Toshiba Satellite L775-119 review

As with most larger laptops, the Satellite L775’s most prominent feature is its huge screen. The 17.3in panel should be more than large enough for office work or watching video, even if the 1,600×900 resolution is only high enough for 720p high definition content. Image quality was well above average, with the high resolution screen preserving lots of detail. Viewing angles are fairly narrow, but there’s plenty of screen tilt to find the position that suits you.

The stereo speakers above the keyboard tray were designed with help from A/V experts Onkyo, so we were expecting better sound quality than the average laptop. Mid-range notes were clean and treble was sharp without being tinny, but as expected bass was still lacking. They’re an above-average set of laptop speakers, but they still can’t compete with a decent set of headphones.

The Satellite L775 is still a great laptop for multimedia thanks to its internal DVD re-writer and spacious 640GB hard disk. There are a reasonable three USB ports, of which one will charge USB devices such as phones while the laptop is switched off, but we would have liked to have seen at least one USB3 port. An SDXC card reader is rather useful, though.

We were pleased to see that Toshiba has included a numerical keypad alongside the full-size QWERTY keyboard, which should make data entry just as easy as typing. The flat keys are quite tightly grouped together, but they all have satisfyingly crisp key actions that made typing a breeze. The decent sized touchpad was responsive and had very little resistance to movement. Less impressive were the two oversized touchpad buttons, which felt slightly spongy when clicked.

If you don’t need a dedicated graphics card, but still want a powerful laptop that can take the place of a desktop PC, the Satellite L775 is a good choice – and the price is hard to beat. If portability and graphics power are more important, however, the Acer Aspire 5750G costs a similar amount but has a dedicated graphics card for gaming.