The HDMI cable is the best interface element for digital data transmission and highly recommended component to use in watching high definition (HD) content. Nowadays, most HD televisions can hand over this cable connector including those early versions of HD TVs. It is a technology for direct high resolution and good sound quality features. Important things to consider are the following:

1. HDMI cable version

There are different cable specification versions; version 1.0-1.2, version 1.3 and version 1.4. The higher version has higher increase in bandwidth and capabilities to transmit data over the cable. Version 1.0-1.2 is recommended to those early versions of HD TVs. Version 1.3 is recommended to provide good and high quality resolution, color and sound. Version 1.4 supports 3D technologies and is recommended to 3D cinemas and family HD TVs for 3D movies, animations, or effects.

2. HDMI cable connector type

Types of connector vary with different sizes. Mini and micro port sizes support HDMI version 1.3 and 1.4, respectively.

3. HDMI cable length

The cable has no maximum length because it depends with the quality of construction and conductor materials but usually it varies from 10 to 15 meters. However in real time use, it will not consume the 15 meters long. Therefore, it is best to know the recommended measure and could be from 50cm up to the edge.

4. HDMI cable thickness

HDMI has two cable categories: category 1 and 2 which both have been tested and classified as standard and high speed cables, respectively. However, you should give emphasize with the thickness of the cable. Too thin cables are not recommended because it may affect the signal quality and the shield is too small that may lead to wire problems and even HD output performance.

5. HDMI cable brands

There are lots of brands available in the market such as Akihabara, Sony, Toshiba, and others which we all know expensive but in high quality. Considered brands as one of factors in choosing cable.

There are many things that should give attention in choosing cable and what are stated above are suggestions that should give consideration first. Following helpful tips could be one of the reasons to become successful in choosing appropriate cable.

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Toshiba Satellite P505-S8950 Specifications:

• Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1)
• 1680 x 945 HD+ TriBrite Display (Glossy)
• ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 with 1GB GDDR2
• Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 (2.53GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB Cache)
• 6GB DDR2-800 RAM
• 64GB Toshiba SSD + 320GB 7200RPM Hitachi
• Slot-Loading DVD SuperMulti (+/- Double Layer) with Labelflash
• Intel 5100AGN, Bluetooth v2.1, and Atheros AR8131 1GB Ethernet
• Harman/kardon speakers
• Built-in web camera
• 12-cell 10.8v 87Wh (100Wh actual) battery
• Dimensions: (LxWxH) 17.4 x 11.6 x 1.63″
• Weight: 11 lbs., 0.3 oz. as configured
• Retail Price: $1,599

Build and Design
The Satellite P505 is a massive notebook, dwarfing even large 17″ gaming systems. Combine that with a heavy body and you are left not wanting to stick it in a backpack; and good luck finding a slip case big enough. The exterior appearance is classy with a glossy black pinstripe finish and chrome trim around all the edges. Inside the color scheme stays the same, with chrome speaker grills, screen hinge, and touchpad buttons. The matching keyboard does a good job of blending in, with glossy black keys and white characters with white backlighting. While its size might make people turn their heads and stare, the tasteful color scheme does a good job of helping the notebook blend into the background. If you are using this as a multimedia hub for a bedroom or dorm, this is exactly what you want, as you aren’t distracted by flashy colors or lots of LEDs.

Build quality is above average, although with the high weight and long width, you will see some mild flex if you try to carry the notebook by a corner. Plastic creaking is minimal and the chassis as a whole feels very strong. The keyboard area and palmrest show no signs of flex, even under very strong pressure. The glossy plastic finish seems to resist minor scratching, keeping a clean look even after wiping the body down multiple times for fingerprints. The screen has excellent protection from the backside, as well as the front thanks to the all-glass panel covering the LCD. Even with strong taps to the front and back of the display, there are no signs of color distortion. The only downside to the massive screen is its weight seems to act against the screen hinges, giving it some wiggle when in an open viewing position. You don’t notice this unless you are constantly shifting around with the laptop on your lap though.

Users looking to upgrade components will enjoy the easy access to both hard drive bays and memory slots. Each hard drive is located in its own individual bay, with a third panel giving you access to the RAM. With the middle panel off you also get a glimpse at the graphics card, but the opening is not large enough to remove the card through. No “warranty void if removed” stickers were found anywhere on our review unit.

