Toshiba Satellite Pro L770 review

Toshiba’s Satellite Pro laptop series strikes a fine balance between home and business users. Its sedate design won’t look out of place in the boardroom, but its dedicated graphics card and Blu-ray optical drive should appeal to film buffs and game fans.

It isn’t the most portable of machines, but its 17in screen and 1,600×900 resolution is a welcome step up from the 15in competition. It’s large enough to work on two documents at once or watch 720p video without having to cradle the machine in your lap.

Its image quality’s a little better than average, thanks to vibrant colours and ample brightness, but its lack of screen tilt and its average viewing angles mean you’ll have to choose your seating position carefully. You might want to turn off the lights for watching films too, because the glossy screen finish makes light reflections an issue.

Thankfully, its wide chassis provides enough room for a full-size keyboard, including a separate numerical keypad for faster data entry. The full-size keys push down quite far and stop abruptly when they reach the switch underneath, but bounce back to a resting position very quickly.

We were a little disappointed with the size of the touchpad. Although it maintains the same 16:9 aspect ratio as the screen, it’s squeezed in between the keyboard tray and oversized touchpad buttons, making our hands feel cramped when navigating the desktop. Its response times are quick enough, but we would have preferred more space.

Given the size of the chassis, the decidedly average selection of ports is another small let-down. One USB3 port, two regular USB2 ports, audio inputs and outputs and a multiformat card reader are all you get, but its Blu-ray writer optical drive is almost enough to make up for lack elsewhere.