Review Toshiba

Those basic specs aside, we now take a closer look at this AUO panel, model number B173RW01 V3. The maximum screen brightness of 214 cd/m2 is nothing more than average. Fortunately, the screen is incredibly evenly lit at a 94% brightness distribution. Sony VGP-BPS9/S battery

This model is luckily unaffected by clouding of LEDs or poor brightness distribution that often plagues its competitors of the same price range.Sony VGP-BPS9 battery

Other measurements we took only confirm this picture of a mediocre display. Sony VGP-BPS9A/B battery The black level is a bit too high at 1.1 cd/m2, making blacks appear more gray and bringing down the contrast to a low 193:1. High picture contrast is most important in making films appear more vivid and enjoyable to watch. For other purposes, the colors and sharpness of the picture are perfectly fine and will likely go unnoticed.Sony VGP-BPS9A/S battery

HP Pavilion g7 vs. sRGB (t)We didn't expect the Pavillion to display a very broad range of colors. Still, the image at the right here shows that the HP's color space here covers a good deal of the sRGB reference color space. This means, the notebook is not terrible for a professional applications like image processing.Sony VGP-BPS13A/B battery

Outdoors, the notebook can't quite overcome the reflective rays of the sun. The screen brightness would otherwise have been high enough if it weren't for the glossy screen that makes the display more of a mirror than a computer screen.Sony VGP-BPS13 battery

Finally, the range of viewing angles confirms our suspicious about this being a cheap TN panel. Looking at the screen from the left or the right, the picture remains discernible for viewing angles up to 45o away from the ideal. Sony VGP-BPS13A/Q battery

Vertically, this happens much faster. Even a small tilt away from the ideal position results in color inversion or an over-exposed looking picture (see image below). Get a better impression of this phenomenon by watching the video below.Sony VGP-BPS13/B battery

The hardware within the g7 is not limited by much except for your own imagination. The ample selection of CPUs allows you to extensively customize to match your needs. In addition to older Intel CPUs, AMD processors as well as Intel's new line of Sandy Bridge processors are available for the g7. Sony VGP-BPS13B/B battery

The model we reviewed is equipped with an AMD Phenom II X4 P960 quad-core processor. Running at a base clock rate of 1.8 GHz with only a 2 MB L2-cache it can be considered an inexpensive (but relatively weak) option for multi-core processing. Sony VGP-BPS13B/Q battery

If you're looking for more power, the new Sandy Bridge CPUs—which are manufactured via the ultramodern 32 nm process—might be the way to go with their speedy data retrieval from L3 cache. Sony VGP-BPS13A/S battery

The AMD Phenom processor—found in the particular configuration we're reviewing here—only manages a performance on par with the previous generation of Intel's mobile CPUs, however.Sony VGP-BPS13/Q battery

Moving on to the graphics card, things get a little more interesting. In addition to the on-board AMD Radeon HD 4250 graphics card, we also find the AMD Radeon HD 6470M dedicated graphics card with 1 GB RAM. Sony VGP-BPS8 battery

With 160 stream processors, UVD3 video decoder and DirectX 11 support,Sony VGP-BPS8A battery this GPU proudly sports the latest graphics technology. The manual graphics card switching is not the most convenient way to achieve a good balance between energy efficiency and powerful graphics rendering. Sony VGP-BPS10 battery

In the Catalyst Control Center,Sony VGP-BPS2 battery you can switch between which of the two GPUs is active. The new AMD PowerXpress 4.0 aka BACON (automatic switchable graphics) is not installed. But since BACON is still little more than a prototype, it's probably a good thing you have to manually switch graphics cards—which functions flawlessly by the way.Sony VGP-BPS2A battery

The first tests we ran dealt with the performance of the processor. The single-core performance is particularly limited due to the lack of a L3-cache. The CineBench R10 (64-Bit) benchmark from Maxon only confirms this. Sony VGP-BPS2B battery

Earning a mere 1922 points, the CPU in place here ranks in within the bottom third of our entire database. A very similar score is produced by the Intel Core i3-330M. The current mainstream model, the Core i5-2410M, runs 57.2% more quickly at 4493 points.Sony VGP-BPS2C battery

In the Multi-Thread Rendering,Sony VGP-BPS22 battery the AMD processor here picks up the pace and places closer to average with 6649 points. The new AMD Llano APU A6-3410MX in the HP Pavilion dv6-6110eg earns 7198 points (+ 7.6 %). The dual-core i5 alternative is even faster (+ 29,9 %). Even Intel's current starter model from Intel, the Core i3-2310M, is a bit faster than the P960 (+ 9.3 %).Sony VGP-BPS22A battery