Some recent Toshiba notebooks left us feeling distinctly ambivalent, but they’ve turned the corner and started to impress once more.

The A110-275 achieved a Sysmark score of 200 and a PCmark of almost 3,000, which is excellent, especially when you consider that it’s £50 cheaper than all the other systems on test.

Aided by Intel’s T2400 (1.83GHz) processor and 1GB of memory, the A110-275 is also Windows Vista capable. Unfortunately, the integrated graphics means that all the flashy bits of Vista probably won’t work, but it’s nice to know this notebook is equipped for future developments, which can’t be said of some entrants in this group test.

The 60GB hard disk is smaller than that found on all the other systems, perhaps showing where that £50 saving has gone, and potentially a problem for the media-hungry. The 15.4in screen is nice and bright, but the integrated graphics aren’t powerful enough to play the latest 3D games.

As you’d expect from Toshiba, it’s one of the best-looking models on test. A solid keyboard, a column of media shortcut buttons and snazzy trackpad buttons look and feel appealing, while the build quality feels more rugged than most of the competition.

At 2.7kg, it’s easily portable. If we have one slight criticism, it’s the size of the trackpad, which is small and has no scroll bar.

Battery life wasn’t that impressive, but the A110-275 still managed 1 hour 40 minutes in Windows. Our DVD test ran to just under 2 hours, which, apart from the Asus, is about average from the notebooks that we looked at.

However, this notebook still has a lot of plus points in its favour and a decent software bundle.

See full performance results for Toshiba Satellite A110-275 laptop
Compare to all laptop performance results

This article is part of a group test of laptop computers costing under £700.
See also:
Asus F3F
Evesham Quest A430
Hi-Grade A9700
MSI Megabook M662
MV Mobeus 13"

Graphs and table of features can be read via our pdf downloads above.