Toshiba Satellite M60-S8112TD Review (pics, specs)

by Matt Jenson, Wisconsin

When you hear Toshiba, if you had an older model, you instantly think, what a great computer. If you have a newer model, less than two years old, you may be thinking overheating, cheap quality notebook that I'll never even consider. This is what I had feared after I had heard some horror stories about the Satellite M30 and M40 series as well as the P30 series. I had also just had a nightmare of a time with my Satellite 5005, which although was built quite well, overheated after about half an hour of use, but I had also heard some good things, so I decided to give them a shot one more time. The notebook I will be reviewing is the Toshiba Satellite M60-S8112TD. This is a 17" widescreen desktop replacement notebook.

Specs for M60 Reviewed:

• 2.00 GHz Pentium M, 2MB L2 cache, 533 MHz FSB
• 256 MB 533 MHz DDR2 RAM (Upgraded to 1.25GB)
• 60 GB Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 5400 RPM hard drive
• 8X DVD-RW Super-Multi Drive.
• 17" Widescreen XGA with TruBrite (1440x900)
• ATI Mobility Radeon X600SE w/128MB dedicated SDRAM (128MB additional shared system RAM)
• Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG 802.11b/g
• 8-cell 4300 mAh Li-ion Battery
• 6-in-1 card reader
• PC Card and ExpressCard slots
• Windows XP Pro w/SP2

Reasons for Buying

My old computer, a Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504, kept shutting down due to overheating so Toshiba settled a lawsuit, which required sending in the laptop and having it tested and receiving a $1500 credit voucher which was only good on Toshiba models. I wasn't that excited about buying another Toshiba after my first and only laptop experience being a negative one, so I was sure to put a lot of research into this decision. I decided that I wanted at least a 15.4" notebook because I like to play a few games, and liked the larger screen. After looking at the Qosmio F25 and G25, which are Toshiba's multimedia machines, and a few of the Tecra models, their business-oriented machines, I decided on the Satellite series again. I had also considered the Tecra A4 specifically, but it was a little out of my price range. Based on the prior experience with a Pentium III in a notebook, I decided I was going to get a Pentium M processor, which unfortunately Toshiba only uses Intel CPU's so I was stuck with either a Pentium 4, a Celeron, or a Pentium M. Most of the models that Toshiba offered only came with a GMA900 video card, which I was strongly against; I was down to 3 models, the M35X, M40, and M60. The M35X became discontinued, so it was down to the 15.4" M40 and the 17" M60. There was a 20% discount on customizing a M60, so that was the final clincher for me.

Where and How Purchased:

I bought the M60 on ToshibaDirect.com and with the 20% off customization it was $1558.40 plus tax for a total of $1644.11. I customized it with the minimum amount of RAM (256 MB) and ordered a stick of 1 GB from New Egg, and upgraded to a 2.0GHz processor and a 60GB 5400 rpm hard drive with the money saved by upgrading the RAM aftermarket. I think it was a good deal because most 17" notebooks are $1750 or more, especially the one's with dedicated video cards.

Build & Design:

Toshiba Satellite M60 top view (viewlarge image)

The look of the notebook is important to me, but not as important as the build quality and overall value. The M60 looks very stylish to me and I like the color combination Toshiba came up with. The blue lid, black keyboard and silver trim looks very sharp. I also like the fact it has a full number pad. The case feels rather sturdy and doesn't flex much at all. The multimedia and Internet buttons are a nice feature, but I don't use them at all. The case is made of plastic, which is fairly high quality, but not near as sturdy as the magnesium case of my T42 ThinkPad. The notebook is fairly light for a 17" desktop replacement, at 7.5lbs. The case flexes a little when pressing on the lid. I always use it on my lap on the couch, and can use it for hours without it getting too hot or heavy. You can twist the screen slightly if you twist it, but it requires a good amount of effort, and the flexing is minimal.

Size comparison to ThinkPad T42 (viewlarge image)

Screen:

I have the 1400 x 900 resolution 17" screen with TruBrite. It is very nice for watching DVDs and the colors really seem quite bright and the contrast is excellent. I ran dead pixel buddy and was pleased to find that there was no dead or stuck pixels. There is no significant light leakage or uneven backlighting. I have noticed that it does show dust much more than a matte screen does, and if there are any smudges on the screen, they seem to be more noticeable. One tradeoff with the TruBrite and most glossy screens is the glare that you when working outside or in bright areas. It is not that big of a deal to me, but if used in an office building with many windows, it could become distracting.

