Toshiba Satellite C55T-B5110 15.6″ Laptop with Pentium

The Toshiba Satellite C55T-B5110 is a low-cost 15.6-inch laptop. It has an admirable feature set, including touchscreen display, a large 750GB hard drive, satisfactory amount of 4GB RAM, DVD burner and all ports, slots, and connectivity features the average user might need. And all that at a low 400-dollar price point. However, for $50 more its C55T-B5109 sibling offers faster performance so it appears to be a batter buying choice. Here’s why.

The C55T-B5110 comes with the Intel Pentium N3530 quad-core, whereas the B5109 includes the Intel Core i3-4005U dual-core. But, the number of cores in this case doesn’t mean much. The i3 is noticeably faster. It scores around 2,200 PassMark benchmark points, while the Pentium is at about 1,700. The N3530 is actually a power-efficient “Bay Trail” part, which is designed to provide a long battery life and affordability. The trade-off is performance. It’s similar to processors in the common Intel Atom “Bay Trail” powered tablets. On the other hand, the i3-4005U is a real laptop-use chip. It’s not a high-end part by no means, but benchmark numbers speak themselves about advantage over the N3530. In the real life use, this means faster completion of more complex tasks such as image and video editing or file conversion. In addition, the i3 has way better integrated graphics, which can be even used for some demanding games on lower settings. That’s not the case with the Pentium. In web browsing, email, writing essays, homework, and multimedia playback, the difference won’t be so visible.

On the positive side for the Toshiba C55T-B5110, the battery life should be longer on it. But we have no info on it at the time of this writing. However, since this kind of laptops are mostly held on desks and plugged into power outlets, this probably isn’t so important for the vast majority of users.

In other aspects these plastic-cladded 1.1″ thin notebooks with a weight of 4.9 pounds are pretty much identical. They are prime examples of inexpensive full-size laptops. The screen has a 1366-by-768 pixel count, which is a standard resolution for the budget laptop category. As usual, there’s a spacious keyboard with numeric pad, stereo speakers, web camera, Wi-Fi wireless and wired LAN network support, HDMI and VGA video output, and a multi-in-1 media card reader. There are three USB connectors on this laptop. A minor omission on the C55T-B5110 is a lack of Bluetooth, which is present on the i3-based model.

Overall, the B5109 is the way to go for the most laptop shoppers who generally like the Toshiba C55 series. But, if you really want to save 50 bucks, the B5110 won’t disappoint you. You’ll get a well-rounded laptop with sufficient computing potential for everyday home use and a bit of modern technology such as touch-enabled display. Still, you need to keep in mind that there are many other similar 15.6″ options on the market at even lower price points.