Toshiba's latest range of laptops sport a smart new look, and the Satellite L40 stays true to its billing. It's a good candidate for a basic, stylish home laptop which just about ticks all the right boxes. But does that mean you should buy one?
Silky blue exterior and a chic new look.
Despite its alluring design and curved edges, the Satellite L40 isn’t spectacularly built, however — its roomy keyboard deck dips too easily at several spots and so does the palmrest. Having said that, typing on the Toshiba Satellite laptop’s keyboard is comfortable. But the same can’t be said of its touchpad which is too sensitive and difficult to use early on – we have no complaints of the touchpad size in any way, but just its overall response. Unlike thin and slim ultrabooks, the Toshiba Satellite L40 is slightly bulkier and heavier, its 14-inch frame weighing in at around 2 kg. It isn’t petite for sure, but for a laptop that doesn’t sport the ultrabook tag, it’s acceptable.
The 14-inch Satellite L40’s battery life lasts for 2 hours 38 minutes in our benchmark test (at high performance mode), which is quite good. Under a conservative setting and basic usage (browsing the Web, working on productivity sheets, 50% screen brightness, etc), expect the laptop to easily go past the 4 hour mark. Apart from this, the laptop’s an adequate performer, multitasks with 3 or 4 programs easily, but nothing extraordinary. It will let you watch an HD movie (with an acceptable audio-visual experience), but don’t even think of gaming on the Satellite L40. Its glossy screen is nice and bright and does a good job displaying text and visuals, and onboard speakers are decent for personal entertainment – not too loud, not too noisy. This laptop’s an average performer, it doesn’t surpass expectations, and it doesn’t disappoint in any respect either. All through our benchmarking and testing duration, the Toshiba Satellite L40 laptop didn’t heat up unduly and ran at a fairly acceptable temperature.
The Satellite L40 comes with Windows 8 operating system. In terms of features, the Toshiba laptop doesn’t really miss out on any of the standard input-output connectivity fare. If you’re wondering whether this laptop comes with latest Intel 4th generation “Haswell” processors, it doesn’t – it still sports last year’s Intel 3rd generation “Ivy Bridge” processors. We really like the fact that the Toshiba Satellite L40 comes with a 750GB hard drive at this price – other OEMs usually limit their bundled HDDs to 500GB at this price point.
Verdict
All things considered, the Toshiba Satellite L40 makes for a good basic home laptop that covers all bases and looks stylish. If you have a soft corner for Toshiba, by all means go for it.
Specifications
- Screen: 14-inch, 1366×768;
- CPU: Intel Core i5-3337U 1.8 GHz;
- RAM: 4 GB DDR3;
- HDD: 750 GB, 7200 RPM;
- GPU: Intel HD 4000;
- OS: Windows 8 Premium 64-bit;
- Optical Drive: Yes;
- USB 3.0: Yes, 3 ports;
- Connectivity: HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Performance
- PC Mark 8 (Home) – 2547
- PC Mark 07 – 2686
- 3D Mark 06 – 4602
- 3D Mark 11 – NA
- Unigine Heaven v4.0 DX11 (fps) – 9.8
- Cinebench R11.5 (CPU) – 2.49
- Cinebench R11.5 (FPS) – 13.27
- Battery Life (mins) – 178
- WinRar (KB/s) – 2200
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Jayesh Shinde
Executive Editor at Digit. Technology journalist since Jan 2008, with stints at Indiatimes.com and PCWorld.in. Enthusiastic dad, reluctant traveler, weekend gamer, LOTR nerd, pseudo bon vivant. View Full Profile
