Toshiba Satellite Pro L100 Review

[moon angel]

by Jessica Gardner, England

The Toshiba Satellite Pro L100 is a dual-purpose notebook from Toshiba. At the low end configuration the L100 is a 15” XGA budget notebook solution, while at the high-end configuration the L100 can be a power home/business laptop, utilising Intel’s Centrino Duo technology. The L100 line is the replacement for the L20 series of notebooks sold in Europe (as of now this laptop is not sold by Toshiba in North America).

Toshiba Satellite Pro L100 (view large image)

The notebook being reviewed here is the PSLA4 version of the L100. The graphics are based on ATi’s Xpress 200 chipset, featuring the very rare 256MB version of this integrated graphics solution, and the processor is an Intel Celeron-M CPU.

Specs for this review:

• Intel Celeron-M 380 1.6GHz processor (400MHz fsb, 1Mb L2 cache)
• 1Gb (2x512mb sodimms) 533MHz DDR2 ram
• 60Gb Fujitsu SATA Hard Disk Drive
• 256mb Ati Radeon Xpress 200m IGP
• LG 8x Dual Layer DVD re-writer
• 15” XGA matte panel at 1024*768 maximum resolution
• Built-in 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN, Gigabit wired LAN and 56k modem
• Windows XP Professional

Reasons for Buying

Being a University student, I was on a strict budget with this laptop. The laptop had to cost no more that £400, not including delivery. I wanted something powerful enough to handle basic tasks such as browsing the internet and email, using Microsoft office applications such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint, Adobe Photoshop and Sibelius. It should also be able to handle some basic 3D games if possible, such as Battlefield 1942 and the 3D Grand Theft Auto series, so a good IGP was important. Another important requirement was the ability to write its own CDs and DVDs without having to use an external drive. As it would stay plugged in 98% of the time the battery life was not a concern.

With such high requirements and such a small budget, special offers were a must. As my previous laptop had suffered a backlight related screen failure I had to make a quick purchase. I had been looking at the L100 over the summer on and off when I saw that it was on offer at laptopsdirect.co.uk I jumped at the opportunity. This particular model which usually retailed at £500-£550 was down to £400. The impressive IGP and non-widescreen matte display swung it over the other offer, which was a Turion powered Acer with a SiS IGP.

Build and Design

Toshiba Satellite Pro L100 with screen on (view large image)

Pleasing laptop design is as individual as the user, however I think the L100 looks very good. It has a simple black and silver scheme, the lid also being black, which makes a difference from past laptops I have had. The overall design is very reminiscent of the Satellite Pro P100 and as such the laptop does not feel like a budget machine. The overall build is sturdy for a plastic laptop, with no flex at all and it can easily be carried by the palm-rest with one hand without any worries. The screen hinges are sturdy and the screen returns back to place quickly when pushed with little wobble. Overall the laptop feels surprisingly sturdy, but I do have two concerns. Firstly, the screen assembly has more flex in it than one would hope for. Secondly, the Toshiba logo on the top of the lid is not fitted in its space properly and has come away at the edges before.

Top view of Toshiba L100 (view large image)

Bottom view of Toshiba L100 (view large image)

Screen

Screen on at full brightness (view large image)

When the laptop arrived I noticed a pixel at the top mid-left of the screen that shined bright green whenever the screen was moved. A gentle rub of the screen over the affected area cured this. Otherwise the screen is pleasingly bright for a matte screen, almost being too harsh on the eyes in a dim environment. Toshiba’s Power management software controls the screen very well, allowing it to be brighter and dimmer at both ends of the scale, it’s better than Windows’ own power utility. Being an XGA the screen can only display 1024*768 maximum resolution, which I feel is a slightly low resolution for a 15” panel in these times, however one cannot expect everything to be perfect with a budget laptop. The only concern here is lack of desktop space, as the picture remains sharp with good bright colours and excellent contrast.

