Toshiba NB205 Review

Pros:

Impressive battery life, Sturdy design, firm and responsive keyboard, Intel Atom N280 1.66 GHz Processor, large 3 inch wide touchpad

Cons:

No Bluetooth (on this version), Bloatware, .3 Megapixel Webcam

Bottom Line:

The Toshiba NB205 is a stellar netbook especially considering how new to the netbook arena Toshiba is. The NB205-N210 that I reviewed is priced around $350 and that gets you a netbook with the better Intel Atom N280 1.66 GHz processor, a 6 cell battery pumping out 9 hours of battery life, a perfect keyboard and a huge touchpad. Put this all together for $350 and you have a great machine in the mid netbook price range.

Quick Product Specs:

Intel Atom N280 1.66 GHz Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 6 Cell Battery, Windows XP Home
View Full Specs

Full Review:

I've owned a few different netbooks by Asus before and didn't have experience with many other manufacturers let alone something from Toshiba, a relative newcomer to the netbook market. But my early reservations were quickly pushed aside after I started using this wonderful machine.

Design:

The netbook is only 1.3 inches tall which is very thin compared to other 6 cell battery netbooks. One of the only more slender netbooks is the Asus Eee PC 1008HA. The top of the case has a lovely diagonal pattern running across the glossy black finish (this does lend itself towards gathering a lot of fingerprints).

Opening up the netbook and you'll be greeted by one of the best keyboards on a netbook yet. The keys are the largest I've seen on any netbook (besides the function keys which run a little smaller). I'll cover the keys more in the usability section of the review.

The battery sticks out of the back about an inch but it's not unsightly or excessively bulging out the bottom of the netbook like I've seen on other models. The RAM access bay is easy to get to and should make upgrading a cinch.

The plastics used in this netbook just feel more high quality than I've felt in other netbooks made by Lenovo and Asus. The Toshiba NB205 almost feels like it's a rugged netbook because of just how great the build quality is. Most impressive indeed.

Usability

As I mentioned above the keys on the Toshiba NB205 are the largest I've ever seen which naturally lends itself towards making it much easier to type on the keyboard. What makes this even better is that keys are also much more firm and responsive than those found in the Asus and Lenovo netbooks I've reviewed. I know this for sure because as I write this review I'm also using the Lenovo S10-2, Lenovo S12 and Asus Eee PC 1008HA.

There are also no awkward key placements found in the Toshiba NB205 which is a big relief. I also appreciate that they've found a way to set aside dedicated up, down, left and right arrow keys with proper spacing and size. When using a netbook I find myself constantly reaching for these keys to scroll up and down web pages due to the lower resolution screens and not trying to cram these into the design is a nice touch. Also by setting aside these arrow keys it creates a space above and to the right for the page down and page up arrows which is a more natural feel than other netbooks that set the keys to the left and right of the up arrow key.

The Toshiba NB205 has the largest touchpad I've ever seen on a netbook. It's 3 inches wide and 1 and 5/8ths inches tall. The closest touchpad I've seen to this side was 2.5 inches wide and 1.5 inches tall so that gives you an idea of just how much larger this beast is - all on a netbook! This makes it even easier to maneuver the cursor around the screen and take advantage of multi-touch features.

Battery Life

The Toshiba NB205 offers a 6 cell lithium ion battery with a 5800 mAh rating and delivers a stellar battery performance. While 9 hours is the manufacturers claim, I only could reach 8 hours which was accomplished while running at 60% brightness, wireless active and on the normal mode for battery life. This is one of the many standout features of this well priced netbook and because it doesn't feature bluetooth this also helps to provide a better battery life.

Benchmarking

In the past I had not done a lot of benchmarking in previous reviews; however, to provide you with more data I will be covering benchmarking test results moving forward with all reviews. Click here to view full benchmarking results. With that said, because most netbooks share similar tech specs the results are often nearly the same so feel free to continue reading on to see my overall impressions on the netbook.

Overall Performance:

This netbook features the faster Intel Atom N280 1.66 GHz processor, so it's slightly faster than most of the other netbooks out there and this processor is usually not found in netbooks at this price point. The speakers are nothing to talk about, you can hear them when sitting nearby the netbook but don't expect to use this in a house party . The netbook has 1 GB of RAM pre-installed just like nearly every other netbook and if you want to upgrade the RAM to 2 GB's you can expect slightly better multi tasking abilities. I suggest that if you don't need bluetooth you should buy this version to save yourself some money, but if you want bluetooth you'll need to go for the N205-N310 model instead. The netbook also only offers 802.11b/g and doesn't go a step further offering draft N like some of the other competing netbooks have offered. Combine this with a weaker .3 megapixel webcam and annoying Norton bloatware and you can see where the Toshiba NB205 has managed to save a few dollars which have thankfully been applied to a lower end user price.

Overall, I believe this is a stellar entry into Toshiba's relatively new line of netbooks. If you're in the market for a new netbook and want to save money where possible you should seriously consider Toshiba's NB205 netbook.

Purchase Options:

Buy New
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