Toshiba Satellite M45 First Thoughts Review (pics, specs)

by Andrew Baxter, New York USA

The Toshiba Satellite M45 was recently released by Toshiba. This notebook features a 15.4" XGA widescreen TruBrite display. But most importantly, it houses the latest Centrino platform from Intel, Sonoma, meaning the 1.60GHz Pentium M chip equipped with the M45-S331 has a 533MHz Front Side Bus (FSB), 2MB L2 Cache and the Intel 915GM chipset for better processor and graphics performance.

Toshiba Satellite M45 (view larger image)

Specs

• Processor: Intel Pentium M 730 (1.60GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB)
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (SP2)
• Memory: 512MB PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM (256MB x 2)
• Screen: 15.4" Wide-screen XGA Tru-Brite Display (1280 x 800)
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 w/64MB-128MB shared video
• Hard Drive: 80GB (4200 RPM)
• Optical Drive: DVD SuperMulti Drive
• Wireless: Intel Wireless Pro 2200BG (802.11g)
• Ports: 5-in-1 built-in media card reader, 3-USB (2.0) ports, IEEE 1394 port, TV-out (S-video), Ethernet port, V.92/56K Modem

Design and Build

The Toshiba Satellite M45 is a 15.4" screen notebook that weighs in at 6.2lbs and is best described as a desktop replacement style notebook, but one that won't break your back if you want to move it between home and office on a daily basis.

The casing is constructed of a rigid and durable plastic materialthat provides for lighter weight, but the casing is not so durable that I'd want to see this laptop dropped any distance. It's not as solidly built as say an IBM ThinkPad or Panasonic ToughBook, but the overall build feels more convincing to me than most Dell Inspiron notebooks I have used. So the construction and durability of the M45 is best described as middle of the road.

Ports and Buttons

I love shortcut buttons, providing a user with the ability to perform an oft performed task by simply pressing a button instead of dragging a mouse and drilling through menus or moving aslider with a cursor is a beautiful thing. Toshiba provides shortcut buttons on the left hand side of the keyboardto launch a browser window, launch windows media player, play or pause a DVD/CD, and skip music tracks or DVD sections. On the front of the notebook is a volume control and button to turn wireless on and off.

Toshiba Satellite M45 Front-side with buttons (show larger image)

I also happen to be a fan of pretty neon lights, it's the simple things that please. Toshiba provides bright neon LED lights on the front of the notebook to indicate power on, battery charge status, hard drive access, and media card status. Also on the front side are the headphone and microphone jacks, this location provides easy access and I personally like this spot as opposed to the left-side where most laptops have the headphone jack.

Left side of Toshiba Satellite M45 (view larger image)

The M45 comes with a generous number of ports. On the left side is 1-USB 2.0 port, a VGA out port and a PCMCIA Type-II PC Card slot. Also on the left side is a slot location for an Express Card that was apparently thought better of and scrapped. I'm baffled by this, you can clearly see that above the PCMCIA slot there is a slot and it has the "EX" designation for Express Card and on the Quick Start Guide indicates the machine having an Express Card slot. However, in the manual there is no mention of this card slot (it does mention the PCMCIA card slot) and there is absolutely no way to remove the dummy piece of plastic Toshiba has put into this "we were going to put it in, but decided not to" port.

Toshiba Satellite M45 back view (view larger image)

On the back of the notebook we have the power port, modem jack, ethernet jack, and video-out port.

Toshiba Satellite M45 right-side view (view larger image)

On the right-side of the M45 we have 2-USB 2.0 ports, a firewire port and the DVD multi-drive for playing/burning both DVDs and CDs.

Processor and Performance

So far my experience with the M45 in measuring performancehas been mostly perception and not via benchmark. Perception wise it's certainly a snappy machine for using everyday applications such as Internet Explorer, Windows Mediaand OfficeApplications...but then againa budget Celeron processor can handle such things without a hiccup.The Pentium M 730 1.60 GHz processor with 533MHz FSB/915GM-chipsetisn't noticeably faster than the older 1.60GHz processor with 400MHz FSB/855GM-chipset on my IBM ThinkPad T40 when using the notebook. But running a simple application that times how long it takes the processor to calcuate Pi to 2-million digits of accuracy does give away the fact the Intel Pentium M 730 is faster than the Intel Pentium M 725 in my ThinkPad T40, here are the results of the IBM ThinkPad T40 (with 1.60GHz Intel Pentium M 725) versus the Toshiba Satellite M45 (with 1.60GHz Intel Pentium M 730).

