The Toshiba Satellite A665-S6094 ($899.99 list, at Best Buy) laptop looks no different than the model we looked at earlier this year, but under the hood it receives a jolt in performance with its quad-core Intel Core i7 processor and discrete ATI Radeon graphics. It doesn't offer a clear performance advantage on mainstream apps compared with competing dual-core models, but it offers a big leap from the Toshiba Satellite A665-S6051 ($799.98 list, 3 stars). Although I think the design could stand to be spiffed up a bit, I was happy to see (and hear) that Toshiba outfitted this A665 model with the same Harman Kardon speakers as the previous iteration. Simply put, they are impressive. For general use where audio quality isn't your sole priority, however, there are better mainstream laptops at this price.
For example, a number of sub-$1,000 laptops are ditching plastic for aluminum chassis. The Satellite A665-S6094 is impressively rigid for a plastic enclosure, but I prefer the look and feel of an aluminum chassis, like the ones found on the 15.6-inch Acer TimelineX AS5820T-5951 ($723 street, 4 stars), 14-inch Asus U45Jc-A1 ($867 street, 4.5 stars), and 17.3-inch HP Pavilion dv7-4083cl ($999.99 list, 4 stars). The Acer and Asus models also offer much more in the way of battery life, which is decidedly not one of the A665-S6094's strong suits.
Design
Sitting on a Best Buy store shelf, the Satellite A665-S6094 isn't likely to catch your eye. Its matte black plastic chassis offers little in the way of adornment. You won't find any color highlights or chrome edges, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The only design features are a textured pattern that runs across the keyboard deck and lid and some bright, white LED lights in the form of a small Satellite logo in the laptop's lower left corner and a stripe of white that runs along the top edge of the touchpad. The LED lighting can be distracting, particularly in low ambient light. Thankfully, you can disable the lighting by turning on Eco mode, which helps extend battery life, in part by lowering display brightness. Once in Eco mode, you can raise the brightness level of the display while still keeping the LEDs off.
The input devices are a mixed bag. The keyboard features isolated or island keys. The keys are nicely spaced, even though the laptop features a dedicated number pad, and they offer great feel. Aiding the typing experience is the stiffness of the chassis; despite being made of plastic instead of a metal, the chassis hardly flexes at all. The touchpad has a matte finish, supports multi-touch gestures, and feels very responsive. The drawback is the mouse buttons; they are generously portioned but look and sound cheap. A loud clack can be heard with every mouse click, and the buttons even rattle when the laptop is jostled. A small button above the touchpad disables the touchpad should you want to use an external mouse.
Above the keyboard is a row of multimedia shortcut keys. The volume keys emit a loud beep when pressed, but you can disable that annoying sound by following this path: TOSHIBA > Utilities > HWSetup > Button Setting > Function Button Sound Notification.
Features
The Satellite A665-S6094 features a 16-inch widescreen display and a 1366 by 768 resolution. The screen has a glossy coating, which can create some glare and reflections, but helps make videos and photos pop. And, indeed, movies look crisp and vivid on the widescreen display, but that's the case with the majority of today's laptops. What sets the Satellite A665-S6094 apart is its impressive audio.
Two Harman Kardon speakers reside above the keyboard behind oval-shaped grills, and they produce booming sound, for a laptop. Most integrated laptop speakers suffice for Web video, are barely passable for a feature-length films (particularly those with soft dialog or loud explosions), and can't cut it for music playback. The A665-S6094's speakers offer enough oomph for movies; we had to turn them down when seated right in front of the laptop. Listening to music is also an enjoyable experience, which is a statement I rarely make when describing laptop audio. In fact, Toshiba outfits the laptop with a new featured called Sleep-and-Music, which lets you run your MP3 player through the laptop's speakers whether the laptop is on, off, or sleeping. Similarly, Sleep-and-Charge lets you charge your USB peripherals from the laptop, even when it's in sleep mode or off.
The laptop offers a useful collection of data and video connections. You get 4 USB 2.0 ports (one of which doubles as an eSATA port), HDMI and VGA ports, and a media card reader and ExpressCard/34 slot. Unlike other similarly priced laptops, including the HP Pavilion dv7-4083cl and Toshiba's own Satellite A665-S6085 ($799.98 list, 4 stars), the A665-S6094 does not offer Blu-ray support, just a run-of-the-mill DVD burner.
The only disappointment among the networking options is the lack of Gigabit Ethernet; you must make do with 10/100 Ethernet. However, wireless connectivity is great, with 802.11n Wi-Fi and WiMax.
Performance
The Toshiba Satellite A665-S6094 features a quad-core Intel Core i7-740QM processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and an entry-level Nvidia GeForce 310M graphics card. The CPU is clocked at 1.73GHz, and with Intel's Turbo Boost, the clockspeed can go as high as 2.93GHz. These components offer competitive mainstream performance, and they represent a significant leg up on the previous Satellite A665D-S6051 and its quad-core AMD chip and integrated ATI graphics. Don't be too quick to assume, however, that a quad-core processor offers an automatic performance advantage against dual-core CPUs. While it's a powerful mobile processor, particularly for the price, many mainstream applications will run just as fast with a modern dual-core chip. The HP Pavilion dv6-3163cl ($899.99 list, 3.5), for instance, uses a dual-core Core i5-460M and edged the Satellite A665-S6094 on our PCMark Vantage, Handbrake, and Photoshop benchmarks. The Satellite A665-S6094 did take top honors on Cinebench R11.5, which put multiple processing cores to good use.
With its entry-level GeForce graphics, we saw only modest framerates on our Crysis and Lost Planet 2 tests. The best score we saw was with Crysis at a low 1024 by 768 resolution, and that was only 22fps. Don't mistake this quad-core mainstream laptop for a gaming machine.
While a quad-core part such as the Intel Core i7-740QM offers more headroom for intensive media editing and encoding applications than a mainstream dual-core chip, one of the drawbacks is power consumption and, thus, battery life. The Satellite A665-S6094 could muster only 2 hours 36 minutes on our MobileMark 2007 battery test. Most mainstream laptops have no trouble surpassing the 4-hour mark.
It's not the most well-rounded laptop, but the Toshiba Satellite A665-S6094 does offer some specific features that hold great appeal. The audio output is second to none at this price, the keyboard is roomy and comfortable, and if you are running applications that will benefit from quad-core processing, this laptop will certainly look attractive. Opt for a dual-core processor at or around this price, however, and you'll find laptops, such as the Editors' Choice HP Pavilion dv7-4083cl, that include a metal chassis, a Blu-ray player, and better battery life.
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Toshiba Satellite A665-S6094 with several other laptops side by side.
• Toshiba Satellite L655-S5096
• Sony VAIO VPC-F136FM/B
• Acer Aspire AS5742Z-4097
• Asus G73JH-BST7
• HP Pavilion dv7-4165dx
• more
As we've seen time and again, AMD-based laptops simply don't perform as well as their similarly priced Intel-based brethren. This, unfortunately, puts the 2.9GHz AMD Phenom II N640-based L675D-S7052 mostly in the back-end of the performance pack. Its PCMark Vantage score of 4,127 can't keep up with the likes of the 2.27GHz Intel Core i3-350M-based