14″ Toshiba Satellite E45-B4100 Notebook via Amazon
Satin gold Toshiba Satellite E45-B4100 is a brand new 14 inch laptop with a crisp and clear Full HD screen, a powerful ultra low voltage high performance Broadwell Intel i5 processor, good memory and storage size (and easy upgradability), long battery life, decent connectivity options, impressive sound and is suitable for home, school and business use. It comes with the 5th generation dual core Intel i5-5200U processor with a 3MB cache and speeds between 2.2 and 2.7GHz with turbo boost for performance boost when needed and power efficiency when not and hyper threading for smart 4-way processing, 6GB DDR3L SDRAM dual channel memory with a maximum capacity of 16GB Max for efficient multitasking of demanding applications, 750GB Serial ATA hard drive at 5400rpm spindle speed as spacious storage which you can upgrade to SSD easily for much higher speeds (both RAM and HDD are easily upgradeable) and Windows 8.1 64-bit operating system as a decent platform for work and entertainment and you will have the option to download Windows 10 for free soon.
14 inch LED-backlit TFT widescreen TruBrite technology FHD display with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution with 16:9 image aspect ratio equals to image clarity, sharp texts and vivid colours. Intel HD 5500 graphics is OK for general multimedia tasks but not so much for 3D games. It comes with a HD webcam with integrated dual microphones with beam-forming technology and for impressive sound you have the DTS Sound and integrated Harman/Kardon stereo speakers. Brushed aluminium finish satin gold stylish and modern Toshiba E45-B4100 weighs 4.5 pounds with dimensions of 13.50 x 9.60 x 0.85 inches, is thin and lightweight for easy portability and it also feels solid and looks premium. LED-backlit Truetype keyboard offers comfy typing even in dim light and has the 10 key numeric pad and Clickpad that appears to be quite functional for gesture control on Windows 8. We don’t have the info on the battery life but is definitely longer than average- it has a lithium polymer battery. There is no DVD drive but pretty much all the other connectivity options are covered, including high speed 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0, 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN with RJ-45 connector, 2 x USB 3.0 ports for quick data transfer and one of which with USB sleep and charge capability, a USB 2.0 port, an HDMI output that supports 4K UHD output, Multiformat Media Reader that supports SD, SDHC, miniSD, microSD, microSDHC and MMC formats, and Voice Recognition function.
Conclusion: Toshiba Satellite E5-B4100 with its below mid-range price range and with such high specs, is no doubt very good value for dollar as an excellent laptop with great performance levels of 5th generation Intel i5 processor with a Passmark benchmark score of 3538 at the time of this review and 6GB of memory that can be upgraded up to 16GB. It is an Intel WiDi capable (Wireless Display) unit so you can stream your multimedia content directly from your laptop to your HDTV wirelessly and you can control your laptop easily via speech with Dragon Assistant software. You will find a month trial of Microsoft Office as well as software like Photo Director and Adobe Reader included, for anti-virus simply install free AVG online. It is an EPEAT Gold certified computer as it is built to be environmentally friendly and is offered with a 12 month limited parts and labor warranty by Toshiba. If you want better performance including much faster boot-up times just add extra memory and get a good quality SSD as they are both very easy to upgrade through the bottom of the PC. It works fast overall and quietly and is great for general daily use like web browsing, word processing, light gaming as well as more demanding stuff- has enough power to handle most tasks except for advanced 3D games as it doesn’t include a 3D graphics card. There is no Optical DVD Drive by default and you may get a low-cost external drive and connect it via one of the USB ports. Toshiba is a reliable brand for computers and this Satellite 14 inch is one of the best value machines you can get at the moment with great features set- screen, sound, processing power, memory, storage, connectivity and build quality at a very reasonable price.
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