Toshiba's Satellite range of notebooks has undergone a refresh recently, with several new series of models added to the range. One of these is the A210 series, a stylish range of laptops aimed at the home user. Our review sample, the 12U, sits in the middle of a four-model family.

Despite the sub-£500 price tag, the A210-12U is a well built, stylish looking notebook in its gloss, metallic, onyx blue and silver finish, set off nicely by blue, back-lit system indicators and a back-lit Satellite logo.

At the heart of the A210-12U sits a dual core AMD Turion X2 TL-52 processor which is clocked at 1.60GHz with an 800MHz FSB and 1MB L2 cache. Backing this up is an ATI RS690M/SB600 chipset combination and 2GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 memory, which is an impressive amount given the price tag.

All of which gives the A210-12U no more than average performance, but it's sufficient for most office applications, although you may find it struggling a bit when it comes to something like picture or video manipulation.

Similarly, the graphics performance is nothing to write home about, but then again the A210-12U is an all-rounder rather than a frame-hungry gaming monster. Powering the graphics is ATI's Radeon X1200 chipset which has 128MB of dedicated video memory plus the ability to use up to 700MB of system memory. Even so, the best you can say is that at least you can use the Aero feature of the pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium operating system without any problems.

The screen is a 15.4-inch widescreen unit and is pixel-sharp thanks to its TruBrite coating and 1,280 by 800 pixel resolution.

Both the keyboard and trackpad are well built and positioned, and both are nice and responsive to the touch when typing. Two mouse buttons sit under the trackpad while above the keyboard sit two speakers which are part of the Toshiba Bass Enhanced Sound System.

There's also a multimedia bar that holds six Easy Keys for launching a Web browser, launching the CD/DVD, Play/Pause, Stop, Rewind and Forward. The A210 also features Microsoft's Windows HotStart, allowing you to play music or watch films without booting into Window itself.

For storage there is a 5,400rpm hard disk and a built-in 8x Pioneer dual layer DVD burner for backups. In addition to these there is an Express card slot and a 6-in-1 card reader built into the front panel.

The rear of the chassis is devoid of any ports so everything is dispersed around the remaining three sides. Joining the card reader on the front panel are two audio ports and a hardware volume control. The majority of the remaining ports are housed in the left hand side; VGA, S-Video, LAN, two USB 2.0 ports, the card slot and a 4-pin FireWire port. The right side makes do with just two more USB ports and the modem port, joining the optical drive.

All the usual suspects are there when it comes to getting the A210-12U to talk to the outside world; 802.11b/g WiFi, 10/100Mbps wired Ethernet and a V.92 modem.

As usual with a Toshiba notebook, all the software to get you up and running is pre-installed; Norton Internet Security 2007, Ulead DVD MovieWriter and Microsoft Works 8.5. This is in addition to all the Toshiba software and utilities that help to keep your Satellite up and running.

Toshiba's A210-12U would make an ideal laptop for people not interested in playing games on their notebook but wanting a system that does all the basics well. It offers a great blend of build quality and price.