Toshiba NB205 reviewed – one of the best netbooks yet?
June 17, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Toshiba’s Mini NB205 netbook for the US market is essentially the same model as the Japanese SKU (Dynabook UX) and the European SKU (NB200). The 10-inch netbook is Toshiba’s follow-on from its first entry in the netbook space, its 8.9-inch NB100. Laptop Mag has published a full review of the NB205 and was full of praise of Toshiba’s 10-inch effort.
According to reviewer Joanna Stern, the netbook “soars past the competition” and she admired the “stunning design, stellar keyboard, and the longest battery life of any netbook to date”. Pretty convincing stuff, although with the last point, we already know that the MSI Wind U115 has the longest netbook battery life from other benchmarks we’ve seen. The NB205 managed to last for a respectable 8.5 hours on its 6-cell battery.
The more expensive SKU (NB205-N310) at $399 has a metallic textured finish, a chrome hinge, chiclet keyboard and will be available in four different colours (Sable Brown, Frost White, Indigo Blue and Posh Pink). The cheaper mini NB205-N210 netbook ($349) has a fusion finish in Black Onyx, comes with a flat keyboard rather than chiclet with black matte finish.
A few minor negative points include the big screen bezel and long boot times. The performance using the N280 Atom CPU is also among its peers. We’re hoping to get our hands on the UK SKU (NB200) at some point soon to find out just how well it stands against the competition.
June 29th, 2009 6:11 PM
Hi
Does anybody know whether this eepc can run linux?
July 21st, 2009 10:29 PM
Yes it can antonio
July 27th, 2009 11:47 PM
I bought a Toshiba NB205 last month, upgraded the RAM to 2GB, wiped Windows, installed Ubuntu, and fell in love. 🙂 VirtualBox enables me to enjoy iTunes, my iPod, and my Polar FT80 watch; Ubuntu handles everything else. It even recognized and installed my Verizon wireless modem USB dongle upon insertion.
Part of me wishes I had stuck with Windows but that’s only because I have yet to find a way to enable the hard drive protection 3D accelerometer under Linux. That’s not a big deal to me. When everything else about the laptop is perfect (for me), I can’t find it in my heart to gripe about the accelerometer.
July 31st, 2009 12:57 PM
when will it lauch into the UK market?
July 31st, 2009 1:15 PM
It’s already out in the UK under the NB200 model name – exactly same model.