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Toshiba Satellite P855-307 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £999
inc VAT

A strong first outing for Ivy Bridge, although the Satellite’s screen is slightly disappointing given the price

Specifications

15.6 in 1,366×768 display, 2.7kg, 2.3GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM, 8MB RAM, 1,000GB disk, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

http://www.pcworld.co.uk

Intel’s latest processor range, previously known as Ivy Bridge, has been a long time coming. Delays and embargoes meant we were waiting for the first chips to arrive for months, but now that we’ve finally got our hands on an Ivy Bridge laptop, we can finally see how the mobile variants compare to their desktop counterparts. Toshiba’s Satellite P855-307 is the first Ivy Bridge laptop we’ve seen, and from first impressions the CPU upgrade has made a huge difference to performance.

Toshiba Satellite P855-307

The laptop’s quad-core i7-3610QM runs at 2.3GHz, but can Turbo Boost to a maximum of 3.3GHz. It also has hyper-threading, effectively doubling the core count to eight within Windows. This, combined with a massive 8GB of RAM, helped the Satellite P855 achieve a phenomenal 94 overall in our multimedia benchmarks. This is essentially on par with last year’s desktop PCs, meaning you’ll have absolutely no trouble running any application.

Ivy Bridge processors have Intel’s integrated HD 4000 graphics, which are a welcome step up from the HD 3000 GPU found in Sandy Bridge chips, but Toshiba has still opted to add dedicated graphics to the Satellite P855. The GeForce GT 630M is at the lower end of Nvidia’s newest mobile graphics range, but it’s still perfectly capable of playing high definition video, as well as games thanks to 2GB of dedicated video memory. Our Dirt3 test produced a silky smooth 43fps, even with antialiasing enabled, so you should have no trouble playing the most up-to-date titles.

Naturally, there’s a downside to all this power – even with Nvidia’s Optimus technology disabling the dedicated graphics card when on battery power, the Satellite P855 could only manage a little over four and a half hours away from the mains. This is barely any different to laptops equipped with the equivalent Sandy Bridge processor, so you’ll still need to keep the power brick to hand when working on the move.

Toshiba Satellite P855-307

As Toshiba is predominantly aiming the Satellite P855 at multimedia users, it’s unsurprising to find a Blu-ray optical drive, but the massive 1TB hard disk is certainly a welcome addition. There’s also a multi-format card reader and four USB3 ports – a first for any laptop we’ve reviewed.

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Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor Intel Core i7-3610QM
Processor clock speed 2.3GHz
Memory 8MB
Memory slots 2
Memory slots free 0
Maximum memory 16GB
Size 28x385x253mm
Weight 2.7kg
Sound Realtek HD Audio
Pointing device touchpad

Display

Viewable size 15.6 in
Native resolution 1,366×768
Graphics Processor Nvidia GeForce GT 630M
Graphics/video ports VGA, HDMI
Graphics Memory 2,048MB

Storage

Total storage capacity 1,000GB
Optical drive type BD-ROM + DVD+/-RW +/-DL, DVD+/-RW +/-DL

Ports and Expansion

USB ports 4
Bluetooth yes
Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support 802.11b/g/n
PC Card slots none
Supported memory cards SDXC, MMC
Other ports minijack audio output, minijack microphone input, 4x USB3

Miscellaneous

Carrying case No
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore option restore partition
Software included Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition
Optional extras none

Buying Information

Warranty one year carry-in
Price £999
Details www.toshiba-europe.com
Supplier http://www.pcworld.co.uk

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