Toshiba Satellite A505 Series
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P7450, Intel Core 2 Duo T6500, Intel Core 2 Duo T6600, Intel Core i3 330M, Intel Core i7 720QMGraphics Adapter: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500MHD, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) HD Graphics, NVIDIA GeForce 310M, NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Display: 16.00 inch
Weight: 2.8kg, 2.9kg, 3.3kg
Price: 500, 600, 750, 800, 1000 euro
Average of 6 scores (from 6 reviews)
Toshiba Satellite A505-S6960
Specifications
Notebook: Toshiba Satellite A505-S6960Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T6500
Graphics Adapter: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500MHD
Display: 16.00 inch, 16:9, 1366 x 768 pixels
Weight: 2.9kg
Price: 600 euro
Links: Toshiba homepage Toshiba notebook section
Pricecompare
Average Score:
Reviews
Source: CNet Archive.org version
The Toshiba Satellite A505-S6960 is backed by an industry-standard one-year warranty. Support is accessible 24-7 via a toll-free phone line, an online knowledge base, and a Web site with driver downloads. While retail shops are happy to sell you an in-store extended warranty, they are often expensive and hard to use, so we don't recommend them.
Good components and a big battery push the Toshiba Satellite A505-S6960 in front of other retail budget laptops.
Single Review, online available, Long, Date: 07/17/2009
Rating: Total score: 70% performance: 80% features: 70% mobility: 80%
Toshiba Satellite A505-S6980
Specifications
Notebook: Toshiba Satellite A505-S6980Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T6600
Graphics Adapter: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500MHD
Display: 16.00 inch, 16:9, 1366 x 768 pixels
Weight: 3.3kg
Price: 500 euro
Links: Toshiba homepage Toshiba notebook section
Pricecompare
Average Score:
Reviews
Source: CNet Archive.org version
You can't argue with a large-screen, value-priced laptop when it delivers good performance, and looks nice to boot. We appreciated the Toshiba Satellite A505-S6960 when we reviewed it in our 2009 back-to-school retail round cup, liking its affordability, large screen, strong battery life, and excellent-sounding speakers. Just a few months later, we find ourselves with a nearly identical model in the Satellite A505-S6980. Good design and some really nice-sounding speakers round out the Toshiba Satellite A505-S6980, a very affordable mainstream laptop with excellent battery life for its size.
Review Type Unknown, online available, Medium, Date: 11/04/2009
Rating: Total score: 77% performance: 70% features: 80% mobility: 90%
Toshiba Satellite A505-S6999
Specifications
Notebook: Toshiba Satellite A505-S6999Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P7450
Graphics Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M
Display: 16.00 inch, 16:9, 1366 x 768 pixels
Weight: 3.3kg
Price: 1000 euro
Links: Toshiba homepage Toshiba notebook section
Pricecompare
Average Score:
Reviews
Source: Comp Reviews Archive.org version
Toshiba's Satellite A505-S6999 has some very unique features that set it apart from many other laptops. Most notable of these is the inclusion of a 64GB solid state drive along with a sizable 500GB hard drive. This provides it with some outstanding storage performance and very fast boot times. It also comes equipped with 6GB for great support of multitasking and memory intensive programs. The big downside though is that this is a beast of a machine that has much more bulk and weight than 15-inch laptops.
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 11/16/2009
Rating: Total score: 60%
Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025
Specifications
Notebook: Toshiba Satellite A505-S6025Processor: Intel Core i3 330M
Graphics Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 310M
Display: 16.00 inch, 16:9, 1366 x 768 pixels
Weight: 2.8kg
Price: 750 euro
Links: Toshiba homepage Toshiba notebook section
Pricecompare
Average Score:
Reviews
Source: CNet Archive.org version
In the previous holiday retail roundup of laptops, our favorite budget notebook ended up being the Toshiba Satellite A505-6980. At $629, its package of a Core 2 Duo processor, long battery life, bright 16-inch screen, and great speakers made it a heavy, rather unportable, but good-valued general computer. While the Toshiba Satellite A505-6025 has a rock-solid combination of computing power, graphics, and battery life, its price and bulk may be hard to swallow.
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 03/01/2010
Rating: Total score: 70%
Toshiba Satellite A505-S6004
Specifications
Notebook: Toshiba Satellite A505-S6004Processor: Intel Core i3 330M
Graphics Adapter: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) HD Graphics
Display: 16.00 inch, 16:9, 1366 x 768 pixels
Weight: 3.3kg
Price: 600 euro
Links: Toshiba homepage Toshiba notebook section
Pricecompare
Average Score:
Reviews
Source: Laptop Mag Archive.org version
If you’re looking for a big-screen notebook with style and great sound, the Toshiba Satellite A505 fills the bill nicely. However, if you don’t care about chrome accents, touch-sensitive buttons, or HDMI output, the Satellite L505-GS5035 costs $70 less and offers practically the same performance. If gaming is more of a priority, the Acer 5740G (6979) has a powerful ATI Radeon GPU and costs $20 less, but you lose about half an hour of battery life. Overall, we like the A505, but wish it cost less or delivered discrete graphics at this price.
