Toshiba Satellite M645: The Steady March of Progress
by Dustin Sklavos on April 29, 2011 12:50 AM ESTMainstream Performance
While Jarred has already gotten his mitts on a couple of dual-core Sandy Bridge notebooks, this is my first experience with the new architecture in this form. From the numbers I pulled testing the Toshiba M645, it looks like the old, perennially-underpowered quad-core i7-720QM workhorse may finally be put out to pasture. It's still somewhat faster than the 2410M in multi-threaded workloads, but it loses everywhere else.
We've highlighted three other systems for comparison in this round. In black we have the Dell XPS 15 L502x, sporting a quad-core i7-2630QM and GT 540M graphics. Last year's XPS 15 L501x with i5-460M and GT 420M is in red, and finally we have the i5-2520M with HD 3000 showing what you can get from dual-core Sandy Bridge without a discrete GPU.
PCMark is unkind to the M645, but it tends to skew heavily towards faster storage subsystems and the 5400RPM Toshiba hard drive is among the slowest. When we get to more CPU-limited workloads like Cinebench and x264 encoding, the i5-2410M is allowed to stretch its legs and the M645 surges forward to near the top of the heap, producing performance virtually on par with last generation's top end mobile dual-core chip. The i7-640M threatened the i7-720QM with early obsolescence, and the middle-of-the-road i5-2410M only helps make good on that threat. Such is progress.
Unfortunately 3DMark is far less kind and it's here where we first see just how much damage the low clocks on the GeForce GT 525M have done. While the 96-core GPU is still a notable improvement over Intel's integrated graphics, it has a hard time hanging with even "last generation's" bottom rung 96-core chips (though in defense of "last generation," the 500M series is basically just 400M chips with a speed bump.) When we get to gaming performance, you'll see how brutally performance has been curtailed.
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james.jwb - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
There are plenty of corporations that behave exactly the same, in fact most do. Prepare to buy amost nothing ever again on that position. But i do agree with your general theme, it's just i can think are far worse companies to get angry with than intel, so i hope you have also informed yourself on some of those and are staying away, like coca cola, for instance.bji - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
I will never read a notebook review past those awful, horrendous display specs. Which cuts out alot of reviews.alephxero - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
Any word on when HP plans of releasing the Sandy Bridge update to their Envy14 line? I know the 17-inch models have had it for awhile now.TrackSmart - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
This keyboard looks suspiciously similar to the keyboards on the Toshiba Portege series laptops, yet the Porteges don't have backlit keyboards. It makes you wonder why their high-end ultraportable models are lacking this feature.LoneWolf15 - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
I don't call the glossy plastic still there, or the lack of a 1600x900 display or Intel wireless for a grand progress. My ThinkPad T420 didn't cost a lot more (it would have cost less had I skipped Optimus graphics) and I got all of those and a real Intel gig NIC instead of Realtek. I also got the extra features of a Core i5-2520M processor.The one thing I didn't get that the Toshiba has is Blu-Ray, but to me, that's a questionable need. I'd rather carry video around on my hard drive instead of discs.
Jared, does the Toshiba still have the insane amount of bloatware (mostly in the form of multiple utilities, each taking the form of an individual executable rather than a few unified control-center type apps) they used to have? I found that highly annoying in the past, because it was extremely hard to tell what you did and didn't need, and the apps munched heavily into RAM because of the number of them.
Maccollector - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
I might buy one of these as they don't look like too shabby. It is a bit pricey for what I would use it for though. I would definitely prefer a faster hard drive though. Thanks for the review!yyrkoon - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
If you're going to review a product, and compare it to others, you really should have some hands on with what you're comparing it to. Your guiding light seems to be performance, and features. Despite obviously never have laid hands on what you suggest as alternatives.What good is a feature, if the system using said feature is either quirky, or just completely unstable. Is having GbE eithernet more important than having drivers for every version of windows since Windows XP ? Probably, because that Sony VAIO you suggest is going to be down so often, you're going to need it to make up for lost time.
