Even pressing the lid's back firmly with a thumb does not cause image distortions. The lid is not thin and ensures a certain degree of rigidness. Particularly the base unit's front left area is a bit flexible. With a bit of effort the plastic casing can be warped to a slight extent but this does not produce any noises. The Toshiba's underside is matte black and provides a non-slip grip in the unlikely case of transportation. The wrist rest, touchpad and display's back feature a glossy silver color and the area below the keyboard up to the lid and the display's bezel have a black piano paint surface. The review sample's casing tries to add a few visual highlights but a high-quality impression is not produced due to the cheap-looking plastic. Our in-depth review will reveal how Toshiba's C55-A-1D5 fares in games, multimedia and in office work based on numerous benchmarks. Both the Toshiba and the Asus weigh 2.3 kg (~5.1), which is typical in this category, but the V3 is heavy at 3.2 kg (~7.1) on the scales. The portability factor is also noteworthy. The other equipment in the Acer and Asus is identical with the Toshiba and both are also available for below 700 Euros (~949).
Asus' A56CB sports a runtime-friendly but slower Intel Core i3-3217U ULV dual-core (2x 1.8 GHz, Hyperthreading, TDP: 17 W) and the same graphics chip as our review sample. The first device features Intel's Core i7 3610QM (4x 2.3 - 3.3 GHz, TDP: 45 W) entry-level quad-core, which is based on the Ivy Bridge architecture just like Intel's Core i5-3230M, while the performance of Nvidia’s GeForce GT 640M graphics solution is lower than that of the Toshiba laptop. Our benchmarks prove that this combination also allows playing current and graphically demanding games smoothly in medium or sometimes even higher presets.įor this test report, we used Acer's Aspire V3-571G-73614G50Makk and Asus' A56CB-XX053H, both with 15.6-inch screens, for comparison. For the original German review, see here.Īn Intel Core i5-3230M (2x 2.6 - 3.2 GHz, Hyperthreading, TDP: 35 W) alongside a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GT 740M graphics solution with 2 GB of memory make Toshiba's Satellite C55-A-1D5 a multimedia laptop.