Toshiba Satellite C70-C-1FT Notebook Review

The design looks rather ordinary. The upper part of the base unit is made from plastic with a brushed texture. The bottom and the top of the lid are smooth. The chassis could be a little more sturdy: picking the unit up with one hand, for example, left us with an uneasy feeling regarding the overall stability. Rubber feet make sure that the notebook remains put even on very slick surfaces. The display hinges bounce a lot. The areas below and next to the keyboard yield easily when pressure is applied. Although noticeable while typing, it does not have a detrimental effect. Fingerprints are an issue and tend to show up after a very short time. 

The transition gaps between the parts are rather large and accumulate dust somewhat easily. The chassis can be opened without a problem even though there are no maintenance covers. Expansion is limited to a second RAM slot. The battery can be swapped out easily once two screws are removed.

To measure the performance of the SD card reader, we use a Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II reference card. We recorded 84.3 MB/s for large data blocks and about 35 MB/s for JPGs (5 MB each). These transfer rates aren't very impressive.

The Toshiba Satellite C70-C-1FT is a 17.3-inch allrounder notebook predominantly designed for desktop use. The hardware is powerful enough to handle most standard workloads and light multi-tasking. At low resolutions, the notebook can handle gaming as well. At the time of writing, the Satellite sells for about 900 Euro (~$1025).

The notebook is equipped with an Intel Core i5-6200U. This frugal dual-core CPU offers middle-class performance and is thus more than sufficient to handle even multitasking without major issues. In addition to hyperthreading, the processor also has a very low TDP of only 15 watts. The i5-6200U is clocked at 2.3 GHz, although the Turbo can overclock one core to 2.8 GHz and both cores to 2.8 GHz. Full performance is available no matter if the notebook is plugged in or running on battery power.     

Users requiring more power should take a look at the Asus N552VX-FY103T, which comes with the much more potent Intel Core i7-6700HQ. The notebook with its quad-core i7 CPU offers about double the performance in the Cinebench R15 CPU multi-core benchmark and scores about 20 % higher in the single-core test. The quad-core processor only really makes sense if the applications are designed to take advantage of it.

Less expensive options are the Dell Inspiron 17 5759-5118 (same processor) or the HP Pavilion 17-f217ng, which comes with the less powerful Intel Core i5-5200U, but still offers quite comparable performance.

Thanks to its modern Intel Core i5 processor and a decent enough hard drive make, the notebook responds fairly quickly and smoothly. We didn't encounter any problems or issues during the review period. Although the results of the PCMark 8 benchmark trail the competition slightly, they are still decent. Other notebooks with similar hardware shouldn't be much faster or slower - at least not noticeably so. The more powerful notebooks pull ahead slightly, but during daily use this should be of little to no consequence.

Toshiba integrated their own 2.5-inch HDD with a capacity of 1000 GB and a rotational speed of 5400 RPM. The benchmark results are decent for a drive in this class and the competing models don't offer appreciably better scores.

Toshiba has equipped this particular Satellite with an Nvidia Geforce 930M. The GPU is based on the Maxwell architecture, supports DirectX 11, and offers a base core speed of 928 MHz and a maximum speed of 941 MHz. The graphics card has access to 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 900 MHz. The frequencies mentioned are available even when the notebook is running on battery power.   

In addition to the GeForce graphics card, the notebook also features the processor-integrated Intel HD Graphics 520. Nvidia's Optimus technology can switch between the GPUs, which in turn can extend the battery life. 

As an alternative, the Asus N552VX-FY103T comes equipped with the GTX 950M, which offers about twice the performance. The HP Pavilion 17-f217ng ships with the predecessor of the 930M and scores only slightly lower. The Dell Inspiron 17 5759-5118 is equipped with a Radeon R5 M335, which is a noticeably weaker GPU.

We shouldn't expect top-notch performance of course, but the notebook is definitely gaming-capable. The GPU can handle older titles even at high detail settings. Newer games or more demanding graphics settings are out of the question, however.  

We used an external monitor to check the gaming performance at maximum details, since the Toshiba only supports a resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels.

Competing notebooks like the HP Pavilion 17-f217ng  and the Dell Inspiron 17 5759-5118 trail our review notebook in this area as expected; the more powerful alternatives Asus N552VX-FY103T and the Acer Aspire V Nitro Black Edition VN7-792G-74Q4 both score higher. If gaming is frequently on the agenda, we recommend looking at a notebook with at least a Geforce GTX 960M or better.

The Toshiba handles our stress test (Prime95 and Furmark in parallel for at least one hour) in identical fashion no matter if it is plugged in or running on battery. We didn't encounter throttling at all. The Satellite does very well again as far as the temperatures are concerned: even under maximum load, the warmest areas are barely warm to the touch. Despite the low TDP of the CPU and the dedicated GPU, this is not something that can be taken for granted. The competition gets either about as warm as the review notebook or considerably hotter.

The Toshiba requires up to 14 watts during idle, which is slightly higher than the competitors with the same CPU. On average, the Satellite is less frugal than the more powerful competitors with quad-core CPUs.

The scenario under load isn't any different, as the Toshiba still maintains the top spot compared to similar models. Notebooks with quad-core CPUs draw even more power under load though and now pull ahead of the review notebook. The power adapter is rated at 65 watts and never is taxed to its limit.

Our WLAN test simulates a real-life scenario and loads a new web page every 40 seconds via a script. We activate the power-saving profile and set the display to a brightness of 150 cd/m². The Satellite shut down after 4 hours and 12 minutes, which is an average result, but pretty good for this class. Only the Dell Inspiron 17 lasted 50 minutes longer.