Toshiba Satellite A660-17T review

Toshiba has managed to squeeze a large 16in widescreen display into its Satellite A660 laptop. Combined with a surprisingly good set of speakers, this makes the A660 a well-balanced desktop replacement, perfect for media playback.

While the screen on the A660 is larger than most laptops in this price range, the resolution is a bog-standard 1,366×768. Colours were vibrant and there was only minor light bleed from the LED backlight on darker images. Great horizontal viewing angles allow several people to view the screen at once which is handy if you want to watch a TV show or movie with friends.

Vertical viewing angles were less impressive, although the screen has plenty of tilt to find the perfect position. Both VGA and HDMI outputs will display higher resolutions on an external monitor for HD content. The speakers are positioned above the keyboard, and provide clear audio. Like most laptops it can’t reproduce bass notes particularly well, but both the mid-tones and treble were crisp, even at high volume.

The A660 has a sleek, all-black chassis that is solidly built. The bright white power button and status LEDs create a stylish contrast, as does the touchpad indicator. Thankfully these can be deactivated with one of the touch-sensitive hotkeys below the screen. A number pad is a welcome addition to the main keyboard. The majority of keys are also full size, with only the cursor and function keys slimmed down in order to make room. The Chiclet-style individual keys and touchpad buttons are glossy, but our fingers didn’t slip at all when typing. The large touchpad can be disabled with a button press for extended typing sessions, and also supports multitouch gestures.

The A660 has a number of useful ports for extra connectivity. An eSATA port doubles as a fourth USB socket, which will also charge your portable devices even if the laptop is turned off. An ExpressCard/34 could be handy for adding extra features such as USB3 further down the line, while a 5-in-1 memory card reader that supports SDHC as well as XD and Memory Stick Pro is placed in front of the touchpad for easy access.

With its 2.27GHz Core i3 350M processor, we expected the A660 to perform well. A score of 77 in our benchmark tests is right on the mark for a Core i3 laptop, making the A660 well suited to everyday tasks. The onboard Intel HD graphics chip is more suited to watching video than gaming, as the 10.9fps score in our Call of Duty 4 test indicates. High definition video playback will still be possible, however. The 64-bit version of Windows 7 installed on the machine is well matched to 4GB of RAM and the 500GB hard disk should provide ample storage. Even with a large screen and powerful processor, the A660 lasted a respectable 3 hours 52 minutes in our battery test. Given that it weighs 2.6kg, it’s more suitable for sitting around the house rather than being on the road.

The Satellite A660 has a great display, comfortable full size keyboard and decent battery life for a laptop with such a large screen. While it has a fast processor, you can get very similar specifications for up to £100 less. As it stands, the A660 is just too expensive.