Toshiba Satellite Pro S300 review: Toshiba Satellite Pro S300

The Toshiba Satellite Pro S300 is available in a variety of flavours. At around £500, the Satellite Pro S300-120, reviewed here, is the cheapest. Designed with undemanding users in mind, it's a solid laptop that just scrapes into the budget category.

Design
The S300-120's dark silver chassis, together with a large, shiny Toshiba logo on the lid, creates a good first impression. It also feels particularly sturdy and will certainly withstand the occasional knock.

Flip open the lid and you'll instantly notice the lack of shortcut buttons, but the well-designed keyboard, with its large, textured keys, is a delight to type on and exhibits very little flex. One minor complaint is that the trackpad and left and right buttons are unnecessarily small.

Given that the S300-120 is aimed at corporate users -- indicated by the inclusion of Windows Vista Business -- the decision to use a glossy-coated display on the 15.4-inch, 1,280x800-pixel resolution screen is odd -- office lighting will cast reflections off it. The screen is also not as bright as we'd like and, despite the glossy screen, colours look slightly washed out. On the plus side, horizontal viewing angles are reasonable.

Features
Driving the S300-120 is Intel's T3200 processor. This comes from Intel's Pentium Mobile range and, with a bus speed of 667MHz and 1MB L2 cache, doesn't compare favourably with the more streamlined Core 2 Duo chips. Although the more expensive models in the Satellite S300 series get extras such as Bluetooth and even HSDPA, this cheaper version is light on features. Neither of the aforementioned wireless-connection options are included, and a PC Card slot is favoured over a newer ExpressCard alternative.

You do, however, get a 1.3-megapixel webcam, built into the screen's bezel, and a multi-format card reader -- SD, MMC, xD and Memory Stick cards are supported. There's also a fingerprint reader sat between the trackpad buttons.

One FireWire and four USB ports are dotted around the chassis -- three of the USB ports are on the right, while the fourth sits on the left and doubles up as an eSata port. Should you have any devices that charge via USB, these ports will provide the required power, even when the laptop is in sleep mode. Those with an interest in legacy connections will appreciate the inclusion of a serial port.