TOSHIBA SATELLITE A305 REVIEW – A NEW ENTRY WITH THE AMD PUMA ON-BOARD

The Toshiba Satellite A305 series notebook holds an extraordinary place in my heart, be it anything either the AMD or Intel variant. Here at Computex 2008, I had an opportunity to test out out the brand new AMD Puma platform based variant of the A305.

Design
The design is indistinguishable to both A305 variants at present on the market, together with the color format of the Fusion finish. The variant on display was far from immaculate with in all probability a billion fingerprints, but the terminate underneath the slush was still gorgeous when wiped clean. Muscle quality is every bit the similar breed, providing the same solid feels which you would expect from a high quality laptop.

Performance
The primary thing on my mind when I witnessed this laptop was to locate out how it compared to the elder A305D laptop. I did not have the point in time to install PCMark05 while no one was looking, but I did administer to slink wPrime on it. The resulting achieve was a bit beneath what I had hoped for, and slower than the preceding laptop we had reviewed. Some of this may be accredited to the laptop being an engineering sample, with not so ideal drivers.

The AMD Puma-equipped laptop has gained an HDMI output, even though it sports incorporated graphics. The older A305D laptop only offered VGA only as a principal video output connection. S-Video which seems to be found on the A305D, is now vanished on the new variant, and you only see a vacant port where that would have gone. One truly nice feature that was a huge surprise was the insertion of and eSATA port, taking the position of one USB port. As you might bear in mind from our A305D review, with the 6-cell battery the older AMD laptop scrambled 3 hours even.

Conclusion
Overall I was satisfied to see a speedy refresh of the Toshiba Satellite A305D in person with the new-fangled AMD Puma platform. It has all of the grand features and styling of the A300, as well as a small number of upgrades from the precedent model with the addition of HDMI and eSATA. My only worry is the less than astrophysical system recital and battery life, which should have at least been on par if not enhanced than the preceding model.

Pros
+ First to be in the PUMA skin
+ Same old sturdy looks

Cons
- Slower than the older unit

Value For Money

Our Rating