An innovative screen but, with limited benefits and niggles elsewhere, it’s little more than
a sideshow.
The desktop wallpaper on Toshiba’s latest laptop claims the firm is
“leading innovation” and, for once, this might be more than marketing
hyperbole. In a world where it’s hard to distinguish between hordes of
identikit Ultrabooks, the Toshiba Satellite U840W stands apart.
Rather than including a 16:9 screen, as used by almost every other
laptop on the market, this machine has a 21:9 panel with a resolution of
1792 x 768 spread across its 14.4in diagonal.
It’s strikingly different, and it’s a design aimed specifically at
those keen on watching movies on their laptops. But that isn’t the only
advantage. When working on the laptop, we appreciated the option to have
two documents lined up side by side. It makes up for the lack of
vertical space, which caused us to spend more time scrolling than we
would on 16:9 screens.
Critically, though, image quality is lacking. The gamma level of 1.9 is
close to the ideal of 1.8 and a colour temperature measurement of 6348K
isn’t far enough away from the 6500K ideal to cause concern. Brightness
is fine at 344cd/m2, too, but viewing angles aren’t great, and the
contrast ratio of 232:1 is low. This means movie scenes lack punch and
depth.
This is a shame, since the U840W-107 is certainly striking. The
wristrest, lid and base are all covered with soft, textured material,
and the rest of the machine is clad in brushed metal. We have a few
complaints about build quality – there’s a little give in both screen
and base, and the Toshiba is a little chunkier than rivals at 20mm thick
and 1.7kg in weight – but that’s about it.
The backlit keyboard makes a good first impression, too, but soon
disappoints. The base is bouncy and the keys don’t have enough travel
for comfortable typing. Toshiba has opted for extra-wide keys rather
than a number pad; we found this made it tricky to get to grips with.
At least the trackpad is good: smooth and responsive, with a firm click
and a pair of comfortable buttons built into its bottom corners. And
the Harman Kardon speakers are among the loudest we’ve heard on a
laptop.
Processing power comes from an Intel Core i5-3317U. This is an Ivy
Bridge part, which sounds good, but in fact it’s the weakest mobile Core
i5 chip in Intel’s current range. Its twin cores run at 1.7GHz, and
they delivered a benchmark score of 0.62. That’s on a par with the Asus
Zenbook but behind the 13in MacBook Air, which scored 0.68. Battery life
stretches to 6hrs 57mins in our light-use test, which for an Ultrabook
isn’t that impressive.
The rest of the Toshiba’s specification fits the Ultrabook blueprint.
There’s a 32GB SSD used for caching, and a 500GB mechanical hard disk
for the donkey work. Six gigabytes of RAM comes as standard, and
connectivity is handled by 10/100 Ethernet and single-band 802.11n
Wi-Fi. And, of course, there’s no optical drive, denting this laptop’s
movie-watching credentials.
One thing the low-power processor does have going for it is Intel’s HD
Graphics 4000 chipset. It helped the Toshiba to a score of 34fps in our
Low quality Crysis benchmark. That figure dropped by only two frames
when we ran the benchmark at the screen’s native resolution.
Toshiba’s U840W-107 packs in plenty for $1499, with a wide screen,
distinctive chassis and beefy speakers. But there isn’t quite enough
quality on show for our liking: the screen isn’t punchy enough, the
keyboard is disappointing, and performance is middling. Unless you
desperately want the unique, super-wide screen, we’d opt for a 13in
MacBook Air instead.
