Toshiba’s 11.6-inch Satellite T115 ($479) has a lot to offer Windows 7 PC shoppers looking for something that’s easy to carry but not too cramped. It soundly outperforms netbooks and lasts nearly a whole work day on a charge. The design could be better, and other systems deliver more oomph for less cash, but this system is worth a look.
Design
Toshiba’s wavy, checkered Fusion Finish in Nova Black graces the lid and deck of the 3.4-pound Satellite T115. The look is nice at first glance, but the glossy plastic casing is a terrible fingerprint magnet, so you’ll want to keep a cloth handy if you’re bothered by smudges. The 11.3 x 8.3 x 1.4-inch notebook is just a hair bigger and heavier than the Acer Aspire 1410. Despite the plastic body, the T115 doesn’t feel or look cheap. It struck us as very solid, yet sleek.
The checkered design extends across the touchpad. Beneath that sits a long mouse bar whose design flows into a row of status lights, similar to the larger Satellite U505. The housing for the 6-cell battery raises the unit up about half an inch, resulting in a gentle incline.
Heat
Despite being a thin system, the T115 dissipates heat pretty well. After streaming a Heroes episode from Hulu for 15 minutes, the touchpad registered 94 degrees Fahrenheit, the space between the G and H keys was 90 degrees, and the center of the underside was 98 degrees. While that last reading is on the warm side, the T115 never was uncomfortable while on our lap.
Keyboard and Touchpad
As expected on an 11.6-inch system, the keyboard is close to full size with roomy keys in the center. However, we’re disappointed that Toshiba didn’t opt to extend the layout to the edge so that keys on the outside left and right could also be full-sized. The right Shift key is shortened—though correctly placed—to cram in dedicated Page Up and Page Down buttons. The Enter key is also smaller than usual, and the Alt and Ctrl keys on the right are so small as to almost be unusable. On the left side the Alt, Fn and Windows keys are all very skinny and not very useful for those who are used to keyboard shortcuts.
Despite the spacing issue, typing on the T115 was comfortable. While typing this review we achieved our normal typing speed after only a few minutes.
Nice and wide, the 3.0 x 1.5-inch touchpad surface on the T115 (practically the same size as the spacious touchpad on the Toshiba mini NB205) is just a little rough, allowing our finger to glide over it effortlessly. We’re glad that the touchpad is so wide, as it meant less picking up our finger as we moved across the screen. The T115’s touchpad supports multitouch, and we were able to pinch and zoom in Google Chrome with little effort.
The large but unified mouse button on this notebook is a drawback. The bar is nice and long, but we had to use the extreme outer edges to get a good response. It’s also somewhat stiff and noisy, but not enough to drive us to an external mouse.
Display and Audio
The glossy, 1366 x 768 pixel display suits the 11.6-inch size well and delivers crisp, bright colors and deep blacks. When watching dark scenes, such as the opening to Torchwood: Children of Earth, the screen kicked back reflections under normal lighting. The bezel surrounding the display is also glossy, which meant that even when we were surfing the Web or typing this review, there were flashes of reflections in the bezel and sometimes on the screen.
The T115’s speakers, located under the front edge of the notebook, didn’t produce impressive sound. When listening to “One Girl Revolution” by Superchick we heard the distinct bass line, but the audio came out tinny and flat; and volume wasn’t great either. We had to hook up external speakers to get passable audio when watching an episode of House via Hulu.
Ports and Webcam
The port spread is what one would expect to find on a netbook-sized system. HDMI and VGA ports line the left side along with a 6-in-1 memory card reader. You’ll also find a USB port that can charge such gadgets as smart phones—even when the notebook is in sleep mode or off—on the left side. Two regular USB ports, Ethernet, power, headphone and microphone jacks line the right side.
Passing the cursor over a thin bar at the top left of the T115’s screen pulls down a tab for the built-in webcam. Sitting above the display, the 0.3-megapixel camera captured dark images and video, even when under good lighting conditions. We tried adjusting the settings, but we never got a better picture.
Users can set up facial recognition as a login from this tab. We attempted to register our face, but the software had a hard time recognizing us, which caused registration to fail several times.
