Toshiba Satellite M645-S4118X: strong for entertainment

Toshiba's Satellite M645-S4118X is a 2.5kg laptop, priced at $ 1,100, with excellent performance, good gaming, excellent audio and video.

M645-S4118X has 6GB of memory, Intel Core i5-2410M CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M graphics card with 1GB of dedicated memory, 640GB 5400RPM hard drive. The device has 117 WorldBench 6 points (good but not top class).

Gaming frame rate is reasonable thanks to NVIDIA graphics card, but high-end games will really have to sacrifice some details to get playable frame rates. Watching videos on a screen with a resolution of 1,366 x 768 (including Blu-ray 1080p) is super smooth. Even the sound emitted through Harman / Kardon speakers is above average.

It has 1 USB 3.0 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports (but no eSATA port, possibly because the BD-ROM / DVD burner is too large), headphone jack and microphone, VGA, HDMI, Ethernet 10 / 100Gbit and 1 Kensington lock port. M645-S4118X has Bluetooth connectivity, 802.11b / g / n 2.4GHz.

M645-S4118X has a Chiclet soft keyboard, very sensitive touchpad but the buttons are a bit stiff. Having an on / off switch right on the touchpad can help you avoid accidentally moving the cursor. You can use Skype with a 640 x 480 webcam.

On the M645-S4118X, there are software: WinDVD (for movie playback), Toshiba WebCam utility, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, Norton Internet Security software suite (you can replace it with Microsoft Security Essentials). There are also many Toshiba utilities (some are background applications) such as online backups, shock sensors.

You can charge your mobile phone via USB 3.0 port. You can also play music using a stereo cord plugged into the microphone jack while the laptop is sleeping (can be disabled in the BIOS to extend battery life if you want).