Toshiba Satellite U845W Ultrabook Review: Going Wide at 21:9
by Dustin Sklavos on October 16, 2012 12:01 AM ESTConclusion: A Niche Worth Exploring
I've come away from my time with the Toshiba Satellite U845W with a largely favorable impression. What Toshiba has achieved here is very respectable and worthy of attention: they've designed a notebook that's pleasing to look at and by and large excellent for productivity. Intel's ultrabook initiative has meant a glut of similar designs hitting the market with different vendors prioritizing only slightly different aspects of the experience (much as has happened with Android tablets), so it's good to see Toshiba produce something genuinely distinctive that sets them apart from the pack.
In terms of build and design, I found the U845W to feel pretty durable. The materials used are solid and the whole thing feels well crafted. The aluminum and brown accents are also surprisingly attractive, taking the distinguishing point (the ultra wide display) and pushing further into making the U845W a unique product. Meanwhile, though the display quality is still on the mediocre side, the increased resolution makes it more suitable for productivity tasks, and Toshiba was able to eke a healthy amount of battery life out of the U845W while still keeping it running both cool and quiet. No trade-offs really needed to be made.
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At the same time, though, my enthusiasm for the U845W starts to wane when I look at what I consider to be the major miscalculations of the design. 10/100 internet in a $700 notebook in 2012 is unacceptable, period, end of discussion. Many users will be able to live without, but we're still stuck with 2.4GHz wireless and no way to upgrade it internally. The mushy keyboard is the nail in productivity's coffin, though. The U845W threatens to be a fantastic solution for a lot of users, so why cheap out on one of the most crucial parts of the experience?
Thankfully, Toshiba makes back a lot of ground on price. The $999 MSRP is on the cusp of reasonable, but the $699 price in retail is far more palatable and makes this unique ultrabook affordable for most people as opposed to just the bleeding edge consumers. With that in mind, I feel like the gulf between this $699 model with 500GB of mechanical storage supplemented by 32GB of SSD cache and the $1,159 model with just a 256GB SSD is far too great, especially when you can get 256GB SSDs for under $200. Toshiba should consider a model with a 128GB SSD at around $899 retail.
As for my wish list, I think Toshiba has the makings of a premium product with the U845W but actually needs work on the internals. I'd personally like to see a low end dedicated GPU option, a/b/g/n wireless, and the ethernet upgraded to the gigabit it should've been in the first place. The CPU is honestly fine for most users, and the middle ground 128GB SSD I suggested earlier would be fine for finishing it off.
If it weren't for the keyboard I would have few reservations about recommending the Toshiba Satellite U845W, but because it's (at least in my opinion) just that bad, you're going to want to see if you can try it out in retail before taking the plunge. Alternatively you can take advantage of Amazon's fairly lax return policy if everything else here appeals to you. I think Toshiba put a very strong foot forward with the U845W by introducing a notebook with an ultra wide display and then backing it up with a mostly solid design; now they need to go back and iterate. A second generation model with at least some of the changes I requested would easily be editor's choice material.
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processinfo - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Come on, now you can have all your icons pined to taskbar. They also removed a need for horizontal scrollbar. Maybe 45:9 would be even better (or 5:1 if you like).Kidding aside I agree this is horrible idea. Get us back 19:10 or 4:3 laptops!!
Kind of reminds me a joke about bus that was 30ft wide and only couple of feet long because everybody wanted to sit next to driver.
MobiusStrip - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
It's time to move out of the '90s. Thunderbolt should be a standard item at this point.Streetwind - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
There's one thing I am missing in this review, and that is a look at how the form factor affects portability.Ultrabooks are meant to be just that: ultraportable. They are meant to weigh little, fit in every pocket (figuratively), and easy to hold and handle, with one hand if necessary.
How does this form factor rest on the lap? Does it feel heavier, or more unwieldly in size, when compared to the regular 16:9 model? Does it fit into bags and backpacks just the same? What's the general feel of it in a day to day usage and carrying scenario?
I suppose it's a nice thing that this model has so much space to dedicate to cooling, but really: that space doesn't come out of nowhere. This thing is very large for an ultrabook, so the handling should be examined.
Calista - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
The FW11E I'm using as a HTPC is 16" with a 16:9 aspect screen is roughly 1 cm wider than the U845W and it's very clumsy to bring along the few times I for one reason or another have to have it with me. And so I have to assume the U845W will be fairly clumsy as well even if it's both much thinner and lighter.The development we have had for the last few years saddens me. I guess 16:10 is workable, but from a portability and ergonomic point of view the old 4:3 format makes much more sense with one exception and that's among 12" laptops since they are small enough as is.
Obviously depending on what you do but I find a vertical resolution of 1600 (as in 30" at 2560x1600 or 20" at 1200x1600) to be the sweet spot even if 1050 is workable on a laptop. But 768 is a far cry from 1050 and even more so from 1600.
Avendit - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
I had a toshiba libretto L1 (http://tinyurl.com/ck4f9yo) that got me through a lot of uni and a few coding jobs. 1200 x 600 wasn't ideal, but you could swap height for width with little effort. Tool bars on the side or floating, work full screen, autohide etc.The wide res really worked for coding - you could get long lines of code all on the screen, and the PPI of 1200 on a 10" screen was stunning. System was reasonably powerful for its day too (played quake!), just wish I'd been able to get a later version with onboard NIC.
Superwide can work, you just need to be willing to change your work habits a little. What worries me is the size of this - I don't think I would put up with such an odd screen res without some other compelling feature tho - at the time the L1 was a ~1kg laptop that appeared to sacrafice very little for its size, the screen was a resulting oddity that you learned to live with and like to some extent. At 2kg there are probably other alternatives that I'd want to try in person first.
Avendit
jabber - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
...is because someone typed the wrong horizontal resolution number into a screen order and they ended up with 30000 non standard screens.As mentioned, though you get a machine with a odd feature as its main USP and the review doesn't even showcase it so we can see what the fuss is about.
You know some of us do care about other factors than pretty pointless benchmark graphs.
What next? Anandtech get a laptop in that has the ability to be used underwater yet it never leaves the testbench?
DanNeely - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
I wish you were right. With Follywierd producing ever more content at 2.37:1; this is probably a trial balloon for the next step in degrading computer screen usability for anything except consuming their garbage.Mugur - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Maybe they should call it "Portable 2.35:1 Movie Player"... :-)Mugur - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Oh and it has ONLY USB 3.0, which means that most probably you cannot install Windows from a USB stick... It happened to me a few times when I accidentally plug the stick into a USB 3 port on various notebooks.xTRICKYxx - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Uhh, That shouldn't affect your installation. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible. I've installed Windows 7 on three notebooks using 3.0 ports and it went fine.