Toshiba Satellite NB15t (A1302) – New Touch Mini Laptop

Toshiba Satellite NB15t A1302

Toshiba has released the entry-level Satellite NB15t mini-laptop with a 11.6-inch touchscreen display. It’s available in stores now in form of the NB15t-A1302 model with the Intel Celeron N2810 dual-core processor at 2GHz, 4GB of RAM memory, and a 500GB hard drive.

The screen supports 5-point multitouch input and has a resolution of 1,366-by-768 pixels. Other features include stereo speakers with DTS Sound technology, a 720p web camera, three USB ports (1 USB 3.0 + 2 USB 2.0 ), VGA and HDMI video connectors, and a multiformat media card reader. For Internet, the NB15t-A1302 uses Wi-Fi and Ethernet LAN, while for external devices there’s built-in Bluetooth.

Power autonomy is provided by a 3-cell/24Wh Lithium Ion battery pack, but Toshiba hasn’t published battery life info. The battery isn’t user replaceable, but HDD and RAM can be upgraded easily, since there are openings on the bottom for that purpose.

The Satellite NB15t series notebook PCs are made of plastics. They have gray lid, palmrests, and touchpad, while the chiclet style keyboard (without backlight) is done up in black color. The whole package weighs 3.3 pounds and the laptop is 1″ thin.

Regarding performance, it’s worth noting that the N2810 is an entry CPU, just like all other Celeron-series chips. It has a PassMark score of 959, which is quite low even for a Celeron. However, the laptop is also expected to be available with some faster processors, such as the Intel Pentium and Core i3.

Overall, the NB15t-A1302 is a well built no-frills ultraportable, but the current price of $380 is a bit high for the given specs and features. For comparison’s sake, the similar Asus X200CA-HCL1104 is currently selling for only $250 and was on a discounted sale for $200. True, the Asus does have a smaller 320GB hard drive, but the CPU inside is the Celeron 1007U with a better performance and PassMark score of 1,474 points. If you’re willing to spend around $380 on a small Windows 8 mobile PC anyway, a good alternative to the Toshiba NB15t is the Asus T100 laptop-tablet hybrid, which offers a detachable 10.1″ screen, the Intel Atom Z3740 processor (1,081 PassMark score), 2GB of RAM, 32 or 64GB of internal Flash memory based storage, and a free copy of Microsoft Office.

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