Toshiba Satellite U845W Ultrabook Review: Going Wide at 21:9

Conclusion: A Niche Worth Exploring

I've come away from my time with the Toshiba Satellite U845W with a largely favorable impression. What Toshiba has achieved here is very respectable and worthy of attention: they've designed a notebook that's pleasing to look at and by and large excellent for productivity. Intel's ultrabook initiative has meant a glut of similar designs hitting the market with different vendors prioritizing only slightly different aspects of the experience (much as has happened with Android tablets), so it's good to see Toshiba produce something genuinely distinctive that sets them apart from the pack.

In terms of build and design, I found the U845W to feel pretty durable. The materials used are solid and the whole thing feels well crafted. The aluminum and brown accents are also surprisingly attractive, taking the distinguishing point (the ultra wide display) and pushing further into making the U845W a unique product. Meanwhile, though the display quality is still on the mediocre side, the increased resolution makes it more suitable for productivity tasks, and Toshiba was able to eke a healthy amount of battery life out of the U845W while still keeping it running both cool and quiet. No trade-offs really needed to be made.

At the same time, though, my enthusiasm for the U845W starts to wane when I look at what I consider to be the major miscalculations of the design. 10/100 internet in a $700 notebook in 2012 is unacceptable, period, end of discussion. Many users will be able to live without, but we're still stuck with 2.4GHz wireless and no way to upgrade it internally. The mushy keyboard is the nail in productivity's coffin, though. The U845W threatens to be a fantastic solution for a lot of users, so why cheap out on one of the most crucial parts of the experience?

Thankfully, Toshiba makes back a lot of ground on price. The $999 MSRP is on the cusp of reasonable, but the $699 price in retail is far more palatable and makes this unique ultrabook affordable for most people as opposed to just the bleeding edge consumers. With that in mind, I feel like the gulf between this $699 model with 500GB of mechanical storage supplemented by 32GB of SSD cache and the $1,159 model with just a 256GB SSD is far too great, especially when you can get 256GB SSDs for under $200. Toshiba should consider a model with a 128GB SSD at around $899 retail.

As for my wish list, I think Toshiba has the makings of a premium product with the U845W but actually needs work on the internals. I'd personally like to see a low end dedicated GPU option, a/b/g/n wireless, and the ethernet upgraded to the gigabit it should've been in the first place. The CPU is honestly fine for most users, and the middle ground 128GB SSD I suggested earlier would be fine for finishing it off.

If it weren't for the keyboard I would have few reservations about recommending the Toshiba Satellite U845W, but because it's (at least in my opinion) just that bad, you're going to want to see if you can try it out in retail before taking the plunge. Alternatively you can take advantage of Amazon's fairly lax return policy if everything else here appeals to you. I think Toshiba put a very strong foot forward with the U845W by introducing a notebook with an ultra wide display and then backing it up with a mostly solid design; now they need to go back and iterate. A second generation model with at least some of the changes I requested would easily be editor's choice material.