Anyway, yes, if you're going to claim something is better than another, googling prices vs features is not going to cut it.
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 30, 2011 - link
So, um, "There are two laptops we'd seriously consider in the 14-inch market." And, "There you have it: six viable alternatives, but none of them comes off clearly superior in every category." Having not had a chance to review the Sony (or any of the other alternatives, other than the Dell XPS 15), we wouldn't actually states something is better or worse -- just an alternative to consider.As for your complaints, have you actually used the Sony we mentioned, or have you just had a bad experience with Sony in general? Because if it's the latter, you're doing even less than "googling prices vs. features". I can't find a good review of the Signature Collection C Series at present, but I wouldn't suggest Sony's consumer laptops are any worse than Dell, HP, Toshiba, Acer, etc. offerings. It looks reasonably nice at least, so maybe I'll see about looking around local stores to get an idea of what they're like in person.
yyrkoon - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
No I have not put hands to that given model. However after being in the business of repairing systems for a living. You come to realize there are brand names that are reasonably consistent, and those that are not.After that. Go to Toshiba's website, and look at any laptop driver list. Every_single_driver_for_any_OS_since_WinXP. That is, concerning Windows. It does not matter if the laptop was a $400 budget model or not. *That* is what I call pride in a brand name. Have you ever tried retrograding/upgrading an Operating system on a Sony laptop ? To put it nicely, it is a very inconsistent experience. Acer, also is very inconsistent from my experiences.. But Dell, and HP both usually are decent so long as the "normal wear and tear" did not include treating the laptop as a Frisbee, or football. Most are not built with this in mind.
Stability is a personal major concern. As I believe it is for anyone. However, after reading some of the reviews of this site. Apparently performance, and features matters more( to you ). Yes, yes, we all buy something because it has something we want. This is understood, and implied. However, if laptop-a is not consistently stable, but has GbE, where another laptop(laptop-b) is rock solid stable, but only has fast ethernet. Does that make laptop-a "better". No, it makes laptop-a *potentially* faster in networking. Assuming you can keep the system up long enough to use that luxury.
The funny thing here, is that most of the time, GbE is no where near as fast as it should be. Even after protocol overhead. Most of the time, GbE ethernet on a home network runs at about 20-30% of its full capacity. Which as it turns out is 2-3x as fast as a good performing 100Mbit network. The average user would be better off transferring large amounts of data over USB2, or firewire. I would say eSATA, but eSATA can be very flaky from one device to the next. Sadly.
So anyway. When this user gets ready to research a product for himself, a friend, or customer. Reading your reviews has nothing to do with the decision. Frankly, newegg user reviews offers more in that respect. If that fact cuts deep, then be glad in knowing you can do something about it. If not, then maybe you think I am a racist, or something, Since that seems to be the trend lately for anyone who does not agree with another's methods.
randinspace - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
Right when SB came out Toshiba crept a few i7 models (with a nvidia card, though which one fails me) into retail stores with the 15.6" version of that chasis for $900. It didn't have blu-ray and I didn't care, and US 3.0 would have been nicer than eSATA for me but I snagged it anyway. Then it was recalled. Then my ancient laptop stopped working and since I needed SOMETHING I picked up a heavily discounted MSI notebook (not netbook...) with AMD's E-350 in it and uh... I kind of wish I'd taken my chances with the eSATA failing on me at some point and kept the Toshiba. Mostly because of the horrible screen on this laptop which actually has NO viewing angle no matter how much I tinker with the Catalyst Control Center, but it also somehow started trying to boot from my external hard drive and I barely figured out how to stop it from doing that before having to take it back.Eh hem sorry to vent there, it's just been a stupid year for me and laptops. At least this thing doesn't have a tendency to freeze when I have Word 07, Chrome, and Foobar2000 open like my old laptop would. At the end of the day that's all that matters, right? Now if only I could do something about the 'A' key's tendency to not register my presses...