Toshiba Satellite R845-S80

The Toshiba Satellite R845-S80 ($649.99 at Staples) sports an attractive ribbed finish and a battery that will take you through a full workday. A second-generation Core i3 CPU and niceties such as USB 3.0 and WiDi 2.0 technology make this laptop a good value for budget-conscious shoppers, but there are better-performing notebooks to be had for around the same price.

Design
Weighing 4.4 pounds, the inch-thick R845-S80 is one of the lighter 14-inch notebooks around. In comparison, the Dell Inspiron i14RN4110-7616DBK ($649.99 list, 3 stars) weighs 5.2 pounds and the Asus U46E-BAL5 ($699.99 list, 4.5 stars) weighs 4.9 pounds. A polished chrome Toshiba logo adorns the lid, which is done up in a smudge-resistant dark blue magnesium alloy finish with a raised ribbed pattern. A pair of polished chrome hinges makes the notebook look more expensive than it is and gives it a solid, durable feel.

Under the lid is a bright 14-inch screen with a maximum resolution of 1,366 by 768. The display has a glossy antiglare coating and delivers vibrant colors and inky blacks, but the screen darkens dramatically when viewed from a side angle. The two small speakers embedded above the keyboard are tinny and not very loud. The R845-S80 holds a full-size spill-resistant keyboard but lacks a dedicated number pad. The big chiclet-style keys and the textured black wrist rest provide a comfortable, smudge-free typing experience, and the recessed touchpad and large mouse buttons are responsive. A switch that enables or disables the touchpad is located just below the space bar. A pair of hotkeys is above the keyboard on the right: One launches Toshiba's eco Utility, which gives you the ability to check power usage and adjust power settings on the fly, and the other is Toshiba's Presentation button, which lets you connect quickly and easily to an external display or projector.

Features
The R845 offers a relatively generous feature set. The left side of the notebook holds VGA and HDMI video outputs, a USB 2.0 port, an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port with Sleep and Charge technology, and headphone and microphone jacks. On the right is a DVD multi-drive, a USB 3.0 port, a memory card reader slot, and an Ethernet port. The 500GB (5,400rpm) hard drive comes with Windows 7 Home Premium and a host of Toshiba-branded applications such as a face recognition utility and a webcam app for the embedded camera, Disc Creator, and PC Health Monitor. Other non-branded apps include Corel Digital Studio and several bloatware items in the forms of games, trialware, and adware.

In addition to 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, the R845 supports WiDi 2.0, the Intel wireless display technology you can use to connect to an external device such as an HDTV or a monitor without having to run any wires. You'll need the Netgear Push2TV receiver ($99 list) to do so, however. WiMAX broadband and Bluetooth networking are not part of the deal. The R845 comes with a standard one-year warranty covering parts and labor.

Performance
The R845-S80 uses Intel's Core i3-2310M Sandy Bridge processor, which has a clock speed of 2.1GHz. It also has 4GB of system memory and Intel's integrated HD Graphics 3000. The R845 turned in a PCMark 7 score of 1,532, which is significantly lower than we've seen on other Core i3 notebooks: For example, the Toshiba Satellite L745-S4210 ($639.99 list, 3.5 stars) earned 2,035 and the Dell Inspiron i14R-7616DBK 1,809. Our current Editors' Choice, the Asus U46E-BAL5, which has a Core i5 processor, scored 2,215 points. On the processor-intensive CineBench R11.5 benchmark test, the R845's score of 2.04 was a bit better than those of the Inspiron (1.99) and the L745-S4210 (2.03), but fell short of the U46E-BAL5 (2.59). The R845-S80's multimedia performance was better; it completed our Handbrake test in 2 minutes 25 seconds and finished our Photoshop CS5 test in 5 minutes 34 seconds, beating both the Inspiron (2:36 and 5:42 respectively) and the L745-S4210 (3:10 and 6:35 respectively). The U46E-BAL5 needed just 1:53 for Handbrake and 4:10 for Photoshop.

With the Intel HD Graphics 3000, the R845-S80 performed as expected in our gaming tests. It gave us only 13.9 frames per second (fps) on our Crysis DirectX 10 (DX10) test and 16.2fps on our Lost Planet 2 DX9 test, both of which we ran with medium detail settings at 1,024-by-768 resolution. You may be able to play some older, less graphics-intensive games on this notebook, but look elsewhere if you want to play current titles.

Where the R845 really shines is battery life. The six-cell, 66Wh battery gave us a MobileMark 2007 time of 9 hours 7 minutes. That's four hours longer than the Inspiron and more than three hours longer than the L745-S4210. Only the Samsung QX411-W01 came close, with a score of 8 hours 48 minutes.

What the Toshiba Satellite R845-S80 lacks in raw computing power it makes up for with a lightweight, durable chassis and an outstanding battery life. Granted, this laptop isn't going to set any speed records, but it is certainly capable of handling nearly all of your basic day-to-day computing tasks?and you get USB 3.0 and WiDi 2.0. That said, if you require the power of a Core i5 processor and want a few more features like WiMAX and a bigger hard drive, the Asus U46E-BAL5 gives you all that for only $50 more.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Toshiba Satellite R845-S80 with several other laptops side by side.

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