17.3″ Toshiba Satellite C75-B7193 Notebook via Amazon
Black Toshiba Satellite C75-B7193 (or C75-B7) is a 17.3 inch large screen laptop that is fairly slim and lightweight for its size but should still be considered as a desktop replacement type machine and not so much a very portable device, powerful with a 5th generation power efficient Jan 2105 release Intel i5 processor, Windows 7 Pro operating system and a nice range of connectivity ports. So Toshiba Satellite comes with the dual core Intel i5-5200U processor at 2.2Ghz speed up to 2.7GHz with turbo boost and hyper threading, 8GB dual channel DDR3L SDRAM at 1600MHz offering great multitasking ability to run several programs and browsers at once smoothly, 1TB Serial ATA HDD hard drive at 5400 revolutions per minute speed (large size and average speed) with HDD Recovery and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional pre-installed with Win 8.1 Pro CD included in the box through downgrade rights from Win 8.1 if you prefer it to Win 7 (not many people do).
17.3 inch diagonal TFT HD+ Truebrite WLED backlit widescreen display with 1600 x 900 max pixel resolution (supports 720p content) with 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio is a good quality screen according to customer reviews and Intel HD 5500 graphics (mid-range of fifth generation GPU’s) that performs better than Haswell HD 5000 and 4400 and that will let you play majority of the 2015 games at very low settings and frame rates per second. It has the standard integrated stereo speakers for OK sound and high definition webcam and microphone for your great Skype chats. Textured resin in jet black Toshiba Satellite weighs 5.9 pounds with the dimensions of 16.3 x 10.6 x 1.3 inches so it is neither too thick nor too heavy. It has a 6-cell 48WHr lithium ion battery that should give you 5 hours on average use, standard US keyboard with 10 key numeric pad and multiple touch touchpad. It has no Bluetooth by default (so you can just get a cheap USB dongle with your purchase of this laptop), but DVD-RW Multi-DVD optical drive, 802.11bgn wireless, 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet with RJ-45 connector, 1 x USB 2.0 port, 2 x USB 3.0 ports (and one has the Sleep and Charge functionality), Memory Card Reader, Microphone input, Headphone output, an HDMI output, an RGB port, DisplayPort 1.2 and a Security lock slot.
Conclusion: Toshiba Satellite C75-B7193 (C75-B7 on Amazon page) is a pretty fast computer with a high performance Broadwell i5 processor which is an ultra low voltage one with a Thermal Design Power of 15 watts that is also smaller in size so performance- more like the 4th generation i5-4300U and less than the non-ULV processors but still great for general computing including office, multimedia and more demanding stuff as long as you don’t expect awesome performance in 3D applications (Passmark benchmark score of 3518 at the time of this review- classified as a high mid-range CPU). 8GB memory can be expanded up to 16GB but would you really need that much memory? (only a small percentage of customers would). You will get Adobe Reader installed as well as the 30 day trial versions of McAfee Live which we recommend that you uninstall and download the free AVG or Avast instead and Microsoft Office which you can pay and purchase after the expiry if you will be using Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. It is an EPEAT Gold registered and Energy Star qualified unit that is also offered with a 12 month standard limited warranty by Toshiba if you encounter any problems. It is nice to have a large 17.3 inch screen especially for multimedia purposes and even though this is not Full HD with IPS, image quality is pretty good but sound is not the best. Keyboard is ergonomic and comfy to type on with its nicely spaced out keys. This is a good all-rounder type powerful Toshiba with large memory and hard drive, good number of modern connectivity options and longish battery life at a medium price.
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