Design and Features
The laptop's design is old school, with a textured, black, polycarbonate shell. It measures 1.05 by 15 by 10.25 inches (HWD) and weighs a manageable 4.6 pounds. Thanks to that 15-inch width, there's room for both a full-size keyboard and a numeric keypad. The traditional scissor-switch keyboard has keys that can accidentally pop off and are a little slippery to type on, compared with the chiclet-style keyboards seen on more modern-looking laptops. For example, the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E545£319.00 at Laptops Direct has scalloped keycaps that are much more comfortable to type on and are more durable.
The 15.6-inch screen has a 1,366-by-768-resolution and lacks touch capability, which is typical in the budget category. Text and graphics can look a little blocky when blown up to fill a 15.6-inch screen. That's forgivable for less expensive systems like the Dell Inspiron 15 Non-Touch (3531)$249.99 at Dell, but we'd rather see higher-resolution screens like the 1,600-by-900 resolution of the 17-inch screen on the Dell Inspiron 17 5000 Series$449.99 at Dell, our Editors' Choice budget desktop-replacement laptop. We're stopping short of mandating a touch screen at this price point, but we do admit that Windows 8.1 is a lot easier to use if you have one.
View all 
On the sides of the system you'll find a gigabit Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a SD card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, and a VGA port. Wireless network connections are handled by the system's 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, but there's no Bluetooth for other wireless devices like keyboards and mice. The DVD burner is a throwback, one that might be necessary in your family for watching old DVDs or if you need to access archived pictures on optical discs.
The system appears to have a removable battery, but looks can be deceiving. There are gaps in the case in the usual spots by the hinge, but it's not a removable panel. That's unfortunate, since replacing a worn battery is a good way to add years of life to a laptop.
The rest of the chassis is off limits to users as well, so you can't upgrade the system's 6GB of memory and 750GB hard drive. That said, most users won't need to upgrade, since the system exceeds the usual 4GB of memory and 500GB hard drive you'll find on budget systems like the Acer Aspire E5-471-59RT$456.12 at Amazon. The 6GB of memory will help you keep dozens of browser tabs open simultaneously, and 750GB is plenty for music, photos, and videos. The drive spins at a relatively slow 5,400rpm, but that's a fair tradeoff for this amount of space.
Some of the hard drive is occupied by an unusually large amount of bloatware, including programs and shortcuts to sites like Amazon, Book Place, eBay, Evernote, Hulu Plus, iHeartRadio, Kindle, Netflix, Next Issue, Norton Internet Security, Pokki, Wild Tangent Games, and Zinio. To be sure, there's a lot of drive space to spare, but you'll have to budget an hour or two to remove all the programs you don't want to use or be prepared to ignore all the tiles in the Start screen and in the taskbar. The system comes with a standard one-year warranty.
PerformanceThe C55D-B5244 is equipped with an AMD A6-6310 quad-core processor with integrated AMD Radeon R9 graphics. It helped the system return a decent 1,967 points on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test, ahead of the Dell Inspiron 15 Non-Touch (1,554 points) and Lenovo E545 (1,777). The Intel-powered Dell Inspiron 17 (2,097) and Acer E5-471-59RT (2,688) returned higher scores, however. Multimedia scores are mostly good, at 4 hours 50 minutes for the Handbrake video test and 157 points on the CineBench test. However, the system lagged behind rivals on the Photoshop CS6 test (10:13). Gaming tests returned slideshow-like, single-digit frame rate scores, similar to the other budget laptops.
On our battery rundown test, the system lasted 5 hours 25 minutes. That's 5 minutes better than the Dell Inspiron 17, and almost an hour-and-a-half better than the Lenovo E545 (4:01). The Acer Aspire E5-471-59RT is the class leader, however, having lasted 8:45 on the same test.
The Toshiba Satellite C55D-B5244 is a competent desktop-replacement laptop for a nice price, but drawbacks, like a non-removable battery and a somewhat flimsy keyboard, keep it in the middle of the pack. Even features like 6GB of system memory and a 750GB hard drive can't elevate the system much higher. The Dell Inspiron 17 5000 Series remains our top pick, thanks to its large 1,600-by-900-resolution screen, removable battery, more expensive feel and build quality, all for a list price that's $20 less than the Toshiba model.
No comments:
Post a Comment