Toshiba Mini NB305 N410BL 10 1 Inch Royal Blue Netbook 11 Hours of Battery Life

The Toshiba Mini NB305-N410BL Netbook is ultra-portable, ultra-light, and ultra-ready to travel anywhere you want to go! This Toshiba Netbook comes running an Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz mobile processor and 1GB of DDR2 memory. That’s enough to enjoy light computer usage wherever you travel! The Toshiba Mini NB305-N410BL Netbook weighs only 2.6 pounds, making it one of the lightest mobile PC solutions on the market. It also has 250GB SATA Hard Drive and media card reader so you can store, share or load up digital devices on the go. Stay connected with integrated 802.11b/g/n wireless and webcam.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Great Netbook, Some lingering power issues
I’ve been using this for about a month now, and I’m definitely satisfied with my purchase. It’s a fantastic netbook: Windows 7 runs smooth and fast, the chiclet keyboard is roomy and comfortable, and all the other major elements are polished and functional.

My issue with the NB305, is the battery life, not so much while the computer is in use, but when it is hibernating or sleeping. When you’re using it, the battery lasts a long time especially in so-called “eco mode” which adjusts the power settings automatically for maximum battery life, as opposed to maximum performance. Strangely, the issue I have with the battery, which is my only real gripe about the NB305 at all, is that it seems to drain inordinately large amounts of battery while it is in standby. If you simply close the screen when you are done with any given session, which I generally do, you’ll find the battery significantly drained if you open it back up a couple hours later. Even in hibernate, it seems to eat power. You have to go through shut down before packing it up, and then you will find it lasts much longer.

Obviously, this isn’t a deal-breaker, it just requires you to adopt that new (and probably good) habit of turning everything off before packing it up. Startup is quick anyway, generally less than two minutes, so it hasn’t been a huge problem. I still recommend this Toshiba, and don’t regret my decision at all.

5 Stars My first netbook; very carefully chosen
I have owned several notebooks and desktops in my lifetime; my most recent notebook gave out a few months ago after three years, and my desktop computer is a couple of years old but still holding strong. I wanted a netbook for portability and as a second computer option (in case the desktop is ever temporarily offline for any reason).

I started seriously looking at picking up a netbook last year, back when the n280 chip was standard. None of the netbooks at the time quite lived up to my expectations in terms of features and form. I decided to wait for the new chipset.

After quite thoroughly comparing over 15 different netbooks all running the new 1.66ghz Intel n450 chip, I ordered the Toshiba NB305-N410WH and after nearly a week with it I feel very comfortable with my purchase; it’s my new best friend. (For what it’s worth, the runner-up was the Asus Eee PC 1005PE-PU.)

I love the texture of the NB305 — it’s not glossy so it doesn’t stupidly attract fingerprints. I don’t usually like white things, especially for electronics, but this one carries well (I figured the white would go nicely with the beautiful silver keyboard) and I don’t see it getting dirty easily like most white things do.

I have installed more software than I expected a netbook to be able to handle, and it has managed my multitasking admirably. Occasionally I ctrl+shift+esc myself to check the task manager and manage whatever’s running up the CPU or RAM processes, but I do that even more often with big powerful desktop computers. Internet has been very snappy, and I have had zero issues with setup and ongoing connection.

I spent the $50 to purchase 2gb stick of RAM. I’m pretty sure that’s made a good difference, though the machine was keeping up quite well running multiple apps even on just 1gb of RAM.

I will probably pick up a $20-25 bluetooth usb adapter at some point.

The touchpad has been very properly responsive. Check the settings/update your synaptics touchpad drivers if you want to make sure to have the full featureset of gesture controls; I love them. Of course, as all the pro reviews have noted, the keyboard is excellent; it looks great and feels great.

The screen is really good despite its small size. The 1024×600 is better than I expected. For the most part, I’m (surprisingly) perfectly content not to be on a bigger screen (I’ve been otherwise used to a dual-monitor setup with monitors 21-24″, but I’ve felt no urge to connect the NB305 to an external monitor).

The sound quality of the speakers is rather weak; fortunately, sound quality with headphones plugged in is good and there are interesting/effective sound customization features that are easily adjustable.

I’m estimating my battery life so far to be at roughly 8+ hours at pretty much maximum performance (aside from my screen, which I like at ~4.5 brightness level even when plugged in).

I found Starter Wallpaper Changer, perfect little app that provides precisely what Microsoft shamefully blocked. I also found instructions online to change the background image of the login screen. So my netbook is now highly attractive both outside and in.

Though my desktop computer is still technically the more powerful machine, and I’ll certainly still turn to it for more hefty tasks, I’ve already been using my NB305 as a primary machine, and I see myself potentially using it more often than my desktop from here out.

I am very pleased with my NB305.

Now I’m on a quest to find the perfect case(s) for my netbook. (I want to be able to take it with me everywhere!)

5 Stars What a netbook is supposed to be!
I had been looking at the various netbooks for a while and really liked Toshiba’s NB205 but just couldn’t get around the negative comments on battery placement and speaker quality. The NB305 was specifically designed to address these concerns – different battery placement and two speakers instead of just the one on the 205.

As for things this shares with the 205: The chiklet keyboard just rocks – space between the keys goes a long way towards cutting down on the mistypes that you get on the keyboards where the keys are merging one into the next. It may not matter to many people but if you have a long haired cat or dog that sheds and likes to spend time in your lap the fact that this is a much easier keyboard to keep pet hair out of is a huge plus as well. Having two separate mouse buttons instead of one rocker bar is handy for those of us who like to actually use the right click. Keyboard layout as a whole is very “touch type” friendly so those who actually learned how to type on a real keyboard or -gasp- typewriter can actually use this keyboard. Portability is also another huge plus, when it’s closed this little guy doesn’t have much more of a footprint than a decent sized hard cover book and while I realize that this just means it’s a netbook as somebody who still remembers his high school computer lab having IBM PS-2’s it’s still amazing.

In an effort to make this a true review I’ll also hit a few of the things that are shortcomings for the NB305. Is this going to let you watch high def movies – no. Is this going to let you play World of Warcraft or other graphic intensive games – no. Are you going to be able to multi-task 5 different RAM intensive applications – be serious you only have 1G of RAM or 2G if you upgrade.

The reason I’m giving such a great rating to this netbook is that having said all of the things that the NB305 – and for that matter netbooks in general – can’t do the simple fact is that I don’t want to do and wouldn’t expect to do those things on a 10.1 in screen to begin with. If you want to play games there are laptops targeted for that market, if you want to watch HD video get a laptop with a blue-ray not something that doesn’t even have an optical media drive. You can get a laptop that plays games – full discloser I have one, handles HD video and/or serves as near “desk top replacements” and you can get them for not a lot more than you will spend to get the NB305, what you will not get is the portability. Personally I want something to check my email, check headlines on the web, watch the occasional You-Tube, do word processing, handle I-Tunes and allow me to use a Citrix client to access the work related apps on a server when I’m away from the office and still fit in my briefcase. This little guy fits the bill and looks good doing it – thanks Toshiba.

4 Stars Would be Perfect
This absolutely would be the Perfect Computer if the Plastic wasnt so cheap. It doesnt feel cheap, but the silver finish below the keyboard is coming off in three places. ive only had this for about a month. Otherwise though, this is a great computer. I can squeeze 10 hours of battery life out of it and the keyboard is really great.

And or all you people out here that are annoyed about not being able to change your desktop background, google stardock MyColors and download it from the legit page. Its not Malware, and i have used it to change my background on starter many times.

5 Stars solid, and perfect for travelling as long as your expectations aren’t too high.
I’ve responded to a few reviews, but haven’t got around to reviewing the netbook myself, so I’ll throw my two cents worth in since I’ve now had it in my possession for about 12 hours. First of all, I decided to go with the N310 model because I hate chiclet keyboards and I love the color black, so that ruled out every other model. Another reason was that I had a windows 7 ultimate license doing absolutely nothing so I thought I would install it on this netbook using a usb flash stick after backing up the xp version that was already on it. I also installed a 2GB kingston memory upgrade the moment I got it because I knew windows 7, even though in my opinion is the best OS to come out of Microsoft, is still a bit of a memory hog in comparison to XP, so a fresh Windows 7 install, a bit of searching on the web for the drivers, 2GB’s of RAM and I was good to go. Just to let you know, had to go to toshiba’s U.K website for all the windows 7 drivers. The drivers are labeled internationally, so no problem if downloading for a U.S NB305. Other than that, everything works great under Windows 7 and contrary to what others are experiencing, pretty quick by netbook standards. The keyboard is a pleasure to type on, doesn’t feel any slower typing on this than on my Dell XPS M1330 and the touchpad’s size is perfect. The screen is really bright, kind of reminds me of the LED screen on the M1330 for being visually strong. I thought the 1024 X 600 size was going to be an issue, but it really isn’t. The size of the screen fonts are good for my eyes ( I ain’t getting any younger), so the 1368 X 786 screens that are floating about on some of the newer netbooks might have made everything too small and that would have been frustrating trying to make everything look bigger even though I was getting more real estate. Haven’t got around to checking the validity of the battery life, but I don’t see any issues where I would run out of juice. It looks like its going to be a great traveling companion because of its size, battery life and it’s solidly built. So, my advice for anyone thinking about buying one of these 10.1 inch netbooks, no matter what brand they pick, is buy 2GB’s of Ram right from the start, spend quality time learning how to do a fresh windows install getting rid of all the bloatware that comes with it which can slow things down big time. Also run it in high performance mode when watching videos. I’ve had no issues with Divx movies, youtube, Hulu full screen struggles a little, Mp3’s are no problem, and running a slingplayer app perfectly with no hiccups from a slingbox streaming a cable box 9500 miles away and also netflix sd streaming works great. Just don’t have huge performance expectations and you’ll come to love everything about these netbooks.

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