Toshiba Intros Three New "Ultrathin" Laptops

By Kevin Parrish
published

All three have ten-point touch input, making them great for Windows 8 navigation.

On Tuesday, Toshiba introduced three new "ultrathin" laptop models: the 14 inch Satellite E45t, the 15.6 inch Satellite E55t and the 15.6 inch Satellite E55Dt. The 14 inch model will be available on August 4, 2013, exclusively at Best Buy stores, BestBuy.com and Toshiba Direct, whereas the 15.6 inch models will be offered in September at major retailers and e-tailers nationwide and direct from Toshiba.

While the specs weren't provided, Toshiba said that all three models will sport a sleek, durable brushed aluminum casing with Toshiba's modern Skyline design. They'll also be less than an inch thin and feature reinforced LED backlit keyboards. All three will even support 10-finger touch support, making them ideal for Windows 8 navigation.

According to the company, customers will have a choice of CPU options including AMD's A6 APU and Intel's fourth-generation Haswell processors. Laptops built with the latter chips will also include Dragon Assistant voice control technology, Intel Smart Response technology and Intel Wireless Display.

"Dragon Assistant on Ultrabook models leverages the power of speech recognition technology, giving users the freedom and flexibility to control applications using their voice," the company said. "Simply speaking, 'Hello Dragon', launches the assistant and allows people to search the Web, find content on their laptop, play music and movies, check and reply to email, update Facebook and Twitter, make Skype calls and even shut down, restart or put the laptop to sleep."

The upcoming ultrathin laptops will also include HDMI output, Ethernet and Wireless N or AC network connectivity (depending on the model), an SD card slot, two USB 3.0 ports (one with USB Sleep & Charge), one USB 2.0 port, and stereo speakers with DTS Studio sound. Battery life ranges from 7 hours and up, depending on the model and processor. Storage capacities will range between 500 GB and 750 GB.

"Thin is in. Our expanding line of ultrathins is designed to be more accessible to consumer looking for a thinner, more stylish PC that delivers the same class of performance and features as a traditional laptop—at a price point that is competitive with a traditional laptop," said Carl Pinto, vice president of marketing, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division.

The only difference Toshiba pointed out between the 14 inch model and the two 15.6 inch models is that the latter group has a built-in 10-key numeric pad. All three have "HD" screens, although Toshiba didn't specify actual resolutions.

However, Best Buy is currently listing the Toshiba Satellite E45t-A4200 laptop for $699.99 USD (opens in new tab). The specs reveal that this particular model has an Intel Core i5-4200U "Haswell" processor (3 MB of cache), 6 GB of DDR3 memory (expandable to 16 GB), a 500 GB 5400 RPM HDD, Mobile Intel HD graphics, Intel Centrino Wireless-N 7260 LAN and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, 10/100 Ethernet, a screen resolution of 1366 x 768 and a built-in webcam. There's no optical drive, and it comes with Windows 8 64-bit.

Pricing for the 15.6 inch Satellite E55t and E55Dt models will be announced closer to availability, the company said.

Kevin Parrish
12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • BringMeAnother
    HD probably means 1366x768 for all 3. Disappointing. Resolution is one of the most important spec, along with the processor for me and it just keeps being disappointing.
    Reply
  • John Bauer-1363825
    11277128 said:
    HD probably means 1366x768 for all 3. Disappointing. Resolution is one of the most important spec, along with the processor for me and it just keeps being disappointing.

    When the display is 13" or under, a 1366x768 display isn't half bad, really.

    When I look for a new laptop (which I have been) I look for 2 things, 6gb+ RAM and 4 hours+ of battery life. And an i5 or better processor. I found a laptop on newegg with 8gb of RAM and an i7 processor for $514.
    Reply
  • Estix
    11277301 said:
    When I look for a new laptop (which I have been) I look for 2 things, 6gb+ RAM and 4 hours+ of battery life. And an i5 or better processor. I found a laptop on newegg with 8gb of RAM and an i7 processor for $514.

    I first look at the screen - 1440x900 is the bare minimum for me. It wouldn't matter to me if it had dual Xeons if the system bottleneck is me having to scroll around or alt+tab all the time :-)
    Reply
  • faust_67
    1366 X 768 and 10/100 ethernet? Were these models developed from scrapped projects from 2005?
    Reply
  • John Bauer-1363825
    11278936 said:
    1366 X 768 and 10/100 ethernet? Were these models developed from scrapped projects from 2005?

    It'd work for me. Considering my Internet speed is 700 kb/s.
    Reply
  • squirrelboy
    I wonder why they keep calling screens with a lower than 1080p resolution HD screens. my 4 year old laptop has a 17,3" 1600x900 screen, and they even dared to call that "HD+"
    Reply
  • damianrobertjones
    HD starts at 1280x720.

    As for the screen... It's not that bad. I'd rather see what I need to see than zoom or go blind. Having 1600x900 would be better but anything above that would probably need you to change to 125% DPI... REDUCING your working space.

    Don't fall for the marketing. Once ALL screens hit 1080p there will be something else for you to complain about. When traveling you only need to view things quickly and when stationary you can plug in that fancy 27" high res screen.
    Reply
  • stevejnb
    I have a Windows tablet with a 1920x1080 resolution on an 11 inch screen and I oftentimes find myself having to zoom in just to read regular text. Frankly, really high resolution screens on smaller devices are vastly overrated, and not worth even a small hit to battery life or performance. Does it output to higher resolutions when you hook it into a monitor or TV? If yes - and they all do - then that's the only high resolution I care about.
    Reply
  • kyuuketsuki
    11277301 said:
    When the display is 13" or under, a 1366x768 display isn't half bad, really.
    Considering the devices in question are 14" and 15.6", I'm not sure why devices 13" and under are under discussion.

    Basically, these are yet another promising laptop line ruined by the choice to use bottom-of-the-barrel screens. It's not like these are going to be good quality, IPS 768p screens. OEMs choose 768p because the panels are dirt cheap -- if they wanted to use quality panels, they would have used a better resolution as well.

    Also, if you're using a small device with a high-resolution screen, you should have DPI scaling on if you want readable text.
    Reply
  • John Bauer-1363825
    11283386 said:
    11277301 said:
    When the display is 13" or under, a 1366x768 display isn't half bad, really.
    Considering the devices in question are 14" and 15.6", I'm not sure why devices 13" and under are under discussion.

    Basically, these are yet another promising laptop line ruined by the choice to use bottom-of-the-barrel screens. It's not like these are going to be good quality, IPS 768p screens. OEMs choose 768p because the panels are dirt cheap -- if they wanted to use quality panels, they would have used a better resolution as well.

    Also, if you're using a small device with a high-resolution screen, you should have DPI scaling on if you want readable text.

    I agree with you- the technology for cheap 1080p screens is there, but no one will use it because of the cheaper 1366x768 screens. My "laptop" a Dell Inspiron 1100 (with 256mb of RAM) has the same display. Laptop (and monitor) res's have stagnated, but demand for a cheap higher res screen isn't there, people are more interested in 1080p screens on their 5" phones.

    If there was some sort of revolution of some kind, it's possible for $300-400 1440p screens, and sub$1000 4K screens. And I'm also talking about those 4K tv's that cost as much as a car.
    Reply