Toshiba NB200-11M review

If you’ve been wondering whether or not to buy a netbook, and you’re reading this before the end of October 2009, then there’s every reason to be tempted by the Toshiba NB200 range right now. Up to that point you can get £50 cashback with your purchase, which means the typical price of £329 inc VAT for this version (the Toshiba NB200-11M) drops down to £279 inc VAT (during the review, we saw it for a few pounds less at Laptops Direct). And at that price, it’s a bargain.

For this laptop is built for work. While machines like the Sony W-Series and Dell Mini 10v both have irritations when the time comes to take them from your bag, the Toshiba NB200 is a pleasure to use.

The keyboard is a particular highlight. While it might look like it’s been designed for style rather than substance, the keys have just enough travel and resistance to help typists race along at top speed. It’s still a shade away from the excellence of the keyboard you’ll find on the Samsung N110, but there’s very little to choose between the two.

Note the wide trackpad too. It’s a little deceptive as the right-hand side and the bottom are a scroll area rather than for controlling your cursor – so if you run your finger down the right of the trackpad, the page you’re looking at scrolls downwards – but once you realise this it becomes easy to jump around the screen.

And this is another highlight. The 10.1in display has a glossy finish, which means that in office conditions you may find yourself distracted by fluorescent strip lights when the desktop backround is dark. But it also helps make the display look vibrant, with photos and video both looking good. There’s no sign of the grain that afflicts lesser netbooks either: it’s clear, sharp and whites look white.

Another sign of this netbook’s usability is its battery life. You can buy the NB200 with a normal battery, which sits flush with the back of the netbook, or an extended one – which adds an extra 2cm to its rear. It also adds weight: with the normal battery in place, the NB200 weighs 1.18kg; with the extended battery it adds up to 1.31kg.

Despite this, we prefer the extended version, because in return you get excellent battery life: a massive 9hrs 42mins in our light-use tests. Toshiba claims the NB200 lasts for around three-and-a-half hours using the normal battery.

Bearing in mind there’s an Atom inside, it’s pretty speedy too. Thanks to a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280, which isn’t dual-core but does support Hyper-Threading, it scored a respectable 0.39 in our benchmarks. That’s enough to ensure office applications run with ease, but more demanding tasks (think video encoding and the like) will take annoyingly long to complete.

It’s helped by the presence of Windows XP Home, which – even with the forthcoming release of Windows 7 – remains an excellent choice for netbooks. Press the Windows key, for instance, and the menu leaps into action, and once you download a faster browser than the supplied Internet Explorer 7 you should find web browsing a similarly speedy experience.

There are a couple of things that prevent us from declaring the NB200 the perfect netbook. One is its styling, which can’t live up to the beauty of Sony’s W-Series: instead of the latter’s subtle matte-finished lid, the NB200 uses a striped, textured design which our style judges weren’t won over by. That said, we deliberately chose to review the blue version, which is nicer looking than the brown or pink versions.

Its chunky design is a similar mix. Although Toshiba rounds off the NB200’s corners, it’s still more square-jawed at the front than all the more style-focused netbooks: the Asus 1008HA being an obvious example. Nor is the Toshiba NB200 overly slim, measuring 31mm thick at the rear and 23mm at the front.

If you’re one of the people – 61% according to a recent PC Pro survey – who occasionally listens to music on your laptop, you’ll be underwhelmed by the fidelity of the speakers. These are integrated into the base of the netbook and lack any clarity, so you’ll probably resort to the headphone jack on the left-hand side of the chassis.

It’s kept company by a 10/100 Ethernet port, microphone jack, D-SUB and one of the three USB ports Toshiba includes. The left-hand USB port handily supports “Sleep-and-Charge”, too, which means you can charge up your mobile phone even when the netbook is lying dormant in your bag.

As with all netbooks, aside from the HP Minis with their corporate aspirations, this is an all-plastic affair, and that means it can feel flimsy in places. Press down on the wristrest, for example, and there’s a distinct amount of flex. Toshiba does go against the trend, however, by including extras such as built-in hard-disk protection: if you drop the NB200, you can be sure the hard disk’s read/write head will be safely tucked away.

This is kept company by a number of other utilities – including the Toshiba PC Diagnostic Tool and a wireless LAN utility to manage your connections – but the highlight is Microsoft Works 9. While no match for Word or the rest of Microsoft’s Office suite, this provides a basic word processor, spreadsheet, database and personal organiser.

We have our criticisms of the NB200, but the fact remains that it’s a high-quality netbook for a very attractive price – if you include the current cashback offer. The only thing to bear in mind before buying is that Windows 7 netbooks are about to flood the market, but if you can live without Microsoft’s latest OS then this makes a fine alternative to the A-Listed Samsung N110.

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