Review: Toshiba Satellite Radius P55W-C

If the Toshiba Satellite Radius P55W-C looks and sounds familiar, it should: It's an upgrade of the Toshiba Satellite Radius P55W-B that I reviewed almost exactly one year ago.

Aside from cosmetic changes (a dark gray color scheme in lieu of lighter/silvery tones), a significant upgrade to the LCD (more on this later), and Windows 10, it's the same Satellite P-Series you know and love. Well, tolerate without too many complaints, anyway.

The big selling point remains its two-in-one status. With a full 10-point touchscreen and 360-degree hinge, you can use the P55W as a laptop, a slate, or in tent mode for media viewing. The big, 15.6-inch screen makes it a better portable TV than most, and the addition of a numeric keypad gives you more room to stretch out for hardcore spreadsheeting.

The big switch is the screen, which now boasts 4K resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. Windows 10 is a little better prepared for this level of detail than Windows 8 (and earlier), which means you won't suffer quite as much through ultra-tiny dialogue boxes if you use it at full resolution. That said, unless you're watching 4K content (which you're not) it's easier to get around if you knock the resolution down a few ticks. The sacrifice of losing some windowing real estate is worth the added usability.

Windows 10 is the other big change, though since the upgrade is free it's not really much of a sell. However, there's some comfort in knowing all of the machine's components will actually work with Win10, said the guy whose new laptop lost its webcam to a Windows 10 driver issue. Some minor component upgrades—a fifth generation Core i7 processor, a bump up to 12GB of RAM, and switching from a 1TB disk drive to a 512GB SSD provide some punch in the benchmark department. All told, the P55W-C tested at about 30 percent faster than the P55W-B. (Though you still shouldn't expect to use it for serious gaming, particularly at full resolution.)

Toshiba

The P55W remains a bit of a hulk, though at 4.5 pounds it has shaved about a third of a pound since last year. Screen brightness has improved by 24 percent, though it still isn't a champ among its peers. Audio is loud and clear, and even the keyboard feels a bit more solid. The new P55W is a millimeter thicker than its predecessor, and while that's probably been handed over to the LCD panel, it's possible some effort has been made to beef up the travel and responsiveness on the keyboard. Whatever's been done, it's a solid enough touch typer now and considerably better than most ultralights.

Three USB ports (two 3.0, one 2.0), HDMI, and an SD card slot remain the same as last year's model—almost. Bizarrely, the 2014 P55W had three USB 3.0 ports. Dropping one of them down to a USB 2.0 port in 2015 is something I can't readily explain.

The P55W takes its only real step back with battery life. While the P55W-B clocked over 6.5 hours of run time, I didn't muster even four hours with the P55W-C. A brighter, more advanced display would eat up some of that time, but the move to an SSD ought to balance it out for the most part. Guess not. That said, four hours isn't bad for this class of machine, but it ranks as merely average.

The P55W remains most appropriate to a user with a particular set of needs: someone who wants ultra-high resolution and convertible tablet features, but doesn't need superb performance or mind extra bulk in his bag. I can picture this guy, but have to close my eyes really hard to do it.