Summary
Toshiba's latest ultrabook offering in India, the Satellite U840 retails for roughly Rs. 53500. It faces some stiff competition from HP (Envy 4) and Samsung (Series 5). What we cannot get around is the fact that while the rivals are offering pretty powerful graphics with their ultrabooks in the same price range, Toshiba has sent out the U840 with just integrated graphics. System performance overall is fine, but the rivals tend to make more sense because of the better graphics option for that light gaming session.
Features & Specifications
For ultrabooks, the Ivy Bridge Core i5-3317U processor is the most popular one in ultrabooks these days. It is clocked at 1.7GHz, with Turbo Boost taking it to 2.6GHz. This is helped along by 4GB of RAM, with one free slot that lets you increase the memory to 8GB.
The 14-inch display size seems to be rather popular with ultrabooks, particularly the second generation ones. The resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels is pretty much standard fare across the board now as well. The Toshiba Satellite U840 display is reflective, and seems to be slightly more so than the Samsung Series 5, but on the same platform as the HP Envy 4. Native brightness is a tad higher than the HP, but it does not handle colours as well on the higher end of the brightness scale – but that is true for most displays. There is adequate crispness to make text readability comfortable, and also helps with the video playback quality.
We had mentioned that the keypad on the much more expensive
Dell XPS 14 is on the flatter side, in terms of the key height and design. The Toshiba Satellite U840 is even flatter. It does take a lot of time to get used to the lesser key travel. Somehow, the keys seem slimmer, not in terms of width, but with the height. We cannot understand why so many tweaks were needed on a keyboard. Not many people realize it, but getting used to a different layout does take time. Why add an unnecessary learning curve in the midst of what could be a seamless shift-over experience? The Toshiba Satellite U840’s touchpad works very well, and the response will be assured and works without fail.
In terms of storage, the Satellite U840 is on terms with the rivals – 500GB hard drive for primary storage and a 32GB flash storage for caching tasks.
Performance
With relatively similar specs to the Samsung Series 5 and the almost the same as the HP Envy 4, you would expect similar performance. And yes, for that part, the U840 delivers very well. It is very slightly behind the other two in the PC Mark Vantage test, but scores the best in the PC Mark 07 test – 4220 to HP’s 3150 and Samsung’s 2371. On paper, this would be a very quick ultrabook to use. However, in the real life usage scenario, the Windows installation does seem slightly sluggish. Apps take time to open, and the response time fluctuates quite a bit – between quick and slow. And we can’t blame too many preloaded apps on the system, because Toshiba’s machines are by far the cleanest of the lot. Plus, even our clean and tweak process prior to the benchmark tests didn’t help at all. And yes, the flash storage was active! This squarely puts the Toshiba Satellite U840 behind the HP Envy and the Samsung Series 5 in terms of the real world usage scenario. Just to be doubly sure, we reinstalled the OS on this ultrabook, and things became much better. The sluggish nature of the machine went out of the Window, completely. This clearly indicated some bloating of the Windows OS that came installed on this machine, could be because of some apps that were installed and then uninstalled.
If you will be using the ultrabook for a bit of gaming, for example, the Toshiba Satellite U840 isn’t the one to buy. This one doesn’t have a dedicated graphics chip, which is a huge surprise considering the immediate rivals offer rather powerful solutions. For a machine depending on Intel HD 4000 graphics, there isn’t much point in comparing it with machines that are significantly more powerful.
Battery life is an area where the U840 does quite okay. In our full load battery test, this lasted 185 minutes on a single charge, compared to the HP that did 223 minutes and the Samsung that did 229 minutes. However, you are still looking at around 5.5 hours of backup in a real world typical usage scenario, which is pretty good.
The Samsung i8520 (also known as the Galaxy Beam, Beam, or previously Halo) is a smartphone produced by Samsung. Its main feature is a built-in DLP WVGA projector that is able to project images at up to 50 inches (1,300 mm) in size at 15 lumens. The i8520 also contains an 8-megapixel camera, that can be used along with the projector to allow the user to project directly what is in front of the camera (similar to the action of an overhead projector). The camera is also able to record HD video at a resolution of 720p at 30 frame/s. The phone also offers local Wi-Ficonnectivity, e-mail, and web browsing, as well as containing a built-in GPS receiver. It was released initially in Singapore on 17 July 2010 with the carrier StarHub. An international release was expected some time during August 2010.
