Toshiba Satellite L645D: Mobile AMD at 3GHz
by Dustin Sklavos on March 9, 2011 3:20 AM ESTConclusion: But it's $619
Reviewing the Toshiba L645D-S4106 has left me with decidedly mixed feelings. Cheap Arrandale-based notebooks are going to provide better processor performance than even AMD's fastest in the L645D, and they'll offer better battery life in the process. Likewise, I really wish Toshiba would just put glossy plastic out to pasture. I've griped about this before but it bears repeating: glossy plastic photographs reasonably well and that's about it, and using it on the keyboard is a horrendous idea.
But...the L645D is $619.
Taken in a vacuum the L645D might be underwhelming, but thankfully for Toshiba (and possibly you and Joe Sixpack), it's not in a vacuum. Toshiba attacks the budget market fairly aggressively, and the value proposition of this notebook is certainly strong. The processor may be competing with some of Arrandale's slowest, but Arrandale's architecture is really quite fast so there isn't much to complain about there. Toshiba may be shipping it with a slow hard drive, but that drive still packs 640GB of capacity. The Mobility Radeon HD 4250 may be on its last legs, but it still gets the job done in a pinch (and at very low settings). And hey, you get a Blu-ray drive standard and an HDMI output to use it with.
A quick visit to NewEgg proves that if you want the 14" form factor, you're going to have to spend a little more to get it. There aren't any cheaper 14" notebooks with the Blu-ray drive, and there are maybe one or two available that promise better CPU performance than the L645D does. If you're buying on a budget you need to accept that you'll have to make some trade-offs. In the case of the L645D, that means putting up with Toshiba's glossy finish (really only an authentic nuisance on the keyboard) and middling battery life in exchange for a decent processor, a Blu-ray drive, and mobility. For the college student strapped for cash the L645D may not be such a bad call, but because it's a budget notebook you're really going to have to decide what's important to you.
Under the circumstances we'd suggest taking the L645D (or a similarly built Toshiba notebook) for a test drive in retail before taking the plunge. The entire L640 line looks like it offers tremendous bang for the buck, with this one being king of the castle. It's tough to recommend any budget notebook because of all the trade-offs that are always involved, but if you need something portable and don't have a lot to spend the L645D is a good option. If you're in the above situation, though, losing Blu-ray and saving another $100 is probably an even better idea.
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Taft12 - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
Starcraft II has higher requirements than the rest of this list, but it is the most popular PC game on the market by a mile. Please include it (low settings of course)JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
This is the list of *old* games I'm testing. Anything on the current list will also be tested. You can already see those results in the HP dm1z review:http://www.anandtech.com/show/4187/hp-dm1z-taking-...
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
We already have low settings SC2 numbers for every low-powered notebook we test, SC2 is in our suite.LeftSide - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
COD4 or COD5. My Dell studio 14 with nvidia 9400m can play cod4 at 1366x768 with low settings. World at War is too much too handle.JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
Hmmm... I've got so many FPS titles in there already. I suppose I can try COD4, which is a slightly newer take on Quake 4 engine IIRC.UNHchabo - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
I have two suggestions:1) Killing Floor or Red Orchestra. As far as I know, you don't have any UT2.5 games on your list, and some lower-end graphics chips can still struggle on it.
2) At least one racing game: maybe Need For Speed: Undercover, or Trackmania Nations.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
I figure if Unreal Tournament 3 can run okay, anything on the UT2.5 engine should be okay as well.The racing genre is pretty unrepresented, true. I suppose one of the NFS games will do; I'm trying to remember what the last one I purchase is. NFS: Carbon I think. I remember playing Underground 1 or 2 and then Carbon, and felt like the series had lost me. What about NFS: World? Is that too demanding, or have they made it work well with slower systems?
Also, I forgot that League of Legends is supposed to be in the above list as well. I suck at it, but I can at least play against the computer. :-)
cdeeter - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - link
How about one of the older Need for Speed games like Most Wanted or Underground? That way you would have a racing game in the mix.HHCosmin - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
this is so stupid what this companies do. i think they deserve a little suing. they give you crap autonomy because they are too lazy to care about integration. for some time i thought that amd cpus were not that great as power usage goes. well... not anymore. sony proved that you can get good runtime with even a small battery with an amd platform. toshiba, asus, dell etc care crap about optimizing the platform (and think this is the case for intel to some degree). these machines are for mobile use so runtime is more important than raw power! do you hear me dear integrators?! they also make life harder for users by feeding crapware and opting out of programs that would assure good quality for drivers and would not cost them anything.... the platform is as good as the software is so use you brainz so good, uptodate drivers we need. do not really see much use for optical drives especially in small laptops and mostly in general. why is gbit lan missing? why all this obsession for gloss? i have some hard time what kind of person makes such decisions? do they know anything about IT in general? if they do it really does not show. i believe these companies really deserve some protests. my protest is simple... right now i believe has some dumb people around that make dumb selections of hardware.HHCosmin - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - link
fully agree with Dustin. why have a expensive blueray drive in a budget machine? why not bigger battery? why not gbit lan? why not bluetooth? there are some decisions that make this look like some people at toshiba are very confused. this laptop could have been a lot better and cheaper but some toshiba dorks screw around. this really pisses me off.