Toshiba NB305 review

It may be hard to get excited by yet another 10.1in netbook, particularly one with largely identical specifications to every other Atom N450-based model. However, for its NB305 Toshiba has put a fair amount of work into making this one stand out from its competition.

For starters it looks fantastic in all three colours (white, black and a sort of burnished gold). In fact we’d go as far to say that it looks more like an expensive ultra-portable rather than a cheap netbook. Its looks aren’t just skin deep, and the NB305 feels incredibly well made. The screen is held on by tough hinges that don’t bend or creak when used, while the netbook case feels incredibly tough. It definitely feels like it has been built to be lugged around in a bag all day.

This feeling is further reinforced by the light 1.3kg weight and incredible battery life. Lasting 10-and-a-half hours in our light-use test, this netbook lasted around two hours longer than any other netbook that we’ve tested. Simply put, you can take this computer with you and use it all day without having to worry about finding a power socket.

For something so light and with incredible battery life, it’s important that it’s comfortable to use. Fortunately, Toshiba hasn’t let the side down here. The 10.1in screen doesn’t have great viewing angles, but its hinges let it open just far enough so that it’s clear to read when the laptop’s sitting on your lap. The display has a glossy coating, although we didn’t find it hard to use under bright office lighting.

Colour reproduction was excellent and the warm-tone helps improve flesh tones in images. We were very happy with the contrast and our test photos lost none of their detail. As with other netbooks the resolution of 1,024×600 is just about enough for single-document use and web browsing.

The keyboard has separate ‘chiclet’ keys. They look great when you open the laptop and are surprisingly comfortable to type on. They’re just about the right size and we found touch-typing no problem. We have only two minor complaints: the Tab key is very small and the backslash key is in the wrong place.

The large touchpad is a pleasure to use. It’s very responsive, while its two individual buttons are large, conveniently placed and are very responsive. Multi-touch gestures can be used on it, using Windows 7’s native support to zoom into documents and scroll through documents. If you’re doing a lot of typing you can disable the touchpad, so that you don’t accidentally lean on it and move the cursor.

Otther shortcut keys let you adjust screen brightness and volume and cycle through the wireless options. The latter lets you turn on and off Bluetooth (brilliant for tethering to a phone for 3G internet access) and 802.11n wireless.

As the NB305 uses Intel’s 1.66GHz N450 Atom processor, it has integrated graphics. The GMA 3150 chip isn’t particularly powerful and won’t allow you to play games but is ideal for the Windows 7 Starter Edition operating system installed. We found that this netbook, along with other N450-based models, was much more responsive, particularly when dragging open windows, than netbooks with the previous generation of Atom and graphics chips. Performance otherwise is largely identical to other netbooks. The overall score of 16 shows that the NB305 is fine for its designed job: internet browsing and light document work.

The rest of the hardware is as you’d expect on a modern netbook with three USB ports for external expansion, a 10/100Mbit Ethernet port and an SDHC memory card reader. The USB port on the left of the case (marked with a lightning bolt) can be set in Sleep and charge mode using the bundled software. This lets you charge USB devices using the port even when the netbook is in sleep mode. Cleverly, you can use a slider to turn off the port when the battery hits a certain point – by default it’s 10 per cent of the remaining charge.

Toshiba has also bundled some software to make the computer easier and more productive to use. ReelTime monitors the documents and applications that you open and when you opened them. Using its timeline view and thumbnails, you can quickly go back to a document or application that you’ve recently opened. The software can be disabled or uninstalled if you’re worried about system performance.

If you get an error you can restore the laptop using the built-in restore partition by pressing F8 when the computer starts. The 250GB hard disk is split into two 125GB partitions: the C: drive is for Windows, applications and user docs; the D: partition holds the restore information and any files that you want to keep when you restore the netbook.

You can also create a restore flash drive using the Create Recovery Media application to protect your computer in case the hard disk corrupts the backup files. This requires a USB flash drive with 5.7GB or more of storage space; however, it refused to work with our 8GB SanDisk Cruzer Contour. Fortunately, it it worked straight away with a 32GB Corsair Flash Voyager. Once the recovery drive’s created you have to press F12 when the netbook is turned on in order to access the boot priority menu and select the USB flash drive.

The stunning battery life, excellent build quality and additional software all add up to make the NB305 the best 10.1in netbook that we’ve reviewed. If you want something small and light enough to carry with you everywhere, this is the one to buy. It’s a Best Buy.