Toshiba Satellite L755-S5271 vs HP ProBook 4530s vs Acer AS5750-6636
Welcome! You are looking at a comparison of 3 currently very popular budget laptops with Intel Core i3 processors: Toshiba Satellite L755-S5271, HP ProBook 4530s XU015UT and Acer AS5750-6636. Their specs seem to be very similar at first look, but there are many small differences between these cheap notebooks. If you're looking for an affordable laptop with Intel Sandy Bridge processor and good specs, then this article can be useful to you. UPDATE: some time has passed since I made this lense, now there are better laptops for the price obviously (mostly newer versions with small diffrences).
Processor & GPU
All 3 laptops use the same Intel Core i3-2310M processor that has 3MB of L3 cache and 2 cores. It is clocked at 2.1GHz, but it doesn't offer Turbo Boost like Intel i5 and i7. i3-2310M is currently ranked #77 at notebookcheck.net mobile processor benchmark list, it should be on par with older Intel Core i3 370M. But newer i3 has faster integrated graphics card built in.
Weight
Acer AS5750-6636 is the heaviest of these laptops, Toshiba Satellite L755-S5271 is only minimally lighter. If Acer and Toshiba are both too heavy and you want a very lightweight notebook then get HP ProBook 4530s XU015UT, it weights 0.5 pounds less than other two.
Memory
All 3 laptops have pretty average 4GB of DDR3 system memory installed, Toshiba and HP both use 1333MHz memory, but Acer uses slower 1066MHz DDR3 RAM. If you are not happy with the memory on these laptops, don't worry, it's easy to replace/upgrade it by yourself.
Battery life
Comparing the battery life is hard, all manufacturers use different ways to measure it. But here they are. Toshiba's battery life: (measured by MobileMark 2007): 5 hours, 42 minutes. HP ProBook 4530s XU015UT has better battery: Up to 6.25 hours. Acer has the weakest one: only up to 4.5-hours battery life.
Ports, connectivity etc.
HP has most USB 2.0 ports (four), Toshiba and Acer both have three. None of them have USB 3.0 ports. All laptops have a HDMI port and a memory card reader, but only HP has integrated Bluetooth 3.0.
Hard drive
Toshiba Satellite L755-S5271 features the largest (640GB) hard drive, but HP ProBook 4530s's hard drive is the fastest. You have to decide if you want a laptop with a big but slow HDD or small but fast hard drive. Or settle with cheap Acer that has a small and slow HDD.
Alternatives:
If you want to play games, then get a laptop with a AMD 6520G or more expensive 6620G graphics card instead, Toshiba Satellite L755D-S5363 or Acer AS5560-Sb613 for example. If you want a faster i5 processor, spend little bit more on B005NHP21C. Don't like any of them, then you can look at ASUS A53E-EH31 or Lenovo G570 43347PU.
