The Toshiba Satellite U845 is Toshiba’s least expensive ultrabook, with a starting price of $749. If the $929 price tag on the 13.3 inch Portege Z930 is a little too high for you, Toshiba wants to provide another option for your thin and light laptop needs.
The Satellite U845 features a 14 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, a brushed aluminum chassis, and a choice of a solid state disk or a hard drive with solid state cache.
At 0.8 inches thick and 3.9 pounds it’s not quite as thin or light as the Toshiba Portege Z930, but Toshiba’s 14 inch notebook still fits well within Intel’s definition of an ultrabook in terms of size and performance.
In order to keep the laptop thin, Toshiba uses a slim 7mm hard drive on models that come with a hard drive. And in order to keep the price down, there may not be as many options on this model as on some other Toshiba ultrabooks — for instance you’re pretty much stuck with that 1366 x 768 pixel display.
But for $749 you do get a computer with an Intel Core i3 Ivy Bridge processor, 1 USB 3.0 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output, Ethernet, a 54Whr battery for up to 7 hours of run time, and a backlit keyboard.
Core i5 and Core i6 options will also be available.
If the Toshiba Satellite U845 looks familiar, that’s because the company started showing a prototype at CES in January, and launched the laptop in Australia in February as the Satellite U840.
Meh. Â It doesn’t seem like you’re getting a lot of computer here. Â For $750 you could get something slightly thicker and maybe a half pound heavier which can do a WHOLE lot more. Â I don’t see ho taking .2″ off the thickness, and .4 lbs, transforms the fact that you’re getting a low end processor and screen, few options, and from the looks of it shoddy materials.
I don’t see how this sells in large volumes, the price/performance ratio is just absurd and it doesn’t have the higher end features like a metal frame body, decent screen, etc. to justify the purchase. Â I’d certainly advise anyone asking me not to buy one.
They can slap the title Ultrabook on it, but once you remove the marketing gunk from it, what do you have?