Toshiba Satellite P75-A7200 A Fast Desktop Replacement

With tablets and Ultraportables garnering so much attention, you might not have noticed how thin and light desktop replacements have become. You'll need an extra-tall backpack to accommodate the Toshiba Satellite P75-A7200 (go.pcworld.com/toshibap75) with its 17.3-inch display, but this machine actually weighs two ounces less than Dell's Latitude E6540 (go.pcworld.com/dellE6540), which has only a 15.5-inch screen.

Toshiba Satellite P75-A7200

Okay, so 7.5 pounds with the AC adapter won't win over any MacBook Air fans. But for many, this laptop's extra screen real estate, super-comfortable keyboard, and second hard drive bay will make it worthwhile to tote around a couple of extra pounds.

The Satellite P75-A7200 houses Intel's fully threaded quad-core Core i7-4700QM CPU feeding off of 8MB of DDR3/1600 memory. The hard drive is a 750GB, 5400-rpm unit that delivers capacity but not scintillating performance. Put an SSD in this laptop, and it'll scream.

That brings us to one of the major perquisites of this particular desktop replacement: a second drive bay. Loosen a single captive screw on the P75-A7200's bottom access panel, and not only can you easily add an SSD or second hard drive, you'll find two open SODIMM slots for adding more memory. You can't make up for the absence of a discrete graphics processor, though; Toshiba relies entirely on integrated graphics.

The display is a large (17.3-inch), 1920 by 1080 widescreen (non-touch), but I was disappointed to see only a DVD burner in its chassis. A Blu-ray player/DVD burner would have taken better advantage of that screen. That said, video looks superb.

The larger screen, comfortable keyboard, and second hard drive make a couple of extra pounds worthwhile.

The P75-A7200 delivered a Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 279 on our WorldBench 8.1 test suite. Compared to similar laptops running hard drives, that's a good score. Subjectively, the P75-A7200 feels responsive, especially after the Windows 8 Home operating system has finished caching. I can't say the same about its gaming performance. BioShock Infinite chugged along at 38 frames per second even at a resolution of 1024 by 768. But that's to be expected with Intel's integrated graphics, fourth-generation HD 4600 or no. If you really want to game, you need a dedicated AMD or Nvidia GPU.

The P75-A7200's 3-hour, 24-minute battery life is disappointing, considering its reliance on integrated graphics.

At 15.5 inches, Toshiba's Satellite P75-A7200 is thicker than it should be, considering that it relies on integrated graphics.

The P75-A7200's external connections are mostly top-notch: It has four USB ports and all of them are 3.0. It also has both VGA and HDMI output, as well as an SDHC card slot.

The Satellite P75-A7200's ergonomics rise almost to Lenovo quality: The keyboard has a slightly soft feel, but it took only a minute or two to adjust to it and set up a good typing rhythm. The touchpad is first-rate, with no perceivable wobble and just the right amount of resistance when you press down to click.

There's a lot to like about the Satellite P75-A7200. It's affordable, fast out of the box, easily made faster with more memory and an SSD, and the display and input ergonomics are first rate. If Toshiba had included discrete graphics, this machine would be a major winner.

But if you don't intend to play hard-core games on your desktop replacement, that might not matter.

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