Toshiba Satellite L645D: Mobile AMD at 3GHz
by Dustin Sklavos on March 9, 2011 3:20 AM ESTLose the Gloss, Toshiba
Though most of the industry has been moving away from glossy plastic, it seems like Toshiba must be sitting on an absolute stockpile of it. That's the only explanation I can think of for how pervasive it is on their notebooks compared to the competition. While the Taiwanese manufacturers (Acer, Asus, Clevo, MSI, Compal) oftentimes have notions of style that seem unusual for American consumers, the thinking behind Toshiba's notebook aesthetic is downright inscrutable. Toshiba has been catering to Americans long enough to know better and for a time they did; older Toshiba notebooks were more austere and of generally excellent quality.
Our review unit comes with a cherry red lid and interior finish, but Toshiba offers black, silver, and brown finishes as well. Glossy plastic on the lid can be irritating but at least makes a modicum of sense, and under all of the colored finishes is a tasteful pattern.
The color scheme inside the notebook is also reasonably tasteful, but again the major complaint is the relentless use of glossy plastic: the only place Toshiba doesn't employ it is the bottom of the unit. For a second it looked like they might have gone with matte plastic for the speaker grilles above the keyboard, but then I looked at them from another angle and they reflected a healthy enough amount of light to prove me wrong. Of course there's glossy plastic used for the screen bezel, too, but at least it doesn't seem as asinine here (where glossy plastic is used everywhere) as it does on other notebooks (where glossy plastic is only used on the bezel and maybe the lid.)
The more astute reader has probably noticed fingerprints on the image of the keyboard: that's because the L645D's keyboard is glossy and flex-riddled. Typing on it isn't a tremendous chore, but it's not a pleasant experience either. The keys feel somewhat mushy, and the odd bevelling of the surfaces combined with the glossy finish feels downright bizarre to the touch. The WASD cluster on my desktop keyboard looks like Pigpen had a field day with it; I can't imagine what these keys are going to look like when they're put under aggressive use.
The delineation of the touchpad beneath the keyboard is next to impossible to spot in the photo, but it sports a different texture in use and is surprisingly comfortable. This is actually one of the strong suits of the L645D; while using it I've never felt a great need to plug in an external mouse the way I have with other review units, and there's even a dedicated touchpad toggle. There's strong action on the buttons, too.
Toshiba advertises "Dolby Advanced Audio" for their speakers, but in practice I found sound quality to be par for the course as far as laptop speakers are concerned: tinny, devoid of bass, and needing to be nearly maxed out to reach an enjoyable audio level. In a pinch these are going to be fine, but anyone planning on using this notebook for multimedia is going to want to either connect other speakers or use headphones.
Finally, the bottom of the notebook has the usual and much appreciated hatches for the user-upgradeable memory, hard disk, and wireless connectivity.
While I haven't been the most charitable to Toshiba in regard to the design of the L645D, there's a crucial component missing here that bears repeating: pardon my French, but the damn thing can be found for $619. At that price, Toshiba is aiming this thing square at Joe Sixpack, someone who wants as much computer as he can get without spending up.
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Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
Glossy plastic looks good in photos and that's about all it's good for; using glossy plastic for the keyboard is insane.mmatis - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
I no longer touch any Toshiba products. Your mileage may vary.Vincent - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
I see 10/100 ethernet offered on a surprising number of notebooks. Why cripple a machine like this? I wish reviewers would criticize manufacturers for not offering gigabit ethernet.alent1234 - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
almost everyone uses wifi these days, and this is a way to cut some costs on a low margin product. most people won't care about no gigabit since no one has gigabit broadband and the whole home media server thing is a tiny nicheanactoraaron - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
yeah but let's face it, we're talking about a difference of about a dollar to Toshiba for the gigabit upgrade. And to say whole home media server or even media sharing is a niche in regards to a laptop with a blu-ray player seems a bit off base.piroroadkill - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
No. If you want to use the laptops in a small business situation, imaging over gigabit is much, much faster.Believe me, consumer laptops DO get used in small business/education environments.
Also, gigabit ethernet would cost almost nothing to add over 10/100. There's simply no reason not to have it.
piesquared - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
I recently bought an Acer 5552G with one an N660, and it's a terrific notebook. It has a 6470M but I never bought it for the gaming, even though it has no problems for what I use it for. Highly recommend the processors, and i'd wouldn't touch one of those flakey sand bridge things, or whatever they're called. It's a big risk buying one of those unstable and flawed parts.Kibbles - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
I'm curious as to why glossy plastic is so adamantly deemed as bad, as if it's fact. I myself prefer the ultrafine matte that's almost like a paper texture, but that's a personal preference. I'm sure there's lots of people out there that like glossy plastics. I know my mom likes it. Could it be that the demographics that these low end laptops target predominantly prefer glossy plastics? Has any manufacturer ever given any statistical feedback on this?LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
The amount of crap loaded on Toshiba laptops disguised as useful software makes me avoid them. Hey, we have a separate widget for managing absolutely everything, and each one runs in a separate process that takes up additional RAM, and each one is a separate executable that takes up disk space too! Isn't that NEAT?Toshiba, a bit of advice: Look at apps like Dell ControlPoint, or even a few of Lenovo's (not as cohesive, but still better thought-out), and realize what a great service you could do your users by bundling nearly a dozen system utilities into a single, unified app. That way, the average user doesn't have to send a system to me to figure out what is useful, what is not, and why all of the stock software is sucking half a gig of RAM (on top of what the OS takes) out of the box, and thrashing the disk. Actually, you're also less likely to have a user say "I'll never buy a Toshiba again, they're ungodly slow."
KiwiTT - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
After nearly 8 years since that model was released, I would have thought we would have had double or even triple the resolution in a 14" form-factor.And it is not just Toshiba, it is nearly all the manufacturers. And if you want comparable resolution to the T41, you have to pay almost double. While you may say that the new notebooks have better brighter Screens, CPUs, Graphic Cards, Battery life, etc., it seems as if screen resolution has been stuck in neutral. This is the main portal to all that is available in the notebook, so it should be the best it can be.
I think major review sites like this one and others should actually start bemoaning this lack of increase in resolution for more mainstream notebooks. Even the new ipad2 was rumored initially to have a better resolution, but no, this was false again.