We take a look at one of Toshiba's 15.4-inch HD-DVD laptops and see how it holds up to other mainstream HD laptops. Is it time to buy a bargain HD-DVD machine?
Review summary of the Toshiba Satellite A205:
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 The Toshiba Satellite A205 is a budget laptop with an HD-DVD drive, two things not normally associated with each other. At less than $1,000, it’s hard to argue with the value you’re getting, especially on a non-Celeron system. If you’re looking for an affordable laptop with an HD-DVD drive, the Satellite A205 is a good deal, assuming the HD-DVD format doesn’t die a slow death in 2008. While ideally we’d like to see 1080p and an HDMI out port, this is still a solid entry in 15.4-inch mainstream notebook category with the bonus of having a high-definition optical drive. Release: January 2008. Price: $900.
Pros: HD-DVD drive, great price, attractive paint job
Cons: 720p instead of 1080p, VGA instead of HDMI, paint scratches/smudges easily
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Full review of the Toshiba Satellite A205:
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Design - Good
The first thing you’ll notice about the Toshiba Satellite A205 is the paint job. The plastic exterior is glossy back of the super-shiny variety, and it’s both a boon and a bane to the A205. On one hand, it looks great. It’s the kind of attention-getting exterior that’s more visually appealing than laptops with magnesium alloy exteriors. On the other hand, it collects fingerprint smudges like a CSI test kit and scratches far too easily, although that’s just the nature of glossy exteriors.
One interesting design choice is the flat bottom. The A205 is 1.55 inches thick from front to back, unlike many mainstream 15.4-inch notebooks which utilize a sloped design that’s thinner in front, usually about an inch, and give off the illusion of a slimmer profile. This may be due to the port arrangement – Toshiba has placed them on the sides instead of the back – but the end result is that a side-by-side comparison makes the A205 seem deceptively larger than comparable models.
The other signature design feature is that there are no sharp corners or right angles, all edges are curved. This adds to the futuristic quality to which the glossy exterior aspires. Six pounds is the normal weight for a 15.4-inch mainstream laptop and our configuration, the A205-S6808, came in just over that.
Toshiba has made steady improvements in the aesthetic quality of their Satellite brand in the past couple of years, and overall the successful design of the A205 shows just how far Toshiba has come in its consumer-oriented machines.
Input - Good
The A205 sports an 86-key keyboard, a row of multimedia control keys and a two-button touchpad. The keys themselves have a soft bounce when pressed and the touchpad buttons respond with a stiff click, which is the right mix -- you don’t want to hear endless clacking when typing, and ideally touchpad buttons should mimic the feel of a mouse.
The power button sits just above the keyboard next to six special function buttons – four for playback control, one to launch Internet Explorer and another to launch Windows Media Center. Volume control is handled via a wheel embedded underneath the touchpad.
Display – Very Good
This is an HD-DVD notebook, so the display's quality is going to be an important trait for any potential buyer. The good news is, watching HD-DVD movies on this LCD makes you want to trade in your standard-definition DVD collection; they’re brighter, more clear and represent a leap forward. The bad news is that the resolution is 1280 x 800, which means the A205 can only reach 720p and not the full 1080p that the HD-DVD spec can reveal. We’re inclined to believe that 1080p is wasted on such a small display, so we don’t begrudge Toshiba for sticking to WXGA and 720p, especially at this $900 price point.
Performance - Mediocre
The A205-S6808 comes configured with the Intel Core 2 Duo T5500, which is clocked at 1.66 GHz. This is the 65-nm version of the Core 2 Duo, which is a generation behind the new 45-nm Penryn chips released in January, but still fast enough to accomplish ordinary productivity tasks.
To keep the price down, Toshiba opted for integrated Intel graphics instead of discrete graphics, which is something of a surprise on a high definition laptop. The payoff is that the A205 is several hundred dollars cheaper than it would be with a chip from Nvidia or ATI, and that the battery lasts far longer than it would on a discrete system. The disadvantage is that the A205 can’t utilize some of the advanced techniques found in Nvidia’s PureVideo technology or ATI’s Avivo.
