I bought this Laptop when it was the Amazon Deal of the Day for $599. I couldn't be happier with this purchase, especially at that ridiculously low price point. Instead of going over all the specs, I'll highlight some pros and cons of this laptop for potential buyers.Pros:
Construction/Look: The chassis and chiclet keyboard (spill-resistant) feel real sturdy and of high-quality. The construction of this laptop doesn't have a cheap "plastic" feeling like some laptops out on the market.
Battery Life: The battery life on this 6-cell battery is unbelievable, especially for a 14' laptop. For the first few charge cycles, I've been able to consistently get over 7 hours of battery life surfing the web and playing music with headphones. The ecoUtility app really helps with prolonging battery life.
Intel WiDi capable: I really wanted a laptop with this capability so that I can wirelessly stream to my TV while working on my laptop. Note that you need to buy a WiDi adapter to connect to your TV/display (~$100).
Performance: The i5 processor coupled with 6GB of memory gives this laptop plenty of juice for 99% of computing activities.
SIZE of hard drive: 640GB of space is more than you'll probably even use.
Weight: 4.2 pounds and just about 1 inch thick makes this laptop pretty portable.
Optical Drive: This may not factor much for some people, but as more and more companies opt to remove optical drives from their laptops, it was nice to see Toshiba put in a full DVD burner/drive on this machine.
Connectivity: 1 USB 3.0 port AND capability for USB Sleep-and-Charge (charge stuff while laptop is off) AND an e-SATA/USB combo port AND an HDMI input is awesome!
Value: For the 600-800 price range for a 14 inch laptop, you'd struggle to find a laptop with this much under the hood.
Cons:
No Bluetooth: a tiny external USB dongle runs for about 10 bucks, but I wish Toshiba would have built-in a bluetooth receiver.
Screen: 1366 x 768 resolution (720p). Not bad by any means, but for a 14', It would have been nice to see a higher resolution offered.
Speakers: Sound can be a bit tinny at loud volumes. Noticably better than Portege R835 speakers though.
SPEED of hard drive: the 640GB hard drive only runs at 5400 rpm. I would have liked to see that be at 7200rpm or even a SSD drive, but all things considered, I can't complain much...just a nagging annoyance.
Bloatware/Volume of Apps: Toshiba seemed to have cut down on the total amount of bloatware they put on this machine but they have too many apps pre-installed on this machine for my liking so I ended up manually uninstalling some that I knew I would never use.
I would DEFINITELY recommend this laptop to anyone considering it at the $600-800 price point, as you'd be hard pressed to find significantly better deals. As another reviewer said, this is basically the 14 inch version of the Portege R835-P81 laptop (also sold on Amazon). That's just a smaller version (13.3' 3.2 lbs), but overall there are a LOT of similarities, even with the look. If you're in the market for a laptop with comparable specs but want something smaller, check that out. I hope this helps potential buyers out!
I watched a bluray file and a 1080 mkv file at the same time with no stutter and with only 18% CPU load. My Quad core Desktop would start stuttering when I do this and cpu load goes to 100% (it's a Q6600 intel quad core cpu)
Had to instal java 64bit edition and directx runtime environment. Just make sure that whatever software you're instaling is 64bit compatible. had to increase color saturation to add more color but led display looks great. Tweaked touchpad settings a little bit to make it the way I like it. Theres an eco button that doubles your battery consumption to 10 hours with light use but dims the display brightness but you'll get used to it. Also it seems that pushing the eco button disables one core of the cpu. The computer wakes up instanly when you open the lid and resumes whatever it was doing. the wifi is very strong and picks up a lot of networks. Hard drive is easily accessible, only two screws. It runs very cool. I ran two 1080p bluray files at the same time through wifi N streaming from another computer with ease and no stutter. This laptop looks thiner in person and looks good. you can carry it with one hand from the corner and it doesn't bend like some do. you have esata, usb 3.0-2.0 combo. The speakers are loud, just make sure you enable loudness in audio properties and also select equalizer and increase the treble a little bit. No inputs in the back. when you rest your hands on the laptop wihile typing feels solid. Keyboard is very nice and I'm pretty picky when it comes to keyboards. After adjusting the color settings in the onboard video properties I watched the planet earth bluray streaming from my media server the display was crisp and clear with vivid colors like I was watching my 1080p led tv. Here's the color adjustments that I'm using, Saturation 10, contrast 1, brightness 0 and see the difference.
