Verdict: Close to being a great laptop, but let down by insufficient 3D firepower

Although there are some signs of Apple's influence in the P10 - note the glowing blue backlit power button and the white surround for the keyboard and touchpad - we can't really accuse Toshiba of copying anyone. This beast of a laptop, which weighs a hefty 3.6kg and measures 363mm across, has a style all of its own, with the black-and-silver insides complemented by a blue, metal alloy lid. It sounds like it shouldn't work, but somehow it does.

The width of the Satellite is put to good use by a 15.4in screen with a whopping 1,920 x 1,200 resolution. This means there's plenty of room for having two windows open, side by side, although you'll need good eyesight to read the small text. It's a little disappointing that Toshiba hasn't put the width to better use with the keyboard, which only has a small spacebar and a single-height enter key - such sacrifices simply aren't necessary. Anyone who frequently scrolls through web pages will also mourn the lack of a scroll button between the two mouse-click keys.

Still, these issues become forgivable as soon as you load up a DVD. The wide screen makes films look fantastic, and the sound is impressive for a laptop. Providing you're not playing a recent release, you should be blown away when playing games too. The screen has a fast enough response time; the problem is the graphics chip, as the Nvidia GeForce FX Go 5200 is stretched a little far by demanding games such as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

You needn't fear about everyday speed, as the 3GHz Pentium 4 chip blasted through all of our benchmarks with ease; in fact, this is the fastest laptop we've seen when it comes to audio and video compression. It would have been nice to see an 80GB rather than a 60GB hard disk, considering the price, but any disappointment here was allayed by the DVD writer - even if it does only write to DVD-R and DVD-RW, and not +R and +RW.

There are plenty more positives too. Although it's not a laptop you'd want to carry around all day, if you want to use the Satellite away from a power supply then it will last a respectable time - almost three hours in our light-use tests. There's also 802.11b WiFi built in as standard.

Another bonus is Microsoft Works Suite 2003, which includes Word XP, Money 2003 and Encarta 2003. It's just a shame the P10 doesn't have more grunt in 3D games.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

• Intel DG45FC - Motherboards
• Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD - Hard disks / storage
• OCZ Core Series 30GB - Hard disks / storage
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
• Multiwinia - Games