Speakers:

For a laptop, the speakers are quite nice. It has the harmon/kardon speakers, which my old Satellite had and they are considered to be among the best speakers available in notebooks. There are two front mounted speakers and they sound much better when playing music and watching DVDs than my T42 ThinkPad. Headphones or external speakers are not necessary as the speakers rival external ones unless you want to hear deep bass and for hardcore gaming needs.

Processor and Performance:

It has a 2.0GHz Pentium M processor and easily handles anything that I have thrown at it. It is quite a bit faster starting up than my T42 because it has a faster processor, hard drive and more RAM. It has a 60GB Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 hard drive and 1.25GB of RAM. I ordered it with the standard 256MB of RAM and then ordered 1GB of Kingston Value RAM off NewEgg. It has never locked up on me, or given me the blue screen of death. It never seems to lag at all, and always seems very snappy and responsive. I play Warcraft III as well as Diablo II and some of the older racing games, Need for Speed IV and Test drive 6, and there has never been any frame skipping, even though these games are not very demanding. I run everything at high resolutions and detail settings and it doesn't slow it down one bit. It does it take a while to boot up from shutdown, around 45 to 50 seconds, but I also have a lot of programs running at startup.

Benchmarks:

Below are the results gained from running Super Pi (ftp://pi.super-computing.org/windows/super_pi.zip), a program that forces the laptop's processor to calculate Pi to 2 million digits of accuracy.

Notebook	Time
Toshiba Satellite M60 (2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 39s
Dell Inspiron e1705 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
IBM ThinkPad T43 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s
IBM ThinkPad Z60m(2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 36s
Fujitsu LifeBook N3510 (1.73 GHz Pentium M)	1m 48s
Dell Inspiron 6000D (1.6 GHz Pentium M)	1m 52s
Dell Inspiron 600M (1.6 GHz Pentium M)	2m 10s
HP Pavilion dv4000(1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 39s
HP DV4170us (Pentium M 1.73 GHz)	1m 53s
Sony VAIO S380 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s

PCMark04 and 3DMark05were alsoused to measure processor and graphics performance, below is a table with benchmarks and a comparison to the popular ThinkPadZ60m notebook:

[/TD]

Futuremark PCMark04 Scores
	Toshiba M60(2.0GHz, ATI X600SE w/128MB)	ThinkPadZ60m (2.0 GHz, ATI X600 128MB graphics)
Multithreaded Test 1 / File Compression	3.78 MB/s	3.38 MB/s
Multithreaded Test 1 / File Encryption	29.58 MB/s	28.13 MB/s
Multithreaded Test 2 / File Decompression	25.90 MB/s	24.94MB/s
Multithreaded Test 2 / Image Processing	11.59 MPixels/s	11.45MPixels/s
Multithreaded Test 3 / Virus Scanning	1829.15 MB/s	2025.38MB/s
Multithreaded Test 3 / Grammar Check	3.08KB/s	2.78KB/s
File Decryption	58.50 MB/s	57.15 MB/s
Audio Conversion	2686.67 KB/s	2610.98 KB/s
Web Page Rendering	5.63 Pages/s	5.4 Pages/s
DivX Video Compression	53.19FPS	54.6FPS
Physics Calculation and 3D	190.33FPS	182.77FPS
Graphics Memory - 64 Lines	2037.64FPS	1635.2FPS
Futuremark 3DMark05 Scores
3DMark Score	19553DMarks	16823D Marks
CPU Score	3414 CPUMarks	3426CPUMarks
Gaming Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon	9.0FPS	7.6FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest	5.6FPS	4.9FPS
GT3 - Canyon Flight	9.6FPS	8.2FPS
CPU Tests
CPU Test 1	1.7 FPS	1.7 FPS
CPU Test 2	2.8 FPS	3.0FPS

(view large image)

HDTune Results

(view large image)

Everest Memory Benchmarks

• Read: 3078MB/s bandwidth
• Write: 779MB/s
• Latency: 111.3ns

Heat and Noise:

It doesn't seem to get too hot, but the fan on the bottom can blow some pretty good heat out the back side, especially when you are doing some pretty heavy gaming or CPU intensive tasks. When you first power on the notebook, the fan runs at full speed for about a second or two, but other than that, it is not very noticeable and you can barely tell when it is running and it never runs at full speed. The spot where your right palm rests on the keyboard can get a bit warm. It must be where heat inside the notebook builds up before exiting the fan. It is noticeable, but isn't overly annoying to me. It's never hot enough to be uncomfortable, but you can feel the difference in temperature from where the left and right palms rest. When using it on your lap, it fits very nicely on the lap, but the fan can warm up your right leg, which can get uncomfortable after a few hours of heavy use, but it is never unbearable. The DVD-RW is fairly quiet except when it speeds up to full speed-reading data, but that only lasts a second or two usually. The hard drive makes an audible noise on startup when reading from the disk every few seconds. It is more of a ticking sound and it's just the moving of the head, nothing out of the ordinary, but worth mentioning.

