Hands-On With The Toshiba Satellite T135-S1325

Thin, lightweight, and quite attractive, the Toshiba Satellite T135-S1325 is a notebook that provides adequate computing power without draining the bank account. The 3.8-pound machine (which starts at just $449) boasts solid battery life, HD display, plenty of memory and storage, and a first on a Toshiba ultraportable (the previous T135 featured an Intel ULV CPU).

Design

The entire system, from the lid to the palmrest to the keys, features a glossy coating that commands your attention. The Fusion Finish in Nova Black offers a dark, rich visual design with a subtle checkered pattern that’s quite fetching.

The keyboard has enough space for even lion-pawed typists to comfortably craft documents, but its left portion has a bit of flex. The multi-touch track pad has much width, but not as much height, so its easier to move horizontally then vertically.

There are the standard array of connections. Built into the right side of the system are two USB 2.0 ports, headphone and mic jacks, an Ethernet jack, and a memory card slot. On the opposite side are ports for Sleep and Charge USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA, and a Kensington lock.

Display and Speakers

We enjoyed crisp and colorful images while watching episodes of  Family Guy on the 13.3-inch (1366 x 768) display. Viewing angles are wide, so we were able to take in the show from all but the most extreme positions. That said, the glossy display did kick back a number of reflections, especially during dark scenes. You may find yourself sitting close to the system, as the stereo speakers don’t offer much punch. When listening to Curtis Mayfield’s “Think” we  kept wishing for greater volume and extra bass boost.

System Performance

The 1.6-GHz AMD Turion Neo X2 L625 dual-core CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 320GB hard drive helped power the T135 to a PCMark Vantage score of 2,557, which is almost 200 points less than the 2,739 ultraportable average. Still, menus and Windows opened relatively quickly when working with multiple applications. The 5,400-RPM HDD copied a 4.97GB folder of mixed media at a rate of 18.0 MBps, which 3.1 MBps slower than the category average.

Graphics Performance and Battery Life

GPU performance is driven by the ATI Radeon HD 3200 chipset, which helped the system achieve a 1,048 3DMark06 score on the video benchmark (almost 200 points higher than the ultraportable average). That enabled the T135 to deftly handle World of Warcraft–at least on the default settings. World of Warcraft moved along at 30 frames per second at 1024 x 768 resolution (which dipped too just 6 frames per second at 1366 x 768). It didn’t pack enough muscle to handle the graphics-intensive Far Cry 2; it managed to push polygons at a rate of 14 frames per second at 1024 x 768 resolution, and 4 frames per second at 1366 x 768 resolution.

The included six-cell battery lasted 5 hours and 6 minutes on our LAPTOP Battery Test (continuous surfing over Wi-Fi), which was 20 minutes shorter than the typical ultraportable.

Software

Naturally, the T135 comes with a host of Toshiba utilities such as Bulletin Board, Media Center, PC Health Monitor, and Reel Time. It also contains a 60-day trial of Microsoft Home and Student 2007 edition and a 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security 2010.

All in all, the Toshiba Satellite T135-S1325 is shaping up to be a quality machine. Stay tuned for our full review.