Screen and Speakers
The 18.4″ panel on the Satellite P505 has a resolution of 1680×945, which seems lacking for something this large. Most high-end multimedia notebooks of this size usually offer a 1080P display, which takes more advantage of the greater surface area. That said, the panel still looks very nice for viewing games, images, or HD video. Colors appear bright and vibrant, thanks in part to the glossy surface. Depending on the viewing situations, reflections can play a huge role in what you are viewing on the display at any given time. While using this notebook at my kitchen table in front of a window, all I saw was the bright sunlight and slates to the shade reflecting off the screen. You can alleviate this by rotating the notebook or tilting the screen, but it is still quite annoying. Vertical viewing angles are average with colors starting to shift or distort as soon as 15 degrees forward or back. Horizontal viewing angles were better, staying true until roughly 50 degrees where reflections on the screen started to overpower the screen itself. Backlight bleed was minimal at the highest brightness setting, and never noticeable in normal viewing conditions.

The last notebook that really impressed me with the onboard speaker system was the Toshiba Satellite A305, giving rich audio from oversized flush-mounted speakers. The P505 continues that trend with an impressive harman/kardon sound system. Unlike the majority of notebook speakers, you can actually hear bass and midrange, although not enough to shake picture frames off walls or annoy neighbors. For a small room the sound system is more than adequate for watching a movie or just playing music in the background. For larger areas, headphones or a stereo system would still be preferred.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard was very comfortable and responsive while typing and the backlight helped greatly with low-light visibility. The 18.4″ frame gave ample room for a full-size keyboard and keypad, with enough room left over for a 1″ wide touch sensitive multimedia key section. Individual key action was springy, with a soft click when fully pressed. The layout was easy to follow, but the tight key spacing did take some getting used to. The top of each key was slightly larger than normal beveled-edge keys, giving less buffer space between each of them. The LED-backlighting was clean and just the right brightness to not be overpowering when typing in dark rooms. With the backlight on you could see some light shining through the edges of keys at a certain angle, but it was not overly apparent.

Toshiba incorporates a large flush-mount Synaptics touchpad into the palmrest of the P505. While we normally praise most Synaptics touchpads, this specific model had inconsistent lag and was frustrating to use. No amount of adjustment in the control panel would help it, since it seemed to be tied directly to its slower refresh rate. Movement across the surface felt inconsistent, and took a bit to get used to. This may be entirely related to buggy drivers or a faulty touchpad on our review unit though. The touchpad buttons were large and easy to trigger with the side of your thumb, giving off a mild click when pressed.

Ports and Features
Port selection on the P505 was good, with three dedicated USB ports, one eSATA/USB combo port, a FireWire connection, LAN, VGA-out, HDMI, and audio jacks. Our model also included a legacy modem port. The notebook could have fit a few extra USB connections, but four should suffice for most people.

Performance and Benchmarks
The Satellite P505-S8950 performed very well in our tests thanks to the Intel P8700 processor, Toshiba 64GB SSD, and ATI Mobility HD 4650 graphics card. Initial boot times were minimal, even with a fair amount of bloatware preinstalled on the system. The only downside to the system we noticed from the start was the 64GB capacity of the primary drive, being a fairly low capacity. We managed to completely fill the drive without noticing, just by installing our benchmarking applications and Left 4 Dead over Steam. In this situation, it would have probably been best to install applications on the secondary drive from the start. As long as you are aware of the space remaining on the smaller system drive, you shouldn’t run into these problems. Multimedia performance was excellent, handling 1080P HD video with ease. Gaming performance was great, but not as good as dedicated gaming systems. The primary target audience for this notebook isn’t really hardcore gamers, but instead people who are looking for a very capable desktop replacement. With a 6,000 point score in 3DMark06 it was under high-end gaming rigs, but still above most notebooks with dedicated graphics.

Heat and Noise
Heat management was above average, with a large chassis and plenty of airflow to keep system temperatures at reasonable levels. Noise levels were always low, even under stress. The fans seemed to stay on constantly after the system had warmed up, but since they ran nearly silent it wasn’t a big issue. Even after running multiple benchmarks, the primary contact areas of the notebook were barely above room temperature. These areas include the palmrest, touchpad, and keyboard. If your legs don’t mind the weight, the bottom of the notebook also stayed relatively cool during our tests. The only part that showed any significant amount heat was the AC adapter, which got as high as 125F. This was under a significant amount of stress though, with the system charging from a nearly dead state while also having the processor and GPU heavily tasked. Under normal use it stayed between 90-100F.

Battery Life
Excellent battery life and 18.4″ gigantic multimedia rig don’t usually belong in the same sentence. In the case of the P505, they were a perfect match. This notebook included a large 12-cell with a reported capacity of 100Wh. At idle this notebook consumed between 20-25 watts, or roughly twice the amount of the standard notebook. In our battery test with the screen brightness set to 70%, Vista on the balanced profile, and wireless active, the P505 stayed on for an amazing 4 hours and 27 minutes. Now this time was entirely dependent on the 12-cell battery, but it is still impressive to see such a long runtime. All other P505 models come with a 6-cell battery with half the capacity, which probably won’t offer comparable results.

