Toshiba Satellite U845: Ultrabooks Go Mainstream
by Vivek Gowri on October 8, 2012 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Intel
- Toshiba
- Ivy Bridge
- Ultrabook
Battery life is decent but by no means stellar given the rest of the Ultrabook class. The battery is a 54Wh 6-cell Li-ion (not lithium polymer, it should be noted) pack of the sealed-in, non-removable variety. Our battery life testing showed a hair over six hours in the internet benchmark and an idle life of close to eight hours. You can reliably expect at least 5.5-6 hours of runtime in light usage scenarios, about average for 14” Ultrabooks but well behind class leading 13”ers like the old Zenbook UX31E.
As I go through more Ultrabooks, I’m finding that the larger 14” and 15” models are not nearly as power efficient as the 13” Ultrabooks, so you find many more data points in the 4.5-6 hour range than in the 7-9 hour range that most of the 13”ers fall in. It makes sense, given the larger and more power-hungry display panels (which easily account for 30-40% of power consumption in our web-browsing test), but unfortunately, manufacturers aren’t putting in larger batteries to compensate. The U845’s battery is a meager 4Wh larger than the 13” Zenbook and Zenbook Prime. Also not helping here? The list of Toshiba services that drain even more power should you not disable or uninstall them first (I uninstalled Norton and ran the battery test with all unnecessary and easily killable processes disabled).
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Calista - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
I sometimes wonder what ever happened to the Thinkpad T50.We had the T20, T30, T40 and the T60. But no T50..?
I must say the current naming convention make sense although, TXY0 where x equals screen size and Y equals generation. It doesn't tell the whole story, but it quickly gives an idea of generation and performance.
Netscorer - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
I looked at this portable briefly two weeks ago when it first started to appear at $600 price point. Ultimately, I chose Visio Thin and Light CT14-A0 14-Inch Ultrabook which is now available at the same price and is a definite upgrade to the Toshiba Satellite.Gorgeous IPS 1600x900 screen, 128Gb SSD Drive (ironically from Toshiba) and sleek unibody aluminium design, weighting 1/2lb less then Toshiba. Visio is not known to release laptops in the past but if they will be judged by this first attempt, they have great future. Design is a monkey copy of Samsung Ultrabook series, just more stylish. It looses few ports comparing to other portables but they are not essential. Ethernet, for example is not the port used often in ultrabooks whose primary goal is to go unhinged by any cords. With Dual Band 811.n Wi-Fi onboard I don't miss it at all. And if you have to have it, buy a cheapo USB to Ethernet adapter and you are in business. SD Card reader may be more important to me but I already have 3 or 4 USB-based mega readers, so if I need to toss one in a bag with me, I am fine with that too.
The Core i3 ULV CPU may be the only thing that limits this Visio. Comparing to i5 in Toshiba it runs at the same (actually slightly higher) frequency but can not handle high-CPU loads, where i5 can boost it's performance significantly in these cases. Oh, and I am disappointed in battery life. It just does not last much longer then 4.5 hours for me before it needs to be recharged. I am still trying to understand if this is because of the hungry screen or design sloppiness by Visio or some bad drivers running in the background, but it is not acceptable.
bji - Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - link
Pathetic.elitistlinuxuser - Saturday, October 13, 2012 - link
Why note just get an acer Aspire v5-171 if you want an ultrabook that is affordable. Even if it isn't technically ultrabookThegonagle - Sunday, October 14, 2012 - link
Lost me at 768. (As has every single other notebook/laptop that only has 768 lines.)marvdmartian - Monday, October 15, 2012 - link
Something is making the Office Depot link turn into gibberish, for their product search. Direct link (without the "detonator dynamite" garbage:http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/337660/Toshi...
raok7 - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
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