IBM ThinkPad T40 (Intel Pentium M725): 2m23s (143s)
Toshiba Satellite M45 (Intel Pentium M 730): 2m12s (132s)

Do the math 100.00 - 100.00 * (132 / 143) = 7.7% difference

So the Pentium M 730 running at the same clock speed as the older Pentium M 725 appears to achieve, as Intel says, approximate a 5% - 10% performance edge in pure processor calculation speed. I haven't tested graphics performance yet, but Intel claims a 93% performance gain with the Pentium M 730 over the Pentium M 725.

To view other notebooks and how fast they calculate Pi to 2-million digits and post your own stats, please visit our popular forum topic "Let's measure our notebook speeds".

Screen

The screen for the M45-S331 is a 15.4" Widescreen (1280 x 800) XGA Tru-Brite display (even though on the Toshiba.com website it does not indicate this notebook as having a TruBrite display, trust me, it is). TruBrite means thescreen has a glossyfinish yet vivid and bright color display. Personally the reflection you get off of these glossy displays doesn't bother me, I like the enhanced brightness you gain. The widescreen display makes viewing DVDs a great experience, and the built-in Harman/Kardon speakers even provide enough volume and quality sound to provide a quality movie watching experience without having to plug in headphones. Two thumbs up on the screen, you won't be disappointed.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Toshiba Satellite M45 above keyboard/touchpad view (view larger image)

I can't deal with non-standard keyboard layouts too well, and the Toshiba M45 is not totally standard. I really dislike the fact there is no Ctrl key on the right side, the Home/PgUp/PgDn/End keys are aligned in an odd vertical way andthe delete key normallly located in the upper right is instead in a hard to reach lower right position. The Tab-key on the left-side is also smaller than usual for no good reason and is easy to miss if you're expecting the larger more standard sized key. Feedback from keys is so-so, you don't get the nice solid feedback a ThinkPad gives you but at least the key travel distance is good.

The touchpad is darn awful. It's way too small for this size notebook and the cursor at times has a mind of its own rather than obeying where I think my finger is dragging it via the touchpad. Best advice I can give with the M45 is use a mouse and place the machine on your desk and you'll be much happier than trying to use the touchpad.

Battery

With a rudimentary battery drain test of going from full charge to forced shut-down and hibernation at 5% battery charge remaining,theToshiba Satellite M45achieved1 hour and17 minutes of battery life on the standard battery under the following conditions:

1) Wi-Fi on
2) Screen Brightness full and forced on
3) Machine idling with no programs being used

These results are obviously terrible, I'll try varying the screen brightness and other battery saving configurations to see how much battery life can be squeezed out of this machine and will then post those numbers in the full review.

More to Come

We'll have a full review of the Toshiba M45 in the coming weeks and more insight on how the latest Intel Pentium M processor stacks up on performance!

Pricing and Availability

 

Does anyone know if you can upgrade the graphics card on the notebook? Also, what types of battery performance have been witnessed?

 

Wow, this review came just right on time! I was checking out this laptop yesterday and was not able to find a review.

Like beerforbrains, I'm also interested in knowing the battery life of this laptop. Initial impression seems to be subpar, for it having a little more than 2 hour battery life only.
Hope that is inaccurate.

 

i'll run some battery life tests for you guys tomorrow, i have not had a chance to do this yet.

 

Looks a bit better than the older Satellite series, but still kinda cheap-looking. 6.2 lbs is definitely very acceptable though.

Green Surveys - Get cash for filling out online surveys.
Green Emails - Get paid to read emails.

 

Andrew,

Does this unit have a blow dryer for a fan? Or is it whisper quiet? Also, did Toshiba bombard it with a lot of preinstalled software that starts up with Windows?

I was absolutely shocked... I recently compared a Centrino-based Toshiba (Dothan) side by side with a cheap Compaq Presario 2200US (Celeron M). The Compaq was wonderfully quiet, speedy and stayed cool to the touch. The much more expensive Pentium M Toshiba had a loud fan and ran hotter. Funny how the "cheapie" in this case was so much more of a pleasure to use.

Barry J. Doyle
Editor in Chief
TabletPCReviewSpot.com
www.tabletpcreviewspot.com

 

hey Barry, it is true that Toshiba pre-installed a bunch of software that I'd just rather not have and the system tray is pretty full with applications running in the background. I won't say that it's a whole lot worse than what any other manufacturer puts on there...but unfortunately they do include such things as AOL 9.0/Napster/Real Player/Quick Time without giving you the choice.

The machine is pretty quiet when in an idle state, the fan does not run, but once you start pushing it a little the fan will kick in and it's noticeable as far as noise goes but not as loud as say the Dell Inspiron 9000 (can you say vacuum cleaner?) and in my book is acceptable on that front.

 

Battery Test #1:

- Screen Forced to stay on at Full Brightness (8/8)
- Wi-Fi on
- Idle state - no applications being used
- Starting battery level: 100%
- Time to shut down due to low battery: 1 hour 17 minutes

 

LOL - holy crap that's terrible.

Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com

 

WOW! only 2 hr. 17 min...That sounds awful. Is this normal for notebooks running on full power, or is this as bad as it sounds??

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by abaxter

 

oops. I meant 1 hour and 17 minutes!

 

Thanks for taking the time to review and test this puppy for us.

I was thinking of bying that one. But the more I read about Toshiba and and some of their problems I'm really turned off it.

The HP ZV5430US looks better to me every day.

 

abaxter: thanks for running the battery test!

Ouch, the battery life is just unacceptable for a Centrino-based laptop!
At 6.2lb with at 15.4" widescreen, it does have its appeal, but I guess I'll turn my head to the Acer Aspire 1689.

Any better suggestion?

 

well, the Dell Inspiron 6000 got 2 hours 56 mins of battery life under the same conditions, but I wouldn't highly recommend that notebook as it's just not all that great look/build wise and the screen is so-so. The Dell i6000 does perform well and have better battery life though.

 

I read the battery test results this morning and really thought my M45 was doing better than that. To be honest, the trubrite screen at full power (8/8) is almost too bright to use for long periods of time, so I ratchet down to 6/8.

This morning I was surfing, IMing, downloading and playing music and video, and working on a spreadsheet. I started at 7:45am pst, and at 10:28am pst I received my first low battery warning (15 minutes left).

For a machine that ran me around $1300 after the rebate, I've been pretty happy with it. I was disappointed that the pci express slot houses a plastic filler, but that's been about it. It runs pretty quiet, and stays reasonably cool.

I did have one dead pixel on boot up...will Toshiba do anything for me?

 

I have a problem with this laptop. I just got a m45-s331 two days ago and heres my problem. When I unplug the ac power plug and run it on battery power and when I plug the ac cord back in the computer freezes, Happens always whe the unit is hot. Returned that unit and got a second unit, same thing when hot replugging the ac cord to re-charge the battery it freezes. Talk to tech support, they could not figure it out, said take it to a repair center. So returned the second unit back to CC. Got their tech guy to experince the problem, tried it on their display module, and guess what same thing, computer freezes. Has any else see this problem?[ !]

 

Battery life...
Bought an m45 about 3 days ago. So far quite pleased with it. Had alot of my own app's to install so I tested battery during the customize.
I got 2.5 hrs of very CD and HD intensive computing... one install after another and several reboots as well. I only had the display at 50% because that was all I needed.
The touch pad also seems quite adequate to me... but I don't use those more than half the time on any laptop I've ever used. Prefer a good track ball (boy are those getting hard to find!) and my Logitech usb marble worked immediately when I plugged it in to the usb port. Some of the fancier footwork will require Logitech's driver, but I'll get to that eventually.
Performance was very satisfying until I downloaded the umpteen gazillion updates my Norton Antivirus requires (I unsinstalled the '05 version that came w/the Toshiba and put my '04 on it... it has more subscription left). Things are a bit sluggish on it now, but I have observed this on every machine I've serviced or used running fully updated NAV '04.

Anyway, happy with the unit so far.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by aadeanb

 

Thanks for this helpful review. I read it before buying an M45 today. FYI, they've got it posted under M45-S351, which has a 740 Pentium M at 1.73 GHz, but the review is about an M45-S331 which seems to have slightly different specs (1.6 GHz on an 730).

The M45-s351 has the same "fake" EX slot, though.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by tsloeza

 

I have the EXACT same problemw with mine. Sometimes it doesn't (i move around the mouse touch pad as i'm plugging in power, that sometimes seems to stop it) -- but it happens most of the time.

Infuriating! I love the machine, but this just annoys me to no end. Surely Toshiba have other reports of this too.

- Chris.

 

Toshiba's M45 was garbage from it's first boot. After nine months mine finally died, and leading up to this point it's been one headache after another.

I've had frequent crashes, program freezes, keys behaving eratically, and just odd random behavior overall.

As if that weren't enough, the thing is just poorly made. The facing to the CD drive fell off. The closure mechanism isn't calibrated right so it often doesn't go into hybernate when the screen is closed. The power cord connection is too loose so it often just falls out, or worse it will look like it's still connected when it's not.

It's been my experience that Toshiba's tech support is anything but supportive -EVEN WHEN MY COMPUTER WAS IN IT'S DEATH THROES!

They gave me the run-around for days before giving me any real help. Then THEY SENT ME TO A RAT-HOLE OF A COMPUTER SHOP. They didn't even have a rat-hole in Seattle. I had to drive to another city's rat-hole. And it won't be fixed for another four days.

In short, Toshiba is BAD NEWS. Ok, so they put out a bad product. At least they could be a little helpful now that I'm stuck with it.