TOSHIBA SATELLITE CL10-B-100
£199 inc VAT • toshiba.co.uk
Small and extremely lightweight, the Satellite CL10-B-100 is an 11.6in budget laptop aimed at buyers who may be tempted by the lure of a Google Chromebook. Compared to even other cheap systems it is limited in performance by the low-power Intel Celeron processor and frugal 2GB memory, the latter unable to be upgraded. But with the help of Microsoft’s free Windows 8.1 with Bing, the £199 price is keen.
Its flash storage is a welcome choice, even if that’s a paltry 32GB eMMC card, with less than half that size actually remaining after the OS, recovery partition and sponsored bloatware – including Microsoft Office, CyberLink Media Player, Evernote, WinZip and McAfee – that together take up precious gigabytes of the tiny drive space.
You can supplement storage either with the time-limited offer of Microsoft OneDrive online space, or by taking advantage of the SDXC card slot to easily add, say, 64GB local storage for under £30.
Build and design
At just under 1.1kg in weight and measuring 20mm thick, the CL10 is a particularly totable slice of laptop, and despite the price build quality is very good. The top deck is smooth plastic with champagne gold finish, the underside a matching but textured moulding, while the lid back has a gloss finish over the same colour.
As you open the lid, the Toshiba’s back is lifted a few millimetres – disconcerting but affording a little more rake that makes typing easier. The keyboard has undersized rectangular keys that we found trickier to type on than full-size keyboards. The action is good though, with positive clicks and a firm unyielding deck for support. The trackpad is a mixed bag – accurate enough but small in size. Its
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real buttons are a merciful relief from low-grade buttonless trackpads that are becoming ubiquitous.
Connectivity is somewhat reduced at two USB, one each 3.0 and 2.0, an HDMI port and SD card slot. Wi-Fi connections will be slowed by the single-stream 11n adaptor.
Performance
Like the Celeron-fulled Acer Extensa, we found raw performance trails that of older smartphones, with Geekbench 3 reporting 1043 and 1824 for single/multi-core modes. The PCMark 8 Home score was around the same too at 2732 points – there may be flash storage inside, but eMMC cards as used in phones and tablets are little better than slow hard disks. Small files move faster though, improving system responsiveness.
Graphics measured better than the Acer despite the same Intel HD Graphics and less memory, averaging 26fps in Batman at its native screen resolution, and 30fps at 720p.
Screen quality appeared better than others in this group, in part because the low 1366x768-pixel count was squeezed into a smaller panel, giving tighter 135ppi. And while colour and contrast ratio were poor (61 percent sRGB and 80:1) we found this glossy screen less irritating than competitors. VERDICT: The little Toshiba has the best build and weighs less than half that of most budget laptops. It may not measure well in benchmarks but the flash drive means the machine feels more responsive in normal use. Add your own SD card and the CL10 becomes viable.