Toshiba isn’t usually associated with making high performance gaming notebooks. They don’t make bad notebooks, it might just be that none of them are particularly shiny. Maybe the Satellite P50t can change that. It’s definitely shiny, with all that aluminium. Taking pictures wasn’t easy either.
Keep reading to find out if it’s worth your time.
Design
There may not be a point in complaining about a high performance notebook being heavy. But there is something about the looks that doesn’t subtly hint that the weight is all part of the style. Compared to the angular lines that appear on competing Alienware and Razer products, the soft curves feel out of place. Gamers like things that resemble military hardware, complete with pointy edges and fighter jet imagery. As it stands, this looks more like an oversized version of a lifestyle notebook. Which is fine, I guess.
A bigger issue is the location of the cooling vent, on the right side of the machine. In other words, it’s right there blowing hot air onto your mouse; which is being covered by your hand. It wouldn’t be too bad if this was a simple mid-range notebook that’s designed for watching movies, but a gaming device it isn’t going to operate at nice low temperatures. To know how it feels, hold your hand next to a car exhaust for a few minutes.
Notably, right handed gamers can now use this machine to experience the pain and suffering left handed people are often subjected to.
Display
The display is extremely dim, and not in the sense that it can’t count to 10. Turning the gamma all the way up to maximum barely does anything for the view. In the case of reading websites, it’s not too bad. It makes staring at the screen for long hours quite bearable. Particularly for people who are chained to sit and write in one spot for many hours.
However, there is a reason smartphones have displays capable of blinding pilots at high altitude. It makes all that light reflected off the touch surface less noticeable. On the P50t, this becomes enough of a problem that you can practically see people standing behind you. Great if you’re on the run from a secret organisation of assassins, not so good if you’re playing a game about being an assassin.
Still, most games do allow for more gamma tweaking; and perhaps it doesn’t take too much time to adjust the settings. Sadly, movie files don’t have the same luxury.
Gaming
Because this is being labelled as a gaming notebook, it should be able to handle games. Packing an NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M isn’t spectacular by any stretch of the imagination. It’s about as good as any other high end machine can produce.
Gaming performance saw frame rates of about 60 fps, at high settings. Pushing it harder proved difficult, since the heat coming off the graphics card was being transmitted to my hand. It would be best to leave graphics at a slightly lower level to reduce this issue.
The keyboard is somewhat problematic in that the key press is too shallow for proper gaming. Meaning that the key is fully pressed before you know it. Not entirely good for gaming where some level of feedback is necessary for maximum performance.
The unusual conclusion
That being said, the keyboard is perfectly comfortable for typing. Each of the keys is given enough space that the likelihood of hitting something else is highly improbable. While the shallow press reduces fatigue when typing long pieces or replying to too many emails. This fact, combined with the decent amount of graphical and processing power makes it good for designers and graphics artists. Something to think about.
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Telegram for more updates and breaking news.