Conclusion
The 18.4″ Toshiba Satellite P505 is a massive desktop replacement notebook, capable of gaming, watching HD video, and pumping out rich audio. The harman/kardon speaker system put out some of the best sound we have heard from a notebook in a long time, full of bass and great midrange tones. While most people might not think a machine of this size could have good battery life, we managed to get four and a half hours thanks to the 12-cell battery. The only real negative aspects we noticed were debris between the all-glass covering and display, and a lackluster touchpad. Overall while this notebook might not have been the most lap-friendly system we have tested, its gaming and multimedia performance was excellent for its price range.

Pros:

• Great speaker system
• Good performance
• Excellent battery life

Cons:

• Very heavy
• Twitchy touchpad
• Dust between layers of the display

Toshiba mini NB205 (NB205-N310/BN) Specifications:

• OS: Microsoft Windows XP Home SP3
• 10.1″ WSVGA (1024 x 600) LED-backlit display
• CPU: Intel Atom N280 (1.66GHz, 533MHz FSB)
• Graphics: Intel GMA 950
• LAN onboard 10/100 Mbps Ethernet controller
• Wireless: 802.11b/g and Bluetooth V2.1
• Memory 1GB (DDR2 533MHz)
• Storage: 160GB hard drive (5400rpm) and SD/SDHC media card reader
• Webcam: 0.3 Megapixel
• Dimensions 10.4 x 8.3 x 1.0/1.27 inches (W x D x H)
• Weight 2.93lbs with 6-cell battery
• Battery: 6-cell Lithium-Ion
• Warranty: 1-Year Parts and Labor, 1-Year Battery
• Price as configured: $399.99 USD

Build and Design
The Toshiba mini NB205 is the first netbook (low-price, low-performance, ultraportable laptop) from Toshiba, but the design is certainly one of the most attractive we’ve seen in the netbook category. Toshiba offers the NB205 in multiple colors, but the silver and “Sable Brown” color combination in our review unit looks quite nice. The screen lid is made of thin textured plastic with the Toshiba logo front and center in silver metalic plastic. Toshiba engineers made the interesting choice of placing the power button in the middle of the screen hinge where it is exposed even when the netbook is closed. At first I was concerned this might not be the best position since it means the power button could be accidentally triggered inside a backpack or laptop case, but the button is disabled if the screen lid is closed.

Build quality was less than impressive despite the attractive exterior of the NB205. The thin plastics used in the construction of the chassis are prone to flex and the plastics make annoying “creaking” noises if you squeeze the netbook between your fingers. The full-size keyboard looks fantastic, but as soon as you apply typing pressure with your fingers you begin to feel the keyboard flex and bounce as you type. Unfortunately, the only area of the mini NB205 that feels nice and firm is the tension on the screen hinges.

The bottom of the netbook chassis shows an abundance of air vents to help with cooling (more on that later) and a pair of easy access panels for the RAM and hard drive. We’re happy to see more and more netbooks with easy access to the internals for upgrading the memory or storage, and Toshiba makes it very simple to complete these upgrades after removing three screws.

Screen and Speakers
The Toshiba NB205 uses a nice and bright 10.1-inch widescreen LED-backlit display panel with a 1024 x 600 native resolution. I wish Toshiba offered the mini NB205 with a higher resolution screen such as the ones available from Dell, HP, and Sony, but considering the $400 price point we can’t complain too much. Vertical viewing angles are average, with obvious color inversion when viewing from below and some over-exposed colors when viewed from above. Horizontal viewing angles are very good with colors only starting to shift at extreme wide viewing angles.

The built-in speaker performance on the mini NB205 is acceptable for listening to system sounds or very short online video clips, but overall the speaker quality is sub-par for a netbook. The built-in speaker is located on bottom front edge and can’t produce enough distortion-free volume to push sound up toward the user. If you want to use this netbook as a mobile entertainment portal then you need to invest in some good headphones. On the bright side, the audio output from the headphone jack is good when paired with earphones or a good set of external speakers.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The NB205 uses a new full-size keyboard that is quite massive for a 10-inch netbook. At first glance the NB205 looks to have one of the best keyboards on any of the current-generation netbooks. Unfortunately, that opinion quickly changes once you start typing. Although the keys are nice and large with excellent spacing to prevent typos, the keyboard falls victim to the same thin and flexible plastics used in the construction of the chassis. If you apply anything more than light typing pressure you will feel the keyboard “bouncing” under your fingertips as the plastic keyboard frame bends under the weight of your hands. If Toshiba engineers places a support frame under the keyboard this problem could easily be fixed.

