Toshiba Satellite L745D-S4220 Review

Toshiba Satellite L745D-S4220

Review Summary:

An affordable laptop for school, but be prepared to upgrade the hard drive if you want decent performance.

Pros

• Good HD video and light gaming performance
• Low cost
• Good keyboard and touchpad

Cons

• Horribly slow hard drive
• Thick with cheap plastics
• Low-quality screen

Toshiba Satellite L745D-S4220 Full Review

 

The Toshiba Satellite L745D-S4220 is a simplified and affordable 14-inch laptop designed for limited back-to-school budgets. Packed with a battery-friendly AMD dual-core processor and graphics, Toshiba promises this laptop will make the grade. We took a closer look to see if this $500 notebook can deliver more than its price tag suggests.

Toshiba Satellite L745D (L745D-S4220) Specifications:

• 14.0-inch 720p (1366x768) display with LED backlighting
• Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
• AMD E-350 with AMD Radeon HD 6310 Graphics (dual-core CPU at 1.6 GHz and dual DX-11 SIMDs at 500 MHz)
• 4GB DDR3 RAM (1066MHz)
• 500GB 5400RPM hard drive (Seagate Momentus)
• 802.11b/g/n wireless
• DVD SuperMulti (+/- Double Layer)
• Warranty: 1-Yr Standard Limited Warranty (1-Yr on Battery)
• 6-cell Li-ion battery (48Wh) and 45W power adapter
• Weight: 5.09 lbs
• Dimensions: 13.3 x 9.1 x 1.3-1.5 inches
• MSRP: $499.99

Build and Design
At first glance the new Satellite L740/L745 series looks virtually the same as the rest of the budget-priced Satellite notebooks from the last year. The rounded clamshell chassis wrapped in a mixture of glossy and matte plastic is a mixture of metallic brown and black. What makes the L740/L745 series "unique" from a design perspective is that this same chassis is used for multiple Satellite notebooks with a wide range of internal configurations.

In short, this 14-inch plastic shell was designed to fit the needs of everything from $500 laptops to custom configurations priced at more than $900. What's that old saying about a "Jack of all trades?"

The screen lid and the top panel that surrounds the keyboard are both made of thin glossy plastics with a brown "dot matrix" pattern. I'm sure the glossy plastics look good on display in stores but the all-gloss surface is prone of picking up smudges from fingerprints as well as any other specks of dirt that come into contact with the laptop.

The all-plastic construction of the L745D means you end up with both a main chassis and screen lid that flex under pressure and "squeak" softly when you squeeze it next to the areas with thinner plastics. The only parts of this laptop that feel particularly durable are the screen hinges on this model which are reasonably tight and hold the screen in position when you move the laptop from one location to another. I'm sure this laptop will survive just fine as a desktop replacement, but I have doubts that the thin plastics used in the L745D will survive daily use and abuse by a high school student if he or she carries it in a backpack with books every day.

The bottom of the notebook is rather basic but it's quite friendly in terms of upgrades. There are two access panels beneath the laptop that give you access to the hard drive, RAM, and wireless card. Most people buying a $500 laptop are unlikely to install any hardware upgrades, but you might be surprised how much snappier this budget notebook becomes with a faster hard drive (more on that later in the performance section).

Ports and Features
The new Satellite L745D features an adequate selection of ports. You get three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet and a memory card slot in addition to the DVD drive. There is no ExpressCard slot for adding new ports and Toshiba neglected to include either USB 3.0 or eSATA ... probably to keep the MSRP at or below $500.

Front view: Memory card slot	Rear view: No ports
Left side: Lock slot, black spot for optional modem, Ethernet, HDMI, two USB 2.0 ports, audio jacks	Right side: DVD drive, USB 2.0, VGA, and power jack

Keyboard and Touchpad
I have to confess that I've been a fan of many Toshiba keyboards over the last two years. The L745D comes with a full-size keyboard that uses a hybrid of a traditional layout with flat individual keys similar to what you'll find on Chiclet-style keyboards. Each key is responsive and provides excellent key travel. The keys are large and flat and have a glossy texture that shows smudges from your skin oils over time. The support structure under the keyboard is quite firm and the keyboard doesn't "bounce" when you type with heavy pressure. My only complaint is that the keyboard lacks LED backlighting for typing under low light ... but I can forgive the lack of a backlit keyboard on a $500 laptop.

The Synaptics touchpad is fairly nice with a matte texture that provides smooth cursor movement. The touchpad driver delivers excellent accuracy and minimal lag with a range of options. The dedicated touchpad buttons are a welcome sight now that so many companies are using buttonless "clickpads" (which often don't work extremely well). The left and right touchpad buttons emit a rather loud "ca-chunk" when pressed, so you might irritate coworkers or classmates if you're constantly clicking the buttons.

Screen and Speakers
The L745D has a 14.0-inch diagonal display with LED backlighting and a 16:9 aspect ratio. The overall quality of the display is "average or below average" within the narrow vertical viewing angle sweet spot. The backlight is even and bright (210 nits according to our light meter), contrast is reasonably sharp (285:1) and colors are good though the colors are a little too saturated at the default settings. The two complaints I had with this screen are the narrow vertical viewing angles (common laptop displays that use standard TN panels) and the fact it was slightly "off center" within the frame. You can actually see a little more black edge on the right side of the screen than the left side ... a sign that someone wasn't too concerned about quality control.

