Toshiba Tecra A11 review

Toshiba’s Tecra Range is designed for the business community and is aimed at providing solid and reliable work horses that get the job done.

As such you won’t find any of the shiny bells and whistles that you would expect from Toshiba’s consumer focussed Satellite series, the Tecra range is for work, not play.

The Tecra A11 is a powerful machine with an Intel Core i3 – i5 processor, 2 Gb RAM and up to a 320 Gb hard drive. It comes with a 15 inch screen and is presented in a plain black chassis.

What we like best

The A11 might not be the prettiest thing you’ll ever see but the performance really impresses.

The new iCore processors are capable of shredding through tasks at a considerable rate. This is thanks to their excellent ability to over-clock automatically up to 2.93 GHz.

You will find some useful options on the Tecra A11, such as the ability to expand the RAM to 8 Gb. Meanwhile the Intel HM55 Express Chipset with an Intel Graphics Media Card Accelerator will provide you with a more than adequate graphics package for a business laptop.

The keyboard is very comfortable to use and, although it has some flex, manages to feel like it belongs to a more expensive laptop than this one. In fact when you take into account this laptop’s excellent performance, its usability and good range of ports, then the very reasonable £700 price tag has to be considered one of its best features.

What we like least

Although the Tecra A11 comes with a decent size 15.6 inch screen and has a nice anti-glare matt finish with 16:9 aspect ratio the 1366 x 768 resolution was unimpressive and not suitable for any serious graphics work.

It only weighs 2.5 Kg but even so the overall size of the A11 means that you will have trouble with it if you intend to use it as a portable machine.

Apart from that there is an air of the ‘no-frills’ about the build quality on the Tecra A11, but I suppose that savings have to come from somewhere.