Ports - Good
Instead of placing the ports in the back of the machine as most laptops do, Toshiba moved all ports to the sides. Anyone who’s ever struggled to blindly plug cables into the back of his or her laptop can appreciate this design move. The port fare is fairly standard – 4 USB 2.0, 1 FireWire, Ethernet and the other usual suspects – but the one unusual decision is the VGA out port instead of HDMI. Perhaps related to the choice of integrated instead of discrete graphics, you can’t output HD-DVD movies to 1080i, much less 1080p. That means the A205 is unlikely to serve as your primary HD-DVD player, since it can’t take full advantage of the spec.
We do like the 5-in-1 memory card reader situated underneath the touchpad. Memory card readers vary wildly from one OEM to the next, and more formats supported by a built-in reader means less headaches, and fewer accessories, for us.
Software - Good
Windows Vista Home Premium is the default operating system on the A205, and as a step above Home Basic it includes the easy-to-use Windows Media Center for those who prefer the convenience of an all-in-one program to handle their music, pictures and movies.
Included is Toshiba’s Assist program which allows you to coordinate several software options, like the wireless interface, user password and a PC diagnostic. Scrolling the mouse to the top of the screen while in Windows brings up a software control for the F1 – F9 options like zoom, mute, adjust brightness and a soft power switch for the wireless radio.
Entertainment – Very Good
The HD-DVD drive is the marquee feature of the A205, and even at 720p it doesn’t disappoint. Movie lovers will appreciate the quality of HD-DVD, which delivers a brighter and clearer picture than the 480p of progressive scan DVDs and brings out previously hard-to-see picture details. It’s not quite the leap in quality from VHS to DVD, but still worth the investment.
However, any potential buyer of HD-DVD hardware should know that Warner Bros. in June will begin pressing its titles in Blu-ray exclusively, effectively giving the Blu-ray camp 70% of the HD media market. Many have predicted that this will be a deathblow for the HD-DVD format. It’s still too early for us to predict who will win the HD format war, but if you’re considering investing in an HD-DVD library for your Satellite A205, it’s worth knowing that many tech prognosticators don’t have faith in the longevity of the HD-DVD format – although it wouldn’t be the first time tech prognosticators have been wrong.
Audio output is handled through two unusually large stereo speakers at the corners of the notebook, which provide vivid sound to accompany the HD playback. We would have liked a surround sound output, like an optical audio out port, but for this price that may be too much to expect.
Gaming - Mediocre
Integrated graphics on the A205 prevent you from playing most of the best new retail games, so this is not a laptop for gamers. We ran 3DMark06 and received a score of 563, which is about what we expected and far short of what you’d need to play the latest games. We installed Crysis but the frame stuttering was too intense to make it playable, even on the lowest settings.
Web browsing - Good
The wireless Ethernet on the A205 is compatible with 802.11a/b/g, although at this point we’d like to see OEMs completely ditch the obsolete 802.11a standard and include Wireless-N instead. That might drive up the price a bit, but there’s no point in sticking with outdated hardware.
Productivity - Good
Toshiba includes a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office 2007, which radically reorganizes the interface of the Office suite but we happen think is the best implementation of the productivity suite, aside from the few issues we've had with the default .DOCX format. The A205 can be used as a productivity notebook, although mainstream notebooks tend to be too heavy to make a perfect workstation for ferrying to and from the office.
Battery life – Very Good
This is where Toshiba’s decision to forgo integrated graphics pays off. Running MobileMark 2007’s DVD battery rundown test produced a battery life of 1:57, which is a solid score for DVD playback. The notebook is designed for watching HD-DVD movies, and it’s hard to find a film that runs much less than 2 hours.
Value – Excellent
Outside of the HD-DVD drive, the price is the most appealing feature of the A205. At $900, you’d be hard pressed to find a better deal for this kind of hardware. Core 2 Duos chips and HD-DVD drives are normally components found on upconfigured machines, hitting a $900 price point is something of a feat for Toshiba.
Price and availability
The Toshiba A205 is available now for $900.
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