Bottom view and fan view (viewlarge image)

Keyboard and Touchpad:

Toshiba Satellite M60 keyboard (viewlarge image)

The keyboard has a good amount of flex to it, and when you hit a key, if you don't hit it exactly in the center, sometimes, the character won't show up. This is rather annoying, but has gotten significantly better since I first received the notebook. The small right shift key, as well as arrow keys, are a bit annoying to me also, but the arrow keys on the number pad can be used instead. The volume control is on the front side of the notebook as well as the microphone and speaker jacks. The touchpad buttons are a different style from anything that I have seen. It is a solid bezel plastic piece that is cut in two right where the two buttons are. It's not hard to use or flimsy, but I just had never seen it before and thought it was worth mentioning.

Input and Output Ports:

The M60has 3 USB 2.0 ports that have an unusual placement. The one on the right side near the back of the notebook is placed well, but on the back there are two ports in the middle on top of each other. I would have preferred to have them on the right/and or left side, but it's not that big of a deal to me. One very nice feature it has is the 6-in-1-card reader. I am able to take pictures with my SD450 and take the SD card out and plug it right into the reader. It can read SD, mini SD (with adapter), Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Multi Media Card, and xD Picture card. I have used the SD and xD cards. It has a video connector in the back between the USB ports and the mouse port. There is no parallel port. It has a firewire and S-video out ports, as well as modem and a 10/100-network port. On the right side towards the front are the PC Card and ExpressCard slots.

Toshiba Satellite M60 Reviewright side and thickness comparison (viewlarge image)

Toshiba Satellite M60 back side view (viewlarge image)

Wireless:

I got the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG 802.11b/g wireless card because my old laptop didn't have a wireless card and I went wireless so I had to buy a PC card slot wireless card and it stuck out so I got the built in wireless card, which works well. I had the router in my bedroom and I used it all over the house, about 50 feet away and there were about 3 walls between and I still had over 50% signal strength. The on/off switch for the wireless is on the right side towards the rear. I did not get the Bluetooth option and there isn't an infrared port.

Intel wireless card (viewlarge image)

Battery:

I use the battery all the time when I am at home and away then when it gets low, I plug it into the adapter. It has an 8-cell 4300 mAh battery and generally gets about 2 hours of battery life, when playing Warcraft III, I get about an hour and a half to 1 hour and 45 minutes. It would be nice if it could go for three hours, but it is good enough for what I need it for. They didn't offer a larger battery when I bought it so it is flush with the bottom and back and doesn't stick out at all. Toshibas come with a battery saving application called the Toshiba Power Saver. You can customize the default settings based upon how much battery is left. I have them all set to a brightness of 3, which is a bit dim, and it goes up to a brightness of 8 which is the default for when it is plugged in.

Operating System and Software:

I had Windows XP Professional w/SP2 installed because it is recommended for my job. I use the Remote Desktop feature and work recommends it for security reasons. It comes with one recovery/restore DVD with the operating system and all their additional software bundled with it. It comes with Quicken 2005, which I find beneficial because I can do all of my financial recordkeeping with it and it integrates with my credit card and can be imported by my tax return software. It comes with the usual AOL and MSN Internet offers and Sonic burning software and WinDVD Creator 2 and WinDVD player. It also comes with Toshiba Media Player and Toshiba Virtual Sound with has different settings for the sound, which I never use and don't find very helpful. It has the Power Saver software that I mentioned before. It also came with an evaluation version of Microsoft Office, and a greeting card program. It also has Toshiba Assist, which is like a control panel for the Toshiba applications.

Customer Support:

I have not had to call customer support as of yet, but when I called to place my order, they were very polite and knowledgeable. It comes with a standard one-year warranty included in the price, and I did not opt for a longer warranty.

Conclusion:

Overall I like the laptop quite a bit, the few things that I find annoying are just that, annoying, and are not a deal breaker for me. If you want a do it all desktop replacement that can be used not only for watching and burning DVDs and some gaming, but is also light enough to carry wherever you need to go, the M60 is a great fit.

