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Toshiba’s latest premium Ultrabook is the first we’ve seen with an ultra-widescreen 21:9 display ratio. That’s the shape of the cinema screens in your local multiplex, but don’t be put off, as the Satellite U840W is also suited to multi-tasking, with ample room for working on two documents simultaneously.
The 14.4in, 1,792×768 resolution display is guaranteed to turn heads, but it has an incredibly glossy finish that makes it difficult to see what’s on-screen under bright light, and the disappointingly average viewing angles don’t help matters. However, find a comfortable position and you’ll soon notice how high resolution everything looks – you’re only getting an additional 456 horizontal pixels compared to the average Ultrabook, but that makes a huge difference, especially when compacted into a 14in display. Colours look vibrant and brightness is reasonable, although we would have liked more contrast to really show off the detail in darker film scenes.
We were able to comfortably fit two word documents on-screen at once, so the U840W is certainly suited to multitasking. For films, it depends on the aspect ratio. A lot of films are shot at 21:9, with the traditional black bars pushed off the top and bottom of the screen, giving you a full-screen experience. For content shot at different aspect ratios, such as 16:9 1080p footage, you end up with black bars at the side of the picture in order to fit the full picture on screen.
The case has room for a multi-format memory card reader, three USB3 ports, an Ethernet port and two 3.5mm audio jacks. Toshiba has also made space for a pair of Harmon Kardon speakers, which produce surprisingly capable audio, although they still can’t compete with a decent pair of headphones or dedicated speakers.
Build quality is something of a mixed bag. Initial impressions are positive, with a sturdy chassis built from a combination of brushed metal and rubberised plastic. The slightly bronze tint looks sleek and gives the laptop a unique look, but there are problems underneath the lid.
The keyboard is our major area of concern, with noticeable flex in the keyboard and keys that are often completely unresponsive, such as the right side of the space bar. The backlit Chiclet-style keys are easy to spot in the dark, but they aren’t very comfortable to type on, as they lack any tactile feedback and have very little travel or bounce.
We felt the touchpad could be better, too. It’s not particularly sensitive, often struggling to pick up tap-to-click motions unless to stick to the upper left corner of the pad. It certainly would have benefited from using the same 21:9 aspect ratio as the screen, although the default sensitivity means you can still span the desktop in one swipe. There’s no noticeable dead zone between the two touchpad buttons, which were surprisingly good for a touchpad integrated design.
As you would expect, performance is in line with almost every other Intel Ivy Bridge Ultrabook. The dual-core i5-3317U runs at 1.77GHz and can Turbo Boost up to 2.6, there’s 6GB of available RAM and the 500GB hard disk is paired with a 32GB caching SSD for faster boot and sleep times. Scoring 43 overall in our multimedia benchmarks, it’s about on par with the competition.
Graphics performance was a little underwhelming, even for Intel’s integrated HD 4000 GPU – it managed only 12.9fps in our Dirt 3 benchmark. At least battery life was a respectable seven and a half hours, meaning you’ll get most of a full working day out of a single charge if you stick to light tasks.
At first glance, the Satellite U840W seems like it’s best for films with its 21:9 display, but in reality with no Blu-ray player and lots of films not shot in 21:9 that’s a bit misleading. However, the high resolution screen is brilliant for working on Windows applications and the price is attractive. Only the keyboard and touchpad detract from it. If the size isn’t so important, the HP Envy 6 is a better all-round laptop.
