The Toshiba Portege R500 – a couple of years ago – before the netbook world took off – the ultra compact Toshiba Portege R500 was a premium £1600+ laptop – it features a 1.2ghz (or 1.33ghz) core 2 duo processor, built in DVDRW, 12.1″ screen, wireless, 2gb ram, 160gb hd, and even the option of solid state hard drive, before these even were heard of. So it was a fully featured mini laptop rather than a stripped down large netbook. And what’s even more important, and relevant today, is that it is available for around £300 second hand on ebay, which is the price you will pay for a new mid-range netbook. But instead of minimal features, memory, and built to a budget price and build quality you get a premium ultra compact laptop, with premium features.

However, is it any good? Or would you be better off with a “modern” netbook with low power and efficiency built in? Or perhaps even a small laptop with a 12 or 13 inch screen? Continue reading below to find out…

The keyboard is a standard laptop layout without anything obviously wrong (unlike the Vostro 1510), although when you do compare it to normal laptop keyboards it is roughly 1cm smaller, so this does seem to effect touch typing speed.

The speakers are missing – and instead there is only one speaker that seems strained when the volume is at a reasonable level.

The screen seems to have a very poor viewing angle – blacks are grey – the range between white and black (dynamice range) doesn’t seem very good. The resolution is very good though with the same resolution at normal laptops with 15.6″ widescreens. You have to sit in front of the laptop at a very specific viewing angle otherwise it’s difficult to view.

The “power” – the CPUs offer 1.2ghz or 1.33ghz dual core (Core 2). This should be adequate and better than most netbooks.

The Windows score is: 2.2 Overall (the overall number uses the lowest score and not an average – the average would be 3.66 if Windows used this)

CPU calculations: 3.8
Memory (RAM): 4.2
Aero (Desktop) Graphics: 2.2
Gaming graphics: 3.0
Disk performance: 5.1

Noise? The cpu fan is quite noisy when watching BBC iplayer – I wouldn’t really expect a laptop to be strained when watching iplayer and should be able to cope without making noise – not so with this one unfortunately. Most modern laptops are optimised to make minimal noise, even budget laptops such as the Dell Vostro range.

Battery life – says you should get 4 hours out of it. Although this will depend on usage. I got about 4 and a half hours out of it with very light use.

It has wifi, bluetooth, VGA connection, 3 USB (1 powered), firewire (mini), mic / headphone sockets, analog volume control, fingerprint reader, LAN, wifi switch, DVDRW, SD slot, built in microphone? (no webcam), Tested running Windows 7 Professional 32bit.

Size, and weight? It’s small – shorter than an A4 piece of paper in length, but wider than the width of an A4 piece of paper. It’s light as well, with an ultra thin (and fairly wobbly) screen. The screen is roughly half a cm thick, and the whole laptop when the screen is closed is less than an inch thick.

Overall – it could be worth considering. However the screen makes it quite difficult to recommend for anyone who does photography or web design. In fact it’s not great for watching TV or films either. There is a lot of backlight bleeding, and viewing angles are very poor. The fan noise is quite disruptive to watching online tv (especially with the placement of the speaker on the left near to where the fan is) and the volume doesn’t really get loud enough to counter the fan speed at times, especially when the internal speaker distorts above a certain volume.

Finding a similarly high specification netbook could turn out to be quite a lot more expensive. The Samsung NC20 with 12.1″ screen is £349 and uses a VIA Nano processor (1.3ghz), and the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 is £399 and uses an Intel Atom cpu at 1.6ghz, however very few, or probably no netbook actually features an optical drive… making DVD playback somewhat difficult. And when you are looking at spending £350 – £400 you are also in the same price range as normal “entry level” laptops with full size screens, DVDRW, and all the other features you’d want in a laptop such as dual core processor.

However – if you’re looking at spending £350 – £400 on a laptop, you are now able to afford most entry level 15.6″ laptops, or even 12.1″ and 13.3″ Dell Vostro laptops, which are available with 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo processors, and full size keyboards etc. The Dell Vostro v13 – with aluminium body is also quite a stylish laptop available for under £400 – and with low power CPUs and a 1 year warranty this could be a good option. Click the pictures to embiggen.