Toshiba Tecra A6

In this crop of conservatively designed notebooks, the 5.5-pound Toshiba Tecra A6 comes the closest to sexy. The glossy silver-metallic-flake paint job would look just as at home on an Audi, and we love the 14.1-inch widescreen panel. The Tecra doesn’t have a wireless broadband option, and performance and battery life were on the low side for this group. At only $1,149 (as tested), you get a lot for your money.

The 1280 x 768-pixel LCD is comfortable on the eyes, and the low profile means that you’ll use the Tecra A6 worry-free on an airplane tray table. Watching movies is a treat; the panel delivered rich, vivid colors, with very little smearing on actions scenes in our tests. The deck-mounted speakers are adequate for business audio, though better speakers with more bass would be a welcome complement to the gorgeous display.

The full-sized keyboard has a good feel, but its touchpad is the only pointing device. The volume dial on the machine’s front edge is a welcome touch, as is the side-mounted memory card reader. The low price of our model gets you an adequate 60GB hard drive, and even though a DVD burner is not available on the A6-S513, you can get it as a build-to-order model on Toshiba’s Web site for an additional $80.

Toshiba has not scrimped when it comes to durability or security. The keyboard is spill-resistant, and the hard drive features an accelerometer that parks the heads should the system fall. In addition to TPM 1.2, the Tecra has a fingerprint reader, and you can order it with the company’s HDLock feature. With HDLock, the hard drive data remains encrypted and inaccessible except to those with the proper password and USB dongle, called an A-Key.

Performance from the Tecra A6’s single-core 1.66-GHz Intel Core Solo Processor T1300 and Intel GMA 950 graphics engine was, predictably, on the low side for this group of dual-core entries, but not alarmingly so. For $40 more, you can configure this system with a 1.66-GHz Core Duo processor. Battery life from the six-cell battery at barely three hours was disappointingly low.

Still, for business buyers on a budget, the Tecra A6 delivers the basics and then some and a beautiful widescreen to boot.

Similar Business Notebooks:
Dell Latitude D620
Fujitsu Lifebook S7020D
Gateway M465-E
Lenovo Thinkpad T60
Toshiba Tecra A6