Toshiba Satellite A665 Reviewed: High Performance But Dismal Battery Life

Sometimes with entertainment notebooks, you have to choose between battery life and performance. The Toshiba Satellite A665, a 16-incher that straddles the line between a mainstream and entertainment notebook, certainly fits that billing.

In our Toshiba Satellite A665 review, we point out that you get a nice package, with a 16-inch screen, a Core i5 processer, 4GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GT330M graphics card, for a reasonable $899 asking price. The nicest surprise on this 3.5-star machine is the top-of-the-line speaker system, which plays music and voices with great clarity. On the downside, you get a relatively short battery life of 2 hours and 55 minutes, an overly glossy screen, and a noisy keyboard.

The A665 stands up fairly well next to competitors like the ASUS N61Jv-X2, the Samsung R580, and the Dell Studio 15. The A6655 puts up higher graphical performance than all of those machines, with more than double the mainstream notebook average, according to the 3DMark06 benchmark test. While we do like the A665, the N61Jv-X2 or the Studio 15 might be worth looking at first—the former offering excellent design and the latter offering good battery life and price.

Read the full review of the Toshiba Satellite A665 here.