Sound and Speakers

When using the laptop’s own speakers the sound is of adequate volume and decent quality for such small speakers. There are even eventualities where the speakers are too loud and this brings to light the laptop’s biggest problem. There is no external sound control for this laptop and as such the user has to rely solely on software to change the volume such as Windows’ own volume control or in-game or media player volume controls. I find this aspect extremely annoying in general use. Another problem with the sound is that when one is using a particularly high quality sound system with the laptop the internal components such as the hard drive make perceptible noise, which makes things like sound editing and music writing difficult. An external or PCMCIA sound card would really be required for complicated music and sound-related tasks on this laptop.

Performance

Budget CPUs are not the under-performing items they once were. AMD’s Sempron series are now running 1600MHz fsb and Celerons are now based on Intel’s mainstream chips with some of the more expensive features removed to reduce costs. The Celeron-M 300 series found in this notebook is based on the Dothan Pentium-M. The only differences in fact are that the Celeron-M has half the level 2 cache of the Pentium-M (1Mb as opposed to 2Mb) and the Celeron lacks Speedstep, the Pentium-M’s version of Dynamic Switching that reduces the CPU speed when it’s not being used to conserve battery power. As such the Celeron is always running at it’s full 1600MHz and this can affect battery life and also mean the CPU runs hotter while idle. Having said this, CPU temperatures are perfectly within safe limits, with an idle of around 47-51 degrees C and a maximum of 64 degrees C under load such as 3DMark or a game.

From a point of view of raw power, the CPU performs impressively being roughly equivalent to a 1.5GHz Pentium-M or 2.8GHz Pentium 4. It never feels laggy or underpowered and can handle a good amount of multitasking, a typical usage for me being Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, Microsoft Live Messenger, Google Talk, Sibelius, Microsoft Word and Windows Media Player 10 all open at once with no noticeable slowdown.

The 5400rpm SATA hard disk feels quick, rarely holding up the user in the course of normal operations. Frequent defragmenting is necessary however as it can get bogged down when retrieving from a few different areas of the disk at once.

The DVD writer performs well, allowing 8x DVD writing. However, the laptop is not capable at writing at it’s full potential without a significant amount of RAM, 1.5GB is really needed for the full 11Mb per second of 8x DVD writing.

The 256Mb ATi Radeon Xpress 200m Integrated Graphics also perform better than one might expect. This version of the x200m has no dedicated memory and automatically takes memory from the main system memory, the amount taken depending on the total amount of system RAM installed. The amount of memory used for graphics is not controllable by the user and is taken at the rate of 64mb for 512mb installed ram and 128mb for 1Gb installed ram. At what point the IGP takes 256mb of ram I do not know as I have not been able to install more than 1Gb of system ram up to this point.

This IGP is very capable of playing 3D games. War Rock is playable at maximum settings but achieves slightly higher frames per second at medium settings. Grand Theft Auto Vice City performs well at nearly the highest settings while Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is very playable but only on low settings.

This is not a powerful gaming card however and it shows. The x200m has trouble with more graphically intensive games such as Battlefield 2. This game is unplayable on an x200m even on lowest settings, giving frame rates of 10-15 frames per second during regular play. It also struggles with City of Heroes, having a wildly fluctuating frame rate and only allowing for low settings.

Strangely FEAR combat is very playable at 800*600 resolution at low settings, however the bottleneck here is not the GPU but the 1Gb of system ram which is reduced to 896Mb after the IGP takes it’s share.

Benchmarks

Beneficial benchmarks in this case would be to compare the various CPUs available at around this price range and the various IGPs also available at this price range. The former will be done with super-pi and the Graphics benchmarks with 3dMark05.

CPU test: Super-Pi calculating 2 million digits of Pi.

