Yahoo! Review: Toshiba's U840W
This super widescreen laptop is quirky but powerful
Toshiba's new Ultrabook, the Satellite U840W takes an interesting standpoint on widescreens. At first glance, this is a laptop with the widest possible screen in the market, and may seem like a marketing ploy to differentiate themselves from the competitors. Only after only few hours of awkward use, did I find the highly unusual 21:9 aspect ratio screen quite intriguing.
Lets start with the body and build…
U840W is pretty; it is minimalistic and clean. This Ultrabook follows the currently trending, highly attractive, brushed aluminium finish with a little twist. It features a two-tone metal and rubber surface that feels great on touch. The metal and rubber combination can also be seen for the insides of the laptop, making the palm rest comfortable. The bottom of the laptop spotlights a rubber-y finish, allowing long hours of use on a person's lap with little to no heat discomfort.
Overall, the build quality of this device is on par with other premium quality ultrabooks such as Samsung's Series 9 and the Macbook Air. The laptop feels grown up, sophisticated; Toshiba has done a commendable job designing and executing this laptop.
On the other hand, the U840W is disproportionate, and the screen size is not easy to get used to (running on 1792 x 768). It’s short, yet its wide body does come with some drawbacks. With such a wide screen, you are almost expected to have multiple applications open simultaneously. Toshiba even includes a Split screen utility, which snaps multiple applications to be placed side by side (very similar to Windows 7’s auto snapping). When viewing multiple documents side by side, the text seems on the small side; I spent a lot of time squinting, zooming in and out to get to the best multitasking experience. When watching full widescreen movies, the screen finally makes sense — the experience is satisfying, and the speakers are downright amazing for a small body like that. Do take note though, that most video content everywhere (the Web, DVD’s, downloaded content) does not run on 21:9, (Youtube runs 16:9) leaving a lot of negative space around the screen.
Moving on to performance and battery life…
This Toshiba laptop does not lack horsepower; it is more than enough for an average user. It’s Intel® Core™ i5-3317U core processor can be clocked to up to 2.6 GHz, which simply means a huge bang for the buck. A strong GPU is necessary with the visual complexity of anything that is good for the mainstream market today — the Intel HD 4000 is just that for ultrabooks. The switch between traditional the hard drive (500gb) to solid state drive (32gb) in this hybrid build is smooth, you will feel a massive boost in speed while booting and opening files up. You also have 6gb of ram, upgradeable to 10 — which is simply excessive for a normal user.
Overall, the U840W fared reasonably well in the performance area when compared to the Macbook Air and Series 9. Their battery life is still not adequate: running at just over 5 hours for basic surfing/ watching videos. The same test on a Macbook Air yields about 6.5 hours. (Full disclosure: This review was done with a Toshiba prototype that is still being finalized. Hopefully they will improve the battery life).
Key Highlights
Certain things stood out for me with the U840W , and I would like to commend Toshiba for:
• Amazing sounding speakers. The Harman Kardon™ stereo speakers was electrifying for a really small laptop like the U840W. I was intensely engaged in any movie I was watching. By far one of the best speakers for a Ultrabook, beating the Macbook Pro and Series 9.
• "Sleep & Charge" and "Sleep & Music". Toshiba has found a way to charge your mobile phone/devices even while your laptop is off by constantly supplying power to one of the USB slots. There is a lot of logic behind this; Why carry an extra set of power adaptors for your smartphones if you could just plug in your computer and leave it alone? I tried plugging my iPhone to the laptop in my bag while traveling, and effectively, your laptop is a giant power brick. There is a lot of market intuition here, and its a pleasant upgrade from Toshiba.
• Backlit Keyboard. Most ultrabooks treat this as a luxury, Toshiba treats it like a norm. The U840W has a backlight!
Bottom Line:
Toshiba’s U840W is an interesting take on a relatively undifferentiated ultrabook market. While everybody is competing to be the slimmest and the prettiest, Toshiba focuses on unique market insights which they turn into products. This marketing approach either does extremely well or breaks down.This laptop is definitely offbeat, but if a person is able to move past the quirky shape of the U840W, they will certainly be greeted with a good machine. For those of you who need to multitask and enjoy watching 21:9 Ultrawide HD movies and are in the market for a new ultrabook, the U840W should be something you would consider.