Review The Toshiba 26DV615DB is rather big and chunky for a 26in telly, but that’s because it has a DVD player built into the casing. The result is that it measures 100mm in depth, so it’s by no means thin.
In addition, the bezel is a substantial 50mm all round, so this relatively small HDTV measures 681mm wide by 514mm tall.
Toshiba’s Regza 26DV615DB: big bezelled
Despite that, the all-up weight is only 8.8kg so it’s quite feasible to move the Tosh around the house when you have guests staying, or fancy watching the cricket in peace and quiet in the kitchen.
The Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) looks good. It offers handy frills such as a progress bar that indicates how far you are into the current show, but it falls short of the perfection offered by Sky. For one thing, the ‘i’ button gives you very little information about the show you’re watching, but does tell you both the signal strength and the signal quality of the station in question. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you watch too much TV? You see, it’s not just the hours you put in: you risk the accusation that telly means too much to you if your screen dominates your living room, and therefore your life. It’s a matter of taste, but arguably a 55in screen is pretty much the limit for respectable viewing and Toshiba’s snazzy SV series can overpower even a substantial-sized room.
Giving it large: Toshiba’s Regza 55SV685DB
Still, size, we know, isn’t everything. Perhaps the screen will redeem itself and overcome this shaky start. Please note, though, that this is a massively heavy TV and way too much for one person to manage. Move it and you’ll notice that you can’t avoid handling the screen. That’s because while other TVs have a bezel frame around the LCD, this model had a flush edge-to-edge display. This doesn’t mean the image runs right up to the corners, merely that there’s an overlay called a Full Crystal Panel which covers the entire front of the television.
Toshiba says this front panel improves colour fidelity and image contrast. Don’t worry about those unavoidable finger smears – the makers have thoughtfully included a small cleaning cloth. The appearance of the Regza SV series is what Toshiba calls Deep Lagoon, where a deep black colour fades gradually to white. Like it or not, is a matter personal taste.
This is a premium television, full of advanced features such as LED backlighting with local dimming, fast 200Hz refresh rate, image processing from the ‘MetaBrain’ engine and Dolby Volume, which is designed to manage sound output variations when you switch channels, for instance. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Toshiba is the first manufacturer to deliver a 2.5in laptop hard drive that packs more than 500GB of storage. Its new MK6465GSX sports 640GB on two platters, and while we are aware that the Western Digital Scorpio Blue and Seagate Momentus 5400.7 are also available in 640GB models we haven’t seen either drive to date.
Toshiba’s MK646GSX: storage boost for your notebook?
The Toshiba is, clearly, built around a 320GB platter and comes in five versions. The 640GB and 500GB models use two platters and four heads, although our maths suggests that the 500GB might use two platters and three heads. The 320GB and 250GB versions have a single platter and two heads, and the baby 160GB drive brings up the rear with a single platter and single head.
All five drives have the same physical form-factor and measure 9.5mm in thickness. They also share a 5400rpm spin speed, 8MB of cache and a 3Gb/s Sata interface that is compliant with the Sata 2.6 standard.
It’s interesting to note that the single-platter models have an idle acoustic figure of 19dB and a seek figure of 20dB while the dual platter drives emit 25dB at idle and also while they are working for their living. While we were testing the 640GB drive, we were indeed impressed that the drive was very quiet. Realistically, though, that’s true of most laptop drives. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Toshiba’s 11.6in Satellite T110 makes you appreciate the fuss Intel makes about multi-core processors.
Toshiba’s Satellite T110: very, very glossy
The T110, you see, has a single-core chip, a 1.3GHz Celeron 743, to be precise, which sits on an 800MHz frontside bus and has 1MB of L2 cache. The 743 is one of Intel’s so-called “consumer ultra-low voltage parts” and that – plus the screen size – tells you the T110 is one of the laptops vendors are currently pitching as the kind of machine you want if you want to start creating the content you can view on a netbook.
Think of a compact laptop that’s slightly larger than a typical 10in netbook, but has a faster processor and more memory. It still lacks an optical drive, to keep the weight down, but it’s a machine, some vendors will tell you, that’s a “proper” notebook. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Pick up the Satellite L450, or even just glance at it, and you’re left in no doubt that it’s very much a budget laptop. Chunky, plasticy and devoid of any bells and whistles, it’s not going to appeal to those who like their laptops to stand out from the crowd.
Toshiba’s Satellite L450: it’s not stylish, but it is dirt cheap
It is, however, dirt cheap, and the L450-137 model we’ve got our hands on here retails for just £379. For this, you get an Intel Celeron T3000, 3GB of DDR 2 memory and integrated Intel GMA 4500M graphics core, along with a 15.6in widescreen display.
Toshiba’s gone for a simple matte-silver finish for the lid, interrupted only by the company’s logo. A large hinge stretches along the bottom of the display, giving the lid a sturdy feel. The display’s bezel isn’t quite as well made, though, and feels very rough when running your finger around the edges of it. Read the rest of this entry »