Notebook	Time
Toshiba Satellite Pro L100 (1.6GHz Celeron-M 380)	2:14
Acer 9503EWSMi (1.5GHz Celeron-M 370)	2:22
Benq Joybook 8100-D29 (1.5GHz Dothan Pentium-M)	2:04
Compaq Presario V2311US (1.6GHz Turion ML-28)	1:47
Compaq V3017LA (1.8GHz Sempron 3200+)	2:01
Compaq V5207NR (1.46GHz Celeron-M 410)	1:40

The CPU is actually not one of the stronger performers in today’s budget range and has now been superseded by the Yonah Core based Celeron-M 400 series. AMD’s Sempron range also performs slightly better in the same price range and the Celeron is outclassed by lower level Turions and Pentium-Ms.

The graphics test has been conducted with 3DMark05 so that a valuable comparison can be made, yet also show how these cards handle up to date graphics technology as compared to more powerful cards.

Graphics test: 3DMark05

Graphics Card	Score (points)
ATi Radeon Xpress 200m	515
ATi Radeon Xpress 1150	720
Intel GMA900	200
Intel GMA950	450
Nvidia GeForce go 6150	630
Nvidia GeForce go 7200	674

The x200m has now been superseded by the more powerful Xpress 1150 yet many machines are still being made and sold with the x200m. Both ATi and Nvidia’s IGPs seriously outclass Intel’s, but are still not up to the standard of dedicated GPUs. It is worth noting that the x200m IGP is easily overclockable and doing so can achieve a 15-20% performance increase.Heat and Noise

On the whole the L100 remains very quiet. Under a full power configuration on Toshiba Power Saver the fan can spin as fast and whenever it wishes and this does a great job of cooling the laptop without being intrusive. Occasionally the fan can be heard spinning up but this is usually just in the first few minutes of use. The laptop does not seem to emit any excess heat, with the bottom being just slightly warm to the touch, and the main cpu vent giving off a slight breeze of warm air.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Toshiba Satellite L100 keyboard (view large image)

The keyboard feels well made and sturdy, only submitting to flex under particularly aggressive pressure. The keys are well sited and intuitive apart from the backslash key which has been sited next to the right shift key which can result in question marks unintentionally being typed as something entirely different. The direction keys are slightly small for a full size laptop keyboard and can be fiddly to use and Page Up and Page Down can often be hit by mistake when using them as they are sited just above. Overall the keyboard invites quick and accurate typing and for the most part is well thought out.

The Touchpad is sensitive and has no particular aspects of interest in it’s appearance and physical use. Toshiba’s touchpad software does include a scrolling function along the right hand side and bottom of the touchpad but this was a surprise discovery as the touchpad is not marked with scroll sectors. Otherwise it has built in functions when tapping the corners such as minimising and maximising windows.

Input and Output Ports

Toshiba L100 right side (view large image)

Toshiba L100 left side (view large image)

Toshiba L100 front side (view large image)

Toshiba L100 back view (view large image)

The L100 features four USB 2.0 ports, two on each side. The right hand side also features the RJ11 LAN port in between the USB ports towards the rear and the DVD writer towards the front. The left side features the other two USB ports located in the middle. Further back there are a VGA port and an S-video out for an external monitor or TV. Towards the front on the left hand side are the RJ45 modem port and the pcmcia card slot, which is located above the microphone and headphone jack sockets. On the whole the laptop includes all the ports one would expect for any laptop, they are all well sited and are easily accessible without getting in the way. The only ports on the back are the power adapter and the lock.

Wireless

The wireless can be turned off and on with a small switch on the left hand side. The wifi light located just under the touchpad then glows red when the wireless is enabled. The wireless connects well and has a good range picking up quite faint signals and using them to good effect.

Battery

As this is a Budget laptop it only comes with a 4-cell Lithium Ion battery. That and the lack of a speedstepping function on the cpu only allow for 1 hour and 50 minutes of battery power. In the most power saving configuration in Toshiba Power Saver (needed to achieve 1:50 of battery power) the laptop can feel sluggish and fall behind the user in aspects such as moving from task to task, opening programs and updating instant messaging windows. This laptop is not designed to be used on the battery for a long time.