Pros:

• Nice large and bright screen
• Decent battery life
• Capable of gaming
• Relatively light and portable
• Excellent speakers
• Card reader is a nice feature
• Has an ExpressCard slot for future expandability
• S-video out port

Cons:

• Build quality could be a little better
• Keyboard not typing all characters was annoying at first
• Keyboard has a little flex
• Toshiba skimped out on the video card and tends to use older or lower-end technology
• Poor USB port placement

Pricing and Availability Toshiba Satellite M60-S8112TD

 

Excellent review! I'm glad you finally found a Toshiba that actually works for you; as a former 5205 owner, I can definitely commiserate with you about Toshibas built around that time period. The 5205 actually had its own unique set of problems; even though they evidently fixed the heat issue, it had problems with its optical drive, hard drive, and screen. It's also good to see that they finally moved the Windows key to where it belongs.

 

Nice review. The M60 is a good buy for the price.

 

Those are some nice performance numbers from the M60, great review Matt. But that peacock blue lid sure is wickedly bright, kinda funny to see it compared to the ThinkPad, talk about polar opposites in design!

 

Almost 2k in 3DMark05 on the X600SE? That's surprising, congrats. Do you know if it has a 64- or 128-bit memory bus? Sorry for my geek questions . . .

Wonderfully written, I really enjoyed reading the review. Nice pictures, kudos for that.

It's nice that Toshiba gave you a voucher.

Chaz

 

Jensy!!! Great review. ^^; Sounds light years again of my A35.

*****

 

I keep wondering why people are buying widescreen laptops for GAMING ???
Are you brain-washed by commercials or smth?
All older and in fact a big part of the newer games will be streched or with black strips... :/

 

Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone, glad you like it . It was my first review so I tried to make it a good one. I still don't know about that Canon SD450 though, it is so tricky to get just the right picture, and close-ups are a just a pain. Sorry for the terrible close-up quality.

Thanks flanken, jetstar, and Niki that 5005 was such a PITA, they should have given me $2000 for all the crap I had to put up with in those 3 painful years.

Chaz and abaxter, I was surprised at how well it performed myself. I did all of the benchmarks when I first got it with 256MB of RAM also, but I can't find those results. For the 3DMark scores, I overclocked the crap out of it. I would still have much preferred the Canadian model in that regard with the 6600 video card, but I'm probably going to sell it to my brother next year for college anyway and get a new one , so I'll need some recommendations people. I'll have to lookup the bus speed when I get home tonight.

martynas, truth is with the home remodeling going on, and work, I don't have much time to game right now. But games look pretty awesome on both the 15.4" 5005 and my 17" screen now. I usually have my T42 hooked up to a dock at work and so I use a 17" monitor (although not widescreen) so I am used to it. Games look just fine to me on it. What is taking a while to get used to is the 32" Toshiba widescreen LCD TV. I have to pick up an S-video cable and hook it up and play some games, that will be fun .

Thanks again everybody!

Matt

 

to Jenson04:

the most important thing is, that you like it - it's your machine after all

 

I found the keys often not registering more than a little annoying, and the problem didn't get better with use. I even bought As-U-Type to try to solve the problem by correcting mistakes on the fly. But it seems that Toshiba have acknowledged this fault is a design problem. They have just taken my computer away for a keyboard replacement which will hopefully cure the fault.

 

hope that fixes it, it was very annoying at first, but now after about 4 months, it is to the point where it only misses about once out of 40 strokes or so. I'm surprised it doesn't do it more with how springy the keys are.

 

I also got a confirmation that the keyboard is a design problem but they don't have a certified replacement yet around here.
I don't think it gets better, it's just that one can adapt the typing style to it. It is better to "sit on a key" rather than hitting it briefly, once you get used to it you can type without missing out any letters - but the next Toshibas will require at least 1 sec keypress or what???

 

Recently I've had the keyboard replaced (rev 01) and made a BIOS update (1.50). Unfortunately, no improvement regarding the key eating problem (although I've read some computers have been fixed successfully). The local service folks are friendly but have no further instructions what to do. Toshiba seems to have serious quality management problems and seems to be unable to solve such a problem in reasonable time, therefore I can't recommend anyone to buy this notebook.

I'd kindly ask anyone who had this problem fixed successfully to write what exactly needs to be done or to give the contact data of the particular Toshiba service that fixed the computer.

I checked the new P100 (similar concept, similar prices, dual core processor, newer chipset) that has the same keyboard layout and seems to be replacing the M60: the keyboard response is definitely better than that of the M60 with the "fixed" keyboard.
If the keyboard problem is bugging you and you don't mind changing the computer again I'd suggest to wait until the M60 is out of stock and then demand replacement of the faulty computer; you should end up with a brand new P100.