Toshiba Satellite S855-S5170 15.6-Inch Laptop (Ice Blue Brushed Aluminum)

I've had this for about a month and so far, I don't have many complaints. I've owned 17" laptops the past few years and while the larger screen is nice, they're just a little too bulky to be taking it everywhere. The 15.6" size is perfect for my needs and is considerably lighter.

The Intel i7-3630QM processor is incredibly fast. Everything loads instantly (Photoshop, databases, ect). The screen looks great but it seems a little muted compared to my Dell laptop. The touchpad tracks much better than others I've used but nothing compares to a regular mouse.

Windows 8 is not as bad as I thought. I didn't have an issue installing/running software from my Windows 7 laptop but the big issue is the new "Start Menu" which appears to be designed for touch screen devices. Installing Classic Shell gave me back the familiar Start Menu that I've grown accustomed to since Windows 95.

The S855-S5170 comes with a dedicated graphics card. If the dedicated graphics card is not a must, save $50 by going with the nearly identical S855-S5168 which uses the integrated Intel HD Graphics Card.

CONS:

-Speakers compared to my Dell laptop, they're terrible. I'm not an audiophile by any means but I like to understand what I'm listening to. The Logitech Z305 Laptop speaker solved this issue.

-Bulky battery charger. Almost twice the size & weight of my Dell charger.

-Side charging port.

I owned a Toshiba and an HP laptop in recent years (my son adopted my HP). The performance of this Toshiba is good, the style is fine, the touchpad is smooth although I use an extra monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse, and the price was great. I also added Office 2013 and a 3 year Toshiba service/accidental damage contract. I use it for both home and work tasks.

What I really find odd is Windows 8. I learned how to navigate pretty quickly using the icon-based navigation (if you have a smart phone, you'll pick it up). Switching back and forth between the Windows 8 app screen to the traditional desktop is odd. The app screen replaced the Ribbon from Windows 7. It make more sense if you get a touch-screen laptop, but I've grown accustomed to it. I didn't buy a touchscreen laptop because I couldn't find one with the processor speed, RAM, and hard drive space I needed at a reasonable price.

It's also weird because if I use the Netflix App, I can't "exit" out of it it just stays there in the background. Some other apps do the same. I just ignore them and move on. There are plenty of video tutorials to walk you through Windows 8.

Buy Toshiba Satellite S855-S5170 15.6-Inch Laptop (Ice Blue Brushed Aluminum) Now

I am very pleased with with the computer. I like the size, weight, etc. I don't care for the glare the screen produces, but there are a number of fixes for that. It's too bad that I did not order it with Windows 7. I have used Windows for years and find Windows 8 to be very disappointing.

Read Best Reviews of Toshiba Satellite S855-S5170 15.6-Inch Laptop (Ice Blue Brushed Aluminum) Here

The Toshiba Satellite S855-S5170 boasts an impressive feature set for a laptop under $1000 quad-core i7 @ 2.4 Ghz (automatically overclocks itself to as much as 3.4 Ghz on demand), 8GB RAM, 2 GB Radeon video (outstanding gaming performance!!), 1 TB HDD (plenty of storage, but the drive is a bit slow), bigger 15.6" screen, full size keyboard with separate num-pad, and the list goes on. It runs Windows 8 very solidly (first thing I did was install a Windows 7 style start-menu shell however), and includes the typical pre-installed bloat ware, all of which I uninstalled in order to use free-ware of similar functionality.

On the downside, I was disappointed to find the Ice Blue Brushed Aluminum areas only included the palm rest and lid-cover. The rest is covered in black plastic or an Ice Blue plastic speaker grill. A full aluminum enclosure (ala a MacBook Pro) would have been much nicer, but I'm sure that would have blown the price point by quite a bit. Unfortunately, the black plastic backing plate feels a bit "squishy", as does the entire keyboard surface (which is not back lit boohoo). The black plastic bezel around the screen glass also feels like it could come off if snagged on something by accident. Two other small gripes the power button doesn't illuminate to show whether the system is on, asleep, or off (there is an LED on the front for that), and the button to open the DVD drive is recessed quite a bit and hard to press. Also, on occasion when waking from sleep mode with the lid closed, the video screen will either flicker, or be off-set, or both, as if the cable going from the GPU to the LCD unit was a bit loose. Closing and re-opening the lid seems to fix this, but I'm surprised to find this type of problem in a brand new laptop.

I give it 4/5 stars because the system is powerful and fast enough for gaming and video editing (my two priorities), has oodles of storage space, plenty of RAM to get going (I'll max it to 16GB next Christmas probably), battery life is about 4.5 hours before drained, the screen is bright and large and the separate num-pad is great. Fit and finish is a bit chintzy, so I'm taking 1 star off for that. For the price, it's a very strong Windows Laptop, and I would buy again.

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Good gaming pc with the new windows 8 with nice blue paint overall awsomes so I am glad I purchased this computer it is an affordable gaming computer and worth it

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