Operating System and Software

Finding Windows XP Professional on a budget laptop is very pleasing and quite rare, especially at this price. Once Toshiba’s more useless programs were removed I did not feel the need to re-install Windows as the laptop feels quick enough already. However, the bundled software is minimal with this model. Other than the operating system one gets Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, WinDVD and some basic CD and DVD writing software. No anti-virus is included.

Customer Support

I have heard horror stories about Toshiba customer support but have experienced nothing but good service from Toshiba’s UK support centre. The support advisors are articulate and easy to understand and can obtain a lot of information about the machine in a short space of time. I called to enquire whether the video ram taken by the IGP was manually controllable and the advisor spend 20 minutes taking me in and out of ATi utilities and the Bios before we concluded this was not possible. My main complaint is that this phone service is very expensive on call rates.

Conclusion

The Toshiba Satellite Pro L100 makes a lot of sense as a budget machine. More than that it makes a lot of sense as a budget light gaming machine offering a surprising amount of gaming performance given it’s spec, however it should certainly not be bought as a gaming machine outright as it sorely lacks the graphics performance for the latest games. Overall it feels quick at all times and can handle OS based tasks with ease. I feel this laptop is let down by it’s woeful battery life, it’s lack of an external volume control and the screen could be manufactured using more sturdy materials. Everything else seems to be a plus.

[Andrew]

Well written review Jess, great analysis on the processor and evaluating based on what your needs are. A 4-cell battery is pretty stingy, but when you're buying budget you have to accept some trade offs. I've been in England the past week and checking out prices of laptops over here in the stores, they're so much more expensive than the U.S., with £400 ($750) you could get a decent Core Duo notebook there. But you can't really think about such things I know, just on my mind since I go between places.

[CalebSchmerge]

Nice review! Seems like a good computer. Why buy all the power if you aren't going to use it?

[Charles P. Jefferies]

There's a lot of technical writing in there, I like that. Well done.

Here in the U.S., a laptop with those specifications would go for around $450 or so; you could probably grab it for $400 if a local store had a good enough sale on it. But at any rate, you got what you could afford, and it looks like you got what you paid for. It's very surprisingly that you got FEAR Combat to run on that, congrats.

[jetstar]

Nice review! Very analytical and thorough! I enjoyed reading it.

[moon angel]

Thanks for the comments!

One of the main points of my review was to try to put across what can and can't be done on hardware that is considered 'mainstream' or even 'inferior'. Due to my knowlege of the Celeron-M I thought it may well have all the power I needed but the x200m was more of a gamble.

I thought the review was long enough as it was but I will include here that originally the machine came with 512mb of ram in one sodimm. I was very pleased with this as the upgrade to 1Gb was made much easier and cheaper. £25 got me 512Mb of 533MHz DDR2 ram from ebay which was very easy to fit.

Overall I think budget hardware gets a real slating on NBR. Some of it is justified, some is not. I hope my review has helped dispel some myths and backup some good facts.

Chaz: I was surprised as well, very surprised. I was expecting 5fps! 2Gb ram is really needed for FEAR as I said but it still runs better than battlefield 2, albeit at a lower resolution. Go figure.

[hello]

I just wanted to point out -

Although the Celeron M line lacks Intel's dynamic speed stepping, the frequency of the processor CAN be scaled. For example, the budget Acer Travelmate 2420 I bought last year came with an ACER e- something program that let you set the 'performance level' during battery mode, and all it was basically doing was scaling the proc down. I got at least an extra 30-40mins of battery life using that piece of software.

[moon angel]

Interesting... do you know of a non-brand specific application that can do that?

Toshiba Power Saver and NHC have options to do that but I don't think they actually work...

[ed22]

Nice review Jess! I found really nice that you stressed the usefulness of the Celeron M for not-so-mundane tasks. And I totally agree with the desktop space given by a 15" XGA screen, it can be a bummer, specially when you begin to use widescreen screens.

[chrisyano]

Excellent review Jess! You really know your processors and it shows. I think you've done a great job of showing what your system can and can't do. You've also done a lot to dispel notions of "non-mainstream" components being worthless.

We really do take notebook prices in the US for granted.