On a much happier note, the mini NB205 features the single best touchpad we’ve used on any netbook to date. The touchpad measures roughly 3.2 inches wide by 1.8 inches tall with standard-sized touchpad buttons that go all the way to the front edge of the netbook. In short, Toshiba made perfect use of the available space and gives users a “real” touchpad rather than the half-sized touchpads used on most netbooks. The touchpad itself is an ALPS model with excellent sensitivity and only minor lag. The scroll zones required a bit of adjustment in our review unit, but once we increased the scroll speed everything seemed fine.

Input and Output Ports
The port selection on the Toshiba mini NB205 is pretty basic for a netbook. The NB205 includes three USB 2.0 ports, VGA out, Ethernet, microphone and headphone jacks, and a SD/SDHC media card slot. One extra little feature is that one of the three USB ports is a “Sleep and Charge” port. This allows you to charge a cell phone or MP3 player using the USB port even if the netbook is turned off. The only potential problem with this feature is that if you’re running on battery power and forget to unplug an iPod you might end up with a dead netbook battery … if you change the default settings.

Performance and Benchmarks
The Toshiba mini NB205 offers similar performance to most netbooks, but that shouldn’t be a surprise to most of our readers. The performance section of a netbook review is generally very boring compared to a full-featured notebook because most netbook have virtually identical specs. All Intel Atom-based netbooks have nearly identical performance in terms of actual real-world use. Overall performance with the Intel Atom platform is very reasonable for daily activities like Web browsing, email, using Microsoft Office, listening to music, and watching DVD-quality movies. If you’re in a bind you can even use Photo Editing Software like Photoshop or GIMP for basic image editing.

The one and only performance-related issue that we encountered during our testing of the NB205 was related to bloatware. Toshiba decided to include some “helpful” applications for the webcam, battery monitoring, wireless controls and Norton antivirus … all of which strain the netbook’s limited resources and make the NB205 slower than it should be. While most netbooks finish booting into Windows XP (including launching all startup applications) in less than 45 seconds, the NB205 takes more than 70 seconds to finish loading all the bloatware during Windows startup.

The use of Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics is probably the only major limitation for netbooks. This integrated graphics processor (IGP) is powerful enough to handle displaying a PowerPoint presentation on a projector or watching DVD quality movies, but if 1080p video playback or video editing is your primary concern then you’ll want to look elsewhere. We selected a family-friendly movie trailer and downloaded three different versions in 480p, 720p, and 1080p resolutions. We used the CCCP Codec Pack for decoding and Media Player Classic Homecinema (version 1.1.796.0) for playing all of the video files.

Heat and Noise
External temperatures on the NB205 are what I consider to be “lap friendly” over most of the netbook’s surface. The areas near the GPU, RAM, hard drive, and Wi-Fi card showed up as obvious heat spikes, but nothing that was too hot to handle. Temperature readings taken from the outside of the plastic chassis remained mostly in the 80s and 90s.

Below are images indicating the temperature readings (listed in degrees Fahrenheit) taken inside our office where the ambient temperature was 74 degrees Fahrenheit.

The cooling fan inside the mini NB205 is louder than we like to hear from a netbook. Whenever the CPU is under stress (such as when watching a YouTube video) the cooling fan kicks on and sounds like a weak hair dryer. It’s loud enough to be moderately annoying in a quiet classroom or office. Considering the abundant air vents built into the NB205, I’m a little surprised the cooling fan has to work so hard.

Battery
The 6-cell lithium-ion battery included with the NB205 has a 5800 mAh rating and delivers excellent battery life for a netbook. Toshiba promises 9 hours of battery life, but we never managed to get quite that much out of a fully charged battery. In our test with the screen brightness set to 70%, wireless active, and XP set to the laptop/portable power profile the system stayed on for 7 hours and 38 minutes of constant use. This isn’t as high as some of the latest Asus Eee PC netbooks, but the Toshiba NB205 should have more than enough juice to get you through a full day of web browsing and email.

Conclusion
The new Toshiba mini NB205 is an attractive netbook that offers a fantastic touchpad, large keyboard, and easy access for upgrades. The battery life of the NB205 is among the best in class and should get you through a full day at school or the office. At a price of just $400 this might be a popular netbook for the back-to-school season.

Still, despite these nice features, it’s hard to overlook the flex and sound of weak plastics, the extremely flexible keyboard, and the weak speakers. Most netbooks have surprisingly firm keyboards, so we’re more than a little disappointed that the keyboard on the NB205 practically “bounces” while you type on it. Most netbooks don’t have particularly great speakers, but listening to music or online videos wasn’t fun on the NB205. If you’re looking for a good netbook for $400 or less the Toshiba mini NB205 deserves a close look, but there are many alternatives to consider in this price range.

Pros:

• Easy access for upgrades
• Large touchpad
• Good battery life

Cons:

• Weak plastic construction
• Severe keyboard flex
• Unimpressive speakers

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