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Toshiba Satellite L515-S4925 14.0-Inch Laptop - Black/Grey "i"
Toshiba Satellite L515-S4925 14.0-Inch Laptop - Black/Grey Review
Toshiba Satellite L515-S4925 14.0-Inch Laptop - Black/Grey Feature
- i : Toshiba Satellite L515-S4925 14.0-Inch Laptop - Black/Grey Check Product Rating
Customer Reviews
The Toshiba L515-S4925 is part of Toshiba's main consumer line: the L500 series of laptops. This version is the thin-and-light entry. It's a very good laptop for someone who values good video quality (where this model excels) above battery life (where it lags behind).A good friend bought this model and had me come over to uninstall the junk software (it was no worse than the typical bloatware found on retail notebook computers) and get it setup on his home network. Overall I liked this model but it has rather strong pluses and minuses. This is a pretty competitive market segment and I think Toshiba took a risk that will appeal to the right buyer: cut back on some less valued features and deliver a very high quality display. It's aimed pretty squarely and HP's very popular DV4 line of 14" laptops and I think it competes well on most levels and (on Amazon at least) is priced about $150 less (depending on the exact DV4 model you compare it against).Here a quick break down of the features:CPU: Intel Pentium T4200 2.1 GHz (my friend's came with the T4300 which is just slightly better). This is a decent dual core CPU for home use and it's pretty typical for laptops in this price range. It's not for anyone serious about gaming but it will run typical home apps and "light" games with no troubles. Two cores mean your system won't slow to a crawl just because your anti-virus kicks in. While not as powerful at the Core2 line it's still a good CPU for home users.RAM: 4 GB 800 MHz RAM. This is becoming the new norm and it's nice because this is lot of memory and provide some future proofing. This is plenty for home use.HDD: 320 GB 5200 RPM. This is more than most home users will need (few exceed 100GB) and the speed is what I recommend for home users because it has a much lower failure rate than faster drives (and it's plenty fast enough for home use).Graphics chip: Intel 4500HD. This is also pretty typical of notebooks in this price range. It's great for home use (including movie playback) and can run any non-3D game just fine. Older 3D games will run great too. Most new 3D games will run at dramatically reduced settings or not run at all.Display: 14" 1366x768 resolution (natively supports 720P video playback). This is a very nice display and I don't know of any other laptop in this price range with a screen this nice. It's is much better than the display you will get on the HP DV4-1433 which only comes in at 1280 x 800. It's bright, has brilliant colors and good blacks. Toshiba clearly thought about the most important part of the laptop for most users and stepped it up a notch from the competition. Like most home systems it's glossy which is great indoors but can be hard to read outdoors.DVD-RW: Has a nice combo DVD-RW drive, which means you can read and write to CD and DVD media. It also has "Labelflash" which lets you use the DVD laser to "burn" blue imagery onto special media that supports it. It's not great looking but it's easier than printing, pealing, and installing labels and looks a lot better than a label written on with a sharpie. I can be slow (up to 20 min for a complex image).Battery: 6 cell 3700mAh. Here is one of the places Toshiba trimmed money back off. This is a fairly low end 6 cell and I wouldn't expect much more than 2.5 hours of real battery life (you'll get more keeping the screen dim and turning off the wireless but who does that?). A more typical 6 cell batter will come in at 4400mAh and high-end 6 cells will deliver over 5400mAh. For most home users this is fine, they tend to plug in wherever they go. Outside the home this could get old fast.Ports: Comes with the typical port assortment (USB, eSata, RJ-45 Lan, RJ-11 modem, VGA) except for one important one - DVI. The lack of a DVI (or HDMI) port means you will get degraded video when outputting to an external LCD monitor (because instead of a direct digital connection the video has be converted to analog sent out from the laptop and re-converted to digital by the monitor). As a result I would not recommend this model to anyone who wants to hook it up to an external display. I should not that some other L500 models do have HDMI portsControl layout: I found the control layout to be good but not earth shattering. The picture on Amazon doesn't show the front very well so let me describe it in detail: There are lights for the wireless, AC, on/off, battery, HDD activity and the media adapter. The memory card reader is also in the front but it only handle the smaller media like SD cards to make certain your digital camera media is supported (for example no compact flash support). Here's the list: Secure Digital, Secure Digital High Capacity, Mini SD Card, Micro SD Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO. The volume control is also here (which is a little odd because the other controls are on the keyboard up by the display). On the sides are the usual USB, VGA, LAN, etc... Above the keyboard you will find the media controls, the on/off switch, and above the screen is the usual webcam and microphone.Wireless: Supports older wireless specs "B" and "G" along with the newer "N" standard. You shouldn't have trouble connecting to wireless networks at home or traveling. This model does not support Blue Tooth.Weight: At 5.02 lbs this feels pretty light and is a typical weight for 14" laptops.Build quality: This one is always a little subjective but I found the build quality to be very good if a little boring. It's well made but there's not much trim or flash to it. There's a good side to boring: less stuff to break or scratch, and it lets Toshiba get that great display in this price range.For the price anyone looking for a smaller and lighter laptop with a great display should be very happy here. As mentioned before serious gamers, travelers, and people planning on using an external display will probably want to keep shopping.
This laptop is very good for it's price, i looked every where to find a better laptop but couldn't. There are only two things i don't like about this laptop-1) There is no HDMI output, i don't understand why any laptop doesn't have that feature.2) The speakers are pretty bad for a laptop, looks like Toshiba found something to cut costs with. The best idea would be to buy some external speakers.Everything else is great, the processor and memory is great. I particularly like the size and it's look. The key board is set up great, there no useless keys on this laptop.
My Toshiba Satellite blue screened on me and I was told by Toshiba that I could drop it off at a local