The display's 1366x768 resolution is a standard resolution for mainstream notebooks. The horizontal resolution is adequate, however only 768 pixels of vertical space means a good deal of scrolling while surfing the Internet and only enough space to view about one-half of a page in a Microsoft Word. This is pretty standard for a modern 14-inch laptop, but since the E305 comes with a Blu-ray drive, it's important to point out you can't watch true 1080p video on this laptop's built-in screen.

The Satellite L745D features non-branded stereo speakers located just above the keyboard. This location is great for pushing sound up and toward the user. Although the audio quality was fine, I was expecting the speakers to sound better based on my first look at the notebook. The speaker grills are quite large but if you examine them closely you'll notice that the actual speakers only take up a tiny amount of space under the grills. If you want to experience premium sound with this laptop then you'll need to invest in a good set of earphones or external speakers.

Performance and Benchmarks
The Toshiba Satellite L740 and L745 Series is available in multiple configurations with either Intel or AMD processors. The Satellite L745D-S4220 is the least expensive configuration in this 14-inch family of laptops. This notebook uses the AMD "Zacate" E-350 accelerated processing unit (APU) which combines a dual-core CPU running at a 1.6 GHz clock speed with a Radeon graphics processing unit (GPU) on a single processor die.

The non-technical translation is that the L745D-S4220 uses a small-yet-powerful combination of processor and graphics that was designed to offer good performance and low power consumption at a low cost. Unfortunately, this also means that the L745D-S4220 has the worst performance among the L740/L745 series.

The E-350 processor and Radeon HD 6310 graphics offer more than enough power for basic computing tasks like writing school papers, browsing the web, editing photos or even watching HD movies on the Netflix website. However, if you're planning to edit many HD home movies or you want to play the latest games you're probably better off spending $100 extra to buy the Toshiba Satellite L745D-S4230 with AMD Quad-Core A6-3400M processor.

That said, even the slightly more expensive upgrade doesn't solve the biggest problem with the L745D's performance: a slow hard drive. Toshiba decided to use one of the slowest (if not the slowest) hard drives we've seen in recent memory. The Seagate 5400rpm hard drive used inside our review unit was so slow that it impacted everything from Windows startup to opening files. We know it was the slow hard drive at fault because after running our performance benchmarks we replaced the stock hard drive with a Western Digital 5400rpm hard drive and not only did the notebook startup faster but both the PCMark and 3DMark scores increased slightly.

Bottom line, the Satellite L745D-S4220 gives you better performance than a typical netbook but the hard drive is painfully slow.

Wprime processor comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):


PCMark Vantage measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):

PCMark 7 measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark06 measures overall graphics performance for gaming (higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark Vantage measures overall graphics performance for gaming (higher scores mean better performance):

CrystalDiskMark storage drive performance test:

 

Heat and Noise
The Toshiba L745D manages to stay extremely "lap friendly" even when you're stressing the processor and graphics with things like HD video encoding or gaming. I suspect most of the credit for this laptop's low external temperatures is due to the AMD E-350 processor inside. This processor was originally designed to fit inside smaller "netbook-sized" laptops, so when Toshiba put this AMD processor inside a larger 14-inch shell it left plenty of room for empty space and air flow. The self-adjusting fan will speed up when needed but the noise produced by the cooling fan is never loud enough to be disruptive. The exterior temperatures shown below are listed in degrees Fahrenheit.

Battery Life
In the "balanced" power mode with 75% screen brightness, the Satellite L745D-S4220 lasted for five hours and eleven minutes of non-stop use with wireless active and refreshing a page every 60 seconds. This is "okay" for a modern 14-inch notebook with a stock 6-cell battery and it's happily very close to Toshiba's advertised 5 and a half hours of battery life.

However, it's worth mentioning that even some smaller notebooks like the HP Pavilion dm1z use 6-cell batteries with higher capacities than the battery in the L745D. The battery in this laptop is rated at 48Wh which is a surprisingly low capacity for a 14-inch laptop. The budget-priced L745D barely delivers more battery time than the HP ENVY 14 ... and that laptop is using a powerful processor and graphics that consume more battery power.

Battery life test results (higher scores mean better battery life):

Conclusion
If you are currently in the market for a low-cost 14-inch laptop that has enough muscle to perform basic tasks (Microsoft Office work or light Photoshop editing) and has the graphics capability to play streaming HD video, then the Toshiba Satellite L745D might be a good choice.

Unfortunately, I have to stress the word, "might" in that previous sentence. The single biggest problem preventing the L745D from earning a stronger recommendation is that Toshiba might have cut too many corners on this laptop so it could be sold at a $500 or lower price. The AMD E-350 dual-core processor and AMD Radeon HD 6310 graphics aren't horribly weak in terms of performance, but if you pair them with an extremely slow hard drive and an average battery the end result is cheap laptop with subpar performance.

If Toshiba used a faster hard drive inside the Satellite L745D this notebook would have felt much "snappier" during general use and it would have performed as well or better than the HP Pavilion dm1z (which has similar technical specs). Likewise, a higher-capacity battery would have made this budget laptop really stand out for back-to-school buyers.

In short, if you buy the Toshiba Satellite L745D and plan to do more than surf the web or write school papers then we highly recommend that you also invest in a faster hard drive or solid state drive in order to give this laptop a much needed speed boost.

Pros:

• Good HD video and light gaming performance
• Low cost
• Good keyboard and touchpad

Cons:

• Horribly slow hard drive
• Thick with cheap plastics
• Low-quality screen

Individual Ratings: *
Software & Support 
Upgrade Capabilities 
Usability 
Design 
Performance 
Features 
Price/Value Rating