

The first KH11 satellite was launched in 1976 and was America's first spy satellite to use digital imaging. Previous generations of satellites had used rolls of film that were dropped back to Earth on parachutes and snagged by planes as they plummeted down.

Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Massive Delta IV rocket launches classified satellite

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Toshiba announces Satellite E series notebooks

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