Toshiba Satellite U500-186 review

At 2.1kg, Toshiba’s Satellite U500-186 is just over the 2kg weight limit for what we consider an ultra-portable laptop.

That said, its 13.3in screen keeps the size of the laptop down, so you could still happily carry it around. It’s a shame, then, that its battery life is so poor. Less than two-and-a-half hours is far short of what we’d expect for a laptop of this size and weight.

The 13.3in screen is extremely bright and has decent viewing angles. It’s a 16:10 screen with a resolution of 1,280×800, rather than the 16:9 screen with a resolution of 1,366×768 found on most modern laptops. This doesn’t make much difference, though: you get slightly fewer pixels horizontally, but more vertically. Two speakers just below the display manage to output loud, if not particularly bass-rich, audio.

With shiny and somewhat slippery keys packed close together, the keyboard isn’t the most comfortable to type on. The keys also have very little travel to them. However, it’s the touchpad that really lets the U500-186 down. Not only is it too small, but it’s also oversensitive, with the cursor occasionally leaping from one end of the screen to the other with just the faintest of touches.

A series of brightly lit touch-sensitive buttons are located just above the keyboard and provide quick access to media-related functions. Toshiba has also lit up the Satellite logo and placed a light strip across the top of the touchpad. If these illuminations annoy you, they can be switched off.

Toshiba has installed an Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor. It managed to perform reasonably well in our 2D benchmarks, with an overall score of 62. The U500-186’s 3D performance was very poor, with Intel’s GMA 4500M HD integrated graphics able to muster only 4.4fps in Call of Duty 4. The 250GB hard disk is a little disappointing at this price; we’d expect at least a 320GB model.

We like the solidly built chassis, but the U500-186’s touchpad lets it down, and for such a small laptop we’d expect better battery life. Samsung’s Q320 is a better choice if you want a small and portable budget laptop.