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 04/20/2010
Rating: Total score: 60%
Toshiba Satellite A505-S6035
Specifications
Notebook: Toshiba Satellite A505-S6035Processor: Intel Core i7 720QM
Graphics Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Display: 16.00 inch, 16:9, 1366 x 768 pixels
Weight: 2.9kg
Price: 800 euro
Links: Toshiba homepage Toshiba notebook section
Pricecompare
Average Score:
Reviews
Source: Comp Reviews Archive.org version
Toshiba's Satellite A505-S6035 is not a very compact system but it makes up for this by offering some very compelling features. The quad core Intel Core i7 processor gives it very strong performance and their are a wide range of external ports. It would be nice to see a higher resolution 16-inch display panel as well but with such an affordable $900 street price, many people probably won't care too much.
Single Review, online available, Short, Date: 05/20/2010
Rating: Total score: 60%
Comment
Toshiba: Toshiba Corporation is a Japanese conglomerate or technology group. The company was established in 1939 and in 1978 Toshiba became the official company name. The company's products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors, hard drives, printers, batteries, lighting, logistics and information technology. Toshiba was one of the largest manufacturers of personal computers, consumer electronics, home appliances and medical equipment.
Only some 3D games with very low demands are playable with these cards.
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500MHD: Onboard (shared Memory) GPU built in the GM45, GE45 and GS45 chipset (Montevina). Because of two more shaders and a higher core clock, much faster than the old GMA X3100. Still not advisable for gamers (DirectX 10 games not playable or only with very low settings). The integrated video processor is able to help decode HD videos (AVC/VC-2/MPEG2) , e.g., for a fluent Blu-Ray playback with slow CPUs.
NVIDIA GeForce 310M: The GeForce 310M is the successor of the GeFore G210M and based on the same chip with very similar clock rates (shader speed +30MHz to 1530MHz).
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) HD Graphics: Onboard graphics card that is built in the new Arrandale CPUs (Core i3 / i5 / i7 Dual Cores). Depending on the model and Turbo Boost, the GMA HD is clocked between 166 and 766 MHz.
Non demanding games should be playable with these graphics cards.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M: The GeForce GT 230M features 48 shader cores as the 9700M GTS but only a 64 bit memory bus. Because of the 40nm process the power consumption is in the region of the GT 130M.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M: The Nvidia GeForce GT 330M is the successor of the GT 230M and technically just a slightly higher clocked GT 240M (but it should still maintain the power envelope of the GT 230M as the naming suggests).
» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Graphics Cards and the corresponding Benchmark List.
Intel Core 2 Duo: This is the Core Duo and Core Solo successor with a longer pipeline and 5-20% more speed without more power consumption. As an addition to the Core Duo design there exists a fourth decoder, an amplified SSE-unit and an additional arithmetical logical unit (ALU).
The Core 2 Duo for laptops is identical to the desktop Core 2 Duo processors but the notebook-processors work with lower voltages (0.95 to 1188 Volt) and a lower Frontside bus clock (1066 vs 667 MHz). The performance of equally clocked notebooks is 20-25% lower than Desktop PCs because of the lower Frontside bus clock and the slower hard disks.
T6500:
Entry level Penryn based dual-core CPU with a small 2MB level 2 cache and FSB800. Similar to the T6570 but without VT-x.
T6600: Entry level Core 2 Duo dual core processor with a small 2MB level 2 cache and without virtualization functions.
P7450: Entry level Core 2 Duo processor with 3 MB Level 2 Cache and due to the 25 Watt TDP also suited for 13" laptops.
Intel Core i3:
330M:
The Core i3-330M is a slower clocked 350M and therefore also lacks the Turbo Boost feature and clocks with max. 2.13 GHz. Thanks to Hyperthreading, 4 threads can be processed simultaneously. An integrated graphics card (GMA HD 3150) and a DDR3 memory controller are also included in the package.
Intel Core i7: The Intel Core i7 for laptops is based on the LG1156 Core i5/i7 CPU for desktops. The base clock speed of the CPUs is relatively low, but because of a huge Turbo mode, the cores can dynamically overclock to up to 3.2 GHz (920XM). Therefore, the CPU can be as fast as high clocked dual-core CPUs (using single threaded applications) but still offer the advantage of 4 cores. Because of the large TDP of 45 W / 55 W, the CPU is only intended for large laptops.
720QM: The Core i7-720QM is the slowes Core i7 Quad Core in 2009 and clocks between 1.6 and 2.8 GHz (due to the Turbo Mode). Therefore, it combines the advantages of a slow quad core CPU with a fast single core one. Compared to the faster Core i7 mobile CPUs, the 720QM only features 6MB L3 Cache.
» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Processsors.
16.00:
This range for display formats was and is a rarity. It is larger than the general standard of 15 inches, but not yet in the range of large workstations. One usually has higher screen resolutions available, but portability suffers from that.
» To find out how fine a display is, see our DPI List.
2.8 kg:
With this weight, a laptop is rather heavier than average. Devices in this range shine more with screen size and performance than with mobility.
3.3 kg:
A laptop with this weight is comparatively heavy and less designed for mobility than for use at the desk. Therefore, the devices tend to shine less with battery life than with a large screen and higher performance.
66.17%: This rating is poor. More than three quarters of the models are rated better. That is rather not a purchase recommendation. Even if verbal ratings in this area do not sound that bad ("sufficient" or "satisfactory"), they are usually euphemisms that disguise a classification as a below-average laptop.
» Further information can be found in our Notebook Purchase Guide.