Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025 review: Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025

Editors' note: This review is part of our Spring 2010 Retail Laptop and Desktop roundup, which covers specific fixed configurations of popular systems found in retail stores.

7.4

Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025

The Good

Solid combination of Core i3 processor and dedicated graphics; good battery life; better-than-average speakers.

The Bad

Tremendous size and bulky battery; priced higher than other Core i3 laptops.

The Bottom Line

While the Toshiba Satellite A505-6025 has a rock-solid combination of computing power, graphics, and battery life, its price and bulk may be hard to swallow.

In the previous holiday retail roundup of laptops, our favorite budget notebook ended up being the Toshiba Satellite A505-6980. At $629, its package of a Core 2 Duo processor, long battery life, bright 16-inch screen, and great speakers made it a heavy, rather unportable, but good-valued general computer.

The A505-S6025 falls into our mainstream category, not budget, chiefly because the price--$799--and increased feature set elevate it. Gone is the low-end Core 2 Duo processor, replaced with an Intel Core i3 CPU. Instead of integrated graphics, the A505-S6025 has Nvidia GeForce 310M dedicated graphics.

Otherwise, the screen size, speakers, and bulky battery--a 12-cell--remain largely the same. We can't say that this is the most affordable Core i3; however: in fact, it's one of the more expensive. And, unfortunately, it's as large as a tank. With Core i3 laptops becoming so incredibly affordable, the A505 lost whatever cache it once had last year and has become just another laptop. For just $629, you could get the Asus U50F instead and have a similar computing experience, minus the dedicated gaming graphics and longer battery life. The Satellite A505-S6025 is a well-constructed, gaming-capable laptop, yes, but also a large one--and for only a hundred more, you could easily enter the realm of higher-end machines. So, despite some decent specs and performance, the system's awkward in-between price works slightly against it.

The Satellite A505-S6025 is one seriously thick laptop. With its chunky battery attached, it's even thicker than the 1.6 inches we measured--more like over 2 inches. At more than 8 pounds with its AC adapter, this is a computer that will need a reinforced bag and some good shoulder strength to carry.

It's not unattractive, however, on the inside. With a glossy black body and a dull silver trim around the edges, the A505 looks like a premium multimedia laptop with its lid open. Harman Kardon speakers flank both sides of an LED touch-key media control strip above the keyboard, and the edge-to-edge keyboard includes a full-size number pad.

The glossy black finish, etched with a spread of varying gray pinstripes that Toshiba calls "quantum black," is much like many other Satellites: curved and flashy, but awfully eager to show off smudges and prints. We liked the interior better, which is fortunate, since the A505 seems destined for a life seated on a desk, sedentary and unlikely to ever move into a backpack or bag.

The 16-inch glossy LED-backlit screen on the Satellite A505-6025 has a native resolution of 1,366x768 pixels, which is a standard size for 16x9 screens in general, but a little low for screens in the 16-inch and larger range. Having a full HD 1,900x1,080 display would have been preferred (although they're rare under 17 or 18 inches), or at least 1,600x900.

Still, our display looked good both when computing and playing back videos and games, although to its credit, the Asus U50F, at only $649, looked equally good to our eyes. As always, Toshiba's speakers are decidedly better than average. The stereo Harman Kardon speakers on the A505--6025 are louder than nearly any other laptop we've recently reviewed and have well-defined bass, a rarity. We won't give this laptop a pass thanks to its speakers alone, but they help justify the relatively higher price.

With a laptop this huge, we would at least expect an extensive selection of ports, and the A505-6025 delivers on that front. USB 2.0, a combo eSATA and sleep-and-charge port, HDMI, FireWire and an ExpressCard slot round out a nearly complete set of options, with only Bluetooth omitted. The included 500GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM are nice touches, but hardly noteworthy anymore: in fact, they are fast becoming standards in the mainstream category, based on our recent reviews.

Running the show inside the A505-6025 is a new Intel Core i3 M330 CPU, a processor that has already impressed us with its speed and overall multitasking performance, especially for the price of the laptops it's being dropped into. Unfortunately, the A505-6025 performs nearly identically to other Core i3 M330 laptops. We say "unfortunately" because the Asus U50F-RBBAG05, also reviewed in this roundup, only costs $649. The Satellite A505-6025 is an extra $150, placing it at the upper end of Core i3 laptops.

The A505-6025 does have its advantages, however: first and foremost is its discrete graphics, thanks to an Nvidia GeForce 310M included inside. This is a good GPU, especially for a general mainstream user--our gaming benchmark had Unreal Tournament III running at 36 fps in 1,440x900 mode downscaled to native resolution, and it can play most mainstream games. That's an admitted plus for this Toshiba Satellite--many of the other Core i3s we reviewed only had integrated graphics. The question is: do you feel like paying $150 for that privilege?

Juice box
Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025	Average watts per hour
Off (60 percent)	0.53
Sleep (10 percent)	0.98
Idle (25 percent)	12.61
Load (5 percent)	52.98
Raw kWh	54.47
Annual energy cost	$6.18

The Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025 ran for 4 hours and 28 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the included 12-cell battery. Admittedly, that's also with dedicated graphics running, but with a gigantic battery like the one grafted to the back of the A505-S6025, we'd have expected even more. That's still better than other Core i3 laptops we covered in this price range, so perhaps adding significant bulk is a worthy trade-off for the added juice. As for us, we'd rather carry a thinner laptop and a charger and live dangerously.

The Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025 is backed by an industry-standard, one-year warranty. Support is accessible 24-7 via a toll-free phone line, an online knowledge base, and a Web site with driver downloads. While retail shops are happy to sell you an in-store extended warranty, they are often expensive and hard to use, so we don't recommend them.

Dell Inspiron i1564-6980CRD
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.13GHz Intel Core i3 M330; 4096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz;32MB (Dedicated)/1696MB (Total) Intel GMA HD; 320GB Western Digital 5400rpm

Dell Studio s15z-2249CPN
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.26GHz Intel Core i5 M430; 4096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz;64MB (Dedicated)/1696MB (Total) Intel GMA HD; 500GB Seagate 7200rpm

Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025
Windows 7 Home Professional (64-bit); 2.13GHz Intel Core i3 M330; 4096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz;512MB Nvidia GeForce 310M; 500GB Hitachi 5400rpm

HP Pavilion dv4-2165dx
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.13GHz Intel Core i3 M330; 4096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz;64MB (Dedicated)/1696MB (Total) Intel GMA HD; 500GB Toshiba 7200rpm

HP Pavilion dv7-3165dx
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.5GHz AMD Turion II Dual-Core M620;4096MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 320MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200; 500GB Seagate 7200rpm

HP Pavilion dv4-2155dx
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.13GHz Intel Core i3 M330; 4096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz;64MB (Dedicated)/1696MB (Total) Intel GMA HD; 320GB Western Digital 7200rpm

Asus U50F-RBBAG05 Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.13GHz Intel Core i3 M330; 4096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz;64MB (Dedicated)/1696MB (Total) Intel GMA HD; 500GB Hitachi 5400rpm

Asus UL50VT-RBBBK05 Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 ULV;4096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 512MB Nvidia