Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 review

The Toshiba Satellite Radius 15 is certainly an interesting take on the convertible laptop formula. It’s a brushed aluminium beauty with all the practical features you could want from a work laptop, but it also has a 180-degree hinge that lets you turn it into a giant 15.6in tablet. It seems to be attempting to appeal to home users and business users at the same time, and you’ll pay £750 for the privilege.

If you’re going to overspend on a large convertible laptop, though, it might as well be this one. The laptop is mainly made from brushed aluminium, and there’s a black plastic rim around the edge of the keyboard tray and a rugged-feeling textured material around the hinge. Even the power button looks well designed, protruding slightly from the right-hand side of the chassis with its classy soft illumination effect.

You’ll find all the standard ports and connectors around the edge of the fairly svelte 20mm-thick chassis, although alongside the three USB ports (including two USB3 connectors), HDMI port and SD card reader, there’s no gigabit Ethernet port, which business users may miss. You’ll have to buy a USB adapter if you want to connect the laptop to a wired network.

The laptop’s keyboard is impressive. The keys are made from a grippy, black material, with high-contrast lettering and a bright backlight. It’s great for working in low-light conditions, but each key is also perfectly visible in daylight. It’s easy to type quickly, as the keys have excellent feedback and a very quiet action. The touchpad, meanwhile, is responsive with a high-quality click from its buttons and reliable gesture controls, including pinch-to-zoom and two-fingered scrolling.

There are some decent, if not especially exciting components inside the Satellite Radius 15. It matches the HP Envy x360 spec-for-spec with a 2.2GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-5200U, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk. It doesn’t quite match it in terms of performance, with a slightly lower overall score of 30 in Expert Reviews’ benchmarks.

This is intriguing, and points towards the chip throttling back during more intensive bouts of multitasking in order to manage heat build-up. Everyday performance in Windows 10 is fine, though, with generally snappy application performance and browsing media-heavy websites for the most part free of stuttering.

Also, although it might not match its HP rival for performance, the Satellite Radius 15 absolutely trounces it in the battery stakes, managing an impressive 6h 12m in Expert Reviews’ moderate usage test, well ahead of the HP’s 4h 52m.

The laptop doesn’t have a dedicated graphics chip, instead relying on the processor’s integrated Intel HD Graphics 5500 chipset. You won’t be able to play the latest 3D games on the Satellite Radius 15, although some older or simpler titles may be within the laptop’s capabilities. Blizzard’s Hearthstone card game, for example, runs relatively smoothly and works brilliantly on the large touchscreen.

The Toshiba’s Full HD screen is fantastic. It’s nice and bright, with a measured maximum brightness level of 280cd/m2 and it also has a high colour-accuracy score; I measured this panel as able to cover 85% of the sRGB gamut. Colours are bright, vivid and punchy, while contrast levels of 971:1 and wide viewing angles mean the screen is great for viewing films and photos.

One disappointment is the quality of the Satellite Radius 15’s speakers, which don’t sound brilliant at any volume and are easily eclipsed by those of smaller laptops such as the Acer R11. This is perhaps a little embarrassing, especially when you consider the overt Harman Kardon branding next to the fake speaker grille just below the screen. The one upshot is that the sound is at least consistent, with its output sounding the same no matter how you’ve folded and stood up the laptop.

I’m impressed by the Toshiba Satellite Radius 15. Although it’s a fair amount more expensive than its convertible rivals, it justifies the price with its impressive screen, great battery life and stylish chassis. You do pay more for the laptop’s convertible nature and touchscreen, and if you just need a laptop you’re much better off buying a general-purpose model, which at this price will have significantly more power. If you’d like to take advantage of Windows 10’s touchscreen capabilities and like to watch films on your laptop or use it in the kitchen, though, it’s a good choice.  For a more traditional laptop check out the Acer Aspire V3-574G.