The Notebook

This is how the Satellite M30-S730 looks like. Although the sleek silver chassis looks like it was made from a magnesium alloy, it is actually just plastic. Still, it was well-built and finished.

Measuring at just under 36 cm x 27 cm, the M30 is significantly larger than a piece of A4 paper. But it is rather svelte with a thickness of just 3.6 cm. And while it is no featherweight at 2.8 kg, it is actually light for its size. Full-sized notebooks like this M30 generally weigh 3-4 kg. Carrying it around with one hand will not be a problem.

Opening the notebook reveals the large 15.4" wide-screen LCD monitor and the full-sized keyboard.

There is even enough place for a large wrist-rest area as well as two harmon/kardon speakers! Overall, the design exudes a sense of spaciousness.

The Display

The Satellite M30 comes with a 15.4" active-matrix TFT display. However, it is no ordinary TFT display. Toshiba chose to equip the M30 with a wide-screen XGA display that has a resolution of 1280 x 800.

Here is a closer look of the M30's wide-screen display. Check out the huge working space that the 1280 x 800 display offers!

The slightly odd 1280 x 800 display will introduce some amount of distortion should you choose to stretch a smaller image or video. This is because it has a 8:5 ratio, rather than the DVD wide-screen ratio of 16:9.

However, the brilliance and sharpness of this large wide-screen TFT display is impressive. In fact, it was what clinched the deal. I was always a sucker for wide-screen displays. IMHO, wide-screen displays are far superior to the usual 4:3 display format. And of all the large wide-screen displays I saw at PC Fair, this 15.4" WXGA display offered the best balance between size and resolution.

In addition, the large size of this display ensures that you won't need to peer so closely, which was what I had to do with my Fujitsu P2040 sub-notebook. Although the Fujitsu display had a comparable resolution of 1280 x 768, all those pixels were cramped into a 10.6" display. While that made for a much crisper display, it also meant I had to crane my neck closer. With the Toshiba's larger display, I can now lean further back.

Toshiba provides little additional details on the M30's display, so I have no idea about its luminance or viewing angles. However, I estimated the viewing angle to be approximately 80° on both sides and from the top. The viewing angle from the bottom was roughly 60°.