Toshiba Satellite C-Series is cheap but fails to impress

We’ve seen these laptops advertised during holiday shopping seasons and in store circulars—they’re big, cheap, and they usually feature severely underpowered processors.

The Toshiba Satellite C655D-S5130 is notable because the processor it carries is one of the new AMD Fusion APUs (AMD’s term for a combo CPU/GPU), a platform we’ve previously only seen on 11.6-inch ultraportables such as the HP Pavilion dm1 and the Lenovo ThinkPad x120e.

The C-series is Toshiba’s ultrabudget line, a generic black-box-type laptop with sometimes-decent specs.

Priced at $398, the C655D-S5130 seems at first glance like an intriguing new bargain.

And yet it isn’t: that AMD processor isn’t an E-350 like we saw on those 11-inchers; instead, it’s a lower-powered E-240.

We reviewed the Toshiba Satellite C655-S5049 in last year’s summer retail round-up of laptops, toting a Celeron 900 CPU for only $349.

That configuration had 1GB less RAM than this AMD Fusion variant, but it outperformed the C655D-S5130 in our benchmark tests, despite being less expensive over half a year ago.

This configuration’s upgraded AMD graphics add a little more to the equation, but even they underperform.

They’re not suitable for gaming, and even underwhelm a little when running Flash-based streaming video.

Yes, this is a bargain-basement machine—but you get what you pay for.

This Toshiba Satellite is, at best, a lateral move from those cheapie models you’ve seen advertised in circulars for years.

Not much more, and in a few instances, even a little bit less.

The Toshiba Satellite C-series is a budget laptop, but even considering that, it’s remarkably pedestrian and generic-looking from a design standpoint.

The all-matte-black exterior and interior, moulded in a patterned grid texture, just feels cheap compared to Toshiba’s higher-end models.

Plain black speaker grilles above the flat keyboard, a thick overall case design, and a distressing amount of flex on the sides and at the seams along the front edge of the palmrest make this laptop uninspiring to behold.

The nearly edge-to-edge keyboard and full number pad do make the most of the available space, but the flat keyboard’s mushy keys ruin what otherwise could have been a better experience.

Despite the ample room, the matte inset multitouch touch pad is small, and isn’t even as wide as the thick, round dual buttons below it.

The multitouch Elan software installed on our C655D-S5130 lacks the same diverse gesture vocabulary of higher-end Synaptics touch pads, and the surface area is too small to easily manoeuvre with average adult-size fingers.

The large, bright 15.6-inch inset glossy LCD screen is what probably brought you to consider the C655D-S5130 in the first place over smaller laptops.