Update 6-5-12
if you do a lot of typing and word documents, I won't recommend this laptop because the cursor jumps all over the place while typing and you're constantly trying to get back to where you are to continue typing. It's not the way I type either because my fingers are away from the touch pad while typing. This is a major flaw with this laptop.
Buy Toshiba Satellite R845-S85 14.0-Inch LED Laptop - Graphite Blue Metallic with Line Pattern Now
Pros:Fast i5 processor
6 gigs of RAM, a spacious HDD
Long battery life (at least 4.5 hours on full blast; up to 7.5 hours if not used aggressively)
USB 3.0 (w/ sleep and charge)
HDD protection gizmo allegedly protects the hard drive from minor accidents
Cons:
Squishy keyboard beware if you're a regular touch typist!
The wireless antenna works only on the 2.4 GHz band even my 3-year old HP Pavilion can connect to the 5 GHz band! However, this laptop has far better reception, so it's not such a big deal. Just a tad disappointing.
Everything seems cheap the hinges creak, the plastic looks cheesy. When I lug it around closed, I'm afraid it will crack open.
A really silly choice of dedicated shortcut buttons (there are only two; one is for turning on the Eco mode why would I need to do this in a hurry? why? the other one switches on the WiDi; IMHO a mute + wifi antenna buttons would have made much more sense)
Despite all the negative remarks, the laptop gets the job done without breaking a sweat, and if it weren't for the horrid keyboard I'd have given it 4 stars.I payed a little extra for this computer thinking faster speed etc. compared to my 2 year old 15.6 inch toshiba we bought on sale from Best buy for $350. I was wrong. So far, there is absolutely no advantage compared to the lesser version from two years ago. It's not just the Core i5 processor either, as I bought my brother-in-law the HP equivalent (same processor, memory, speed etc)and that computer performs much better than this one. Something is just off with the design or this specific model as previously I have been happy with Toshiba products (why I kept this one and gave the HP as a gift). Battery life promised 10 hrs but I get 8 hours at best (when relatively inactive and only on the Eco mode where it shuts down every 30 seconds and the screen is dimmed to point where you can barely read). I get 3 hours of battery at most when online.With an SSD Upgrade (I'd recommend Crucial 128 GB for around $160), this baby just flies.
Windows boot-up time is around 14 seconds, programs open almost instantly, and even programs that take up a few gigabytes install in seconds. By far the best laptop I've owned, comes to around $800 with the SSD upgrade. Besides you'll have a free 640 GB external slim hard drive for all your storage (movies, music, photos) purposes. (Don't forget to order an HDD enclosure for around $5-10)
The power usage while browsing with wireless on and brightness at half averages around 7 Watts, so I'd expect to get a good 8.5-9 hours of usage with the 66 Wh battery. (SSDs consume less power than HDDs)
Compared to various higher-end ultrabooks costing around $1200, the R845-S85 has a slightly better CPU, same Graphics (Intel HD 3000), better battery, and more ports (3xUSB, HDMI, VGA, ethernet). Besides the Crucial SSD also outperforms other brands in benchmark tests. OK, it's a pound heavier, quarter of an inch thicker, and doesn't have the "looks", but it's hundreds of dollars cheaper despite the higher performance&quality components and the build quality of Toshiba. (owned an Asus before buying this, which fell apart because of the cheap plastic case, poor DC Jack and bad build quality overall)
The only downside is that the GPU (Intel HD 3000), which won't allow new games with high settings. But then again, sub 14-inch notebooks almost never have dedicated graphics cards.
If you are looking for a portable and inexpensive powerhouse, this is the one to go with. Highly recommended.
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