Toshiba Satellite L745 AMD E-350 14In Laptop Review

For those who are looking into buying your first laptop, or are looking for a back to school laptop to write papers, maybe play some games and surf the web, then the latest Satellite laptop from Toshiba might be the right laptop for you! With this budget friendly laptop, you get a low-powered AMD processor with integrated graphics over the more expensive Intel versions. In other words, it is a simple laptop for simple tasks. Main Features and Specifications: 1.6 GHz AMD E-Series Processor E-350 4GB RAM DDR3 1066MHz (max 8GB) 500GB HDD 5400RPM ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6310 256MB-1917MB Shared Graphics Memory Windows 7 Home Premium 64 SuperMulti DVD Burner 14" TruBrite LED Backlit Widescreen Display at 1366x768 resolution; 720p HD Integrated Webcam and Microphone Supermulti DVD drive (+/- double layer) 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi Built-in stereo speakers with Dolby Advanced Audio Multi-format memory card reader Sleep & Charge HDMI ouptut Weight: 5 lbs 1.50" (H) x 13.30" (W) x 9.10" (D) 6 Cell Lithium-Ion battery 1 Year Limited Warranty What We Liked: Nice Finish: This laptop looks nice with its Matrix Silver finish and evidence of fingerprints is harder to find with the glossy finish. It comes off looking modern, slides easily into laptop bags and looks nice on a desk or in a dorm room. Bright Screen: At 14", this screen is smaller than lots of more expensive laptops out there, but the image is crisp and bright ... which is great for working on that last minute assignment or watching a YouTube clip. Stylish & Functional Touchpad: Instead if being boxed off completely, the touchpad blends in smoothly with the palmrest. Not only is it nice to look at, but the touchpad is multi-touch and is sensitive enough to read the slightest finger stroke. Another benefit of the touchpad is that its texture is actually different than the texture of the rest of the palmrest, so it is easy to discern when you are on the touchpad and when you are off. The slightly gritty texture actually makes it easier to maneuver as well. Log-In & Load-Up: This laptop is quick to log into and load a webpage, but it can be miserably slow when playing a game or watching a movie. The shared graphics puts a heavy load on the processor when gearing up to play a movie or performing any graphics intensive task. Sleep & Charge: Even when your laptop is asleep, you can still charge your phone or other electronic devices via USB port. This is a great feature when you are waiting in an airport and you just need to charge your phone for a bit, but can't find anywhere to plugin. Nice Set Of Speakers: We liked that the speakers on this device are found at the top just above the keyboard so that the sound is sent up and over to the user. Port Friendly: We loved the HDMI port on the side of the laptop. When connected directly to a 42" flat panel display the laptop immediately recognized the 1080p connection, switched the output from the 14" laptop display to the 42" remote HDMI display, and then it was only two clicks to send the audio over the same connection. It gave us the option to enjoy a Netflix movie on the big screen versus watching it on the 14" laptop display. This is a great feature for anyone that is looking to use their laptop for home theatre entertainment. The Price Is Right: With a price tag under $500, you get a little bit of everything plus some nice extras with this laptop. Battery Life: We were impressed with the life of the battery in this laptop. Toshiba boasts 5.37 hours of battery life and after our own use, we found that this laptop delivered around five hours and fifteen minutes before a recharge. What We Didn't Like: Bulky: The overall weight of this laptop is about five pounds, but the overall size is anything but thin. This laptop is thick compared to most of today's laptop equivalents and you may get tired of carrying it around. The laptop itself feels like there is a lot of extra room inside, and that designers could have fit everything into an even smaller and thinner case. This would make it even simpler for students to fit into a bag with textbooks and other school supplies. Control Buttons: We are still wondering why the design of the touchpad was more modern, but the design of the control buttons seems like it was an afterthought. Big and loud, like your drunk uncle at a family reunion, they simply look out of place. Classmates, co-workers and probably even the user will get tired of hearing the clickety-clack of these control buttons after awhile. Keypad: Finding the perfect keyboard to fit your personal style is hard. There are a lot of different keyboard styles to choose from and after using this keyboard, we were left wanting more. The keyboard is sturdy and you can pound away without worrying about any of the keys coming loose, but the overall feel of the keys is cheap. Processor Overload: This is a great laptop for using an office suite, web browsers, or writing emails, and even watching a little bit of web video, but it is not the best for doing more than one or two of these at once. We tried to hook up an extra monitor to expand the available workspace and found that it overworks the processor. The challenge is that the processor struggles to support the video processing, so any extra video load taxes the entire machine and slows everything down. In fact, while the other monitor was connected and we tried to play a movie on Netflix at the same time, the entire computer was nearly unusable. However, keeping in mind that this is a sub $500 laptop, as soon as we unplugged the extra monitor, the movie played great and we had a great experience on a single screen. It is a laptop that provides a great single use experience. Cheap Feel: We hate to say this, but this laptop feels so five years ago. We are in the generation of laptops that are sleek, thin and lightweight and this laptop does not fit into any of those categories. Quality of Sound: We had mixed feelings here, playback on some movies and audio clips was great and at other times the sound quality was definitely lacking. Plug in a pair of your favorite headphones for a better listening experience. Our Verdict: You will get a lot of little extras for the money spent on this laptop, but we feel that this is an average laptop at best when compared to most of it¿s competitors. A slow processor and the overall bulkiness overshadowed most of the good qualities that this laptop possesses. If you are looking to do more than school papers, browse the web or watch the occasional movie, than this is probably not the laptop for you. But if you are not looking to spend a bundle and don't depend on your laptop for hours on end, then this is a winner. Our Score: 3.5 out of 5 _______________