Visual look and discussion
Difficult to tell from the above picture but the Toshiba Satellite Pro A300-15B ships with a carbon-fibre-like cover. Give it a push and you'll immediately note that it's plastic.
That said, the laptop feels sturdy enough on first appearance. The multi-card reader, audio ports, and volume wheel are located on the front, just where you would use them. There's also a handy switch that toggles wireless connectivity. There is no pre-installed Bluetooth connectivity on this model, however.
The majority of the ports line the left-hand side. Outputs include HDMI, S-Video, and VGA, which are good. The second-from-right input is a handy port-doubler which functions as both an eSATA and USB2.0, for super-fast transfers to and from the laptop's drive. All USB ports features Toshiba's Sleep-and-Charge technology, where USB devices can be charged without having the machine switched on.
Nothing on the rear section, though, and it's down to the way the screen's hinge works. Open it up and it obscures the rear section, leaving no room for ports.
A couple of further USB2.0 ports, bringing the complement up to four, line the right-hand portion. The power jack needs to be inserted firmly into the inlet for the mains to provide the necessary juice, so be aware of that.
The laptop is near-silent in a 2D environment and emits a fairly low and consistent hum as the fan(s) spin up when gaming; nothing for all but the most silence-seeking individuals to worry about.
As a counterpoint to the above statement, a Pioneer optical drive writes and reads to the usual DVD-based formats, and it's rather zippy at transfers, but it's horribly noticeable when playing back DVDs. What makes it worse is that it continually spins up and down.
Outfitted with 4GB of RAM we see little reason for users to tinker with the insides, but access to various parts of the laptop is made relatively straightforward.
The A300D tipped our scales at 2.91kg which is just a touch above average for a laptop with a 15.4in display.
Housed at the top, the battery's 43WHr capacity is somewhat stingy for a mid-range machine with discrete graphics, and that doesn't bode well for the battery life.
Open up the lid and you're greeted with more mock carbon-fibre finish. Note, too, that it smudges ridiculously easily. Stray reflections exacerbate matters, showing each smudge in glorious detail, and it's just as well that Toshiba bundles in a cleaning cloth.
Each side-mounted port is represented by a symbol on the top, making it easy to connect up devices without peering to one side.
One aspect we didn't take to was the quality of the trackpad buttons - they were rounded and required a firm press for them to function correctly.
Being a consumer-oriented model, the A300D-15B has all manner of lights and shortcut buttons on the top. They're pretty useful, we suppose, but it does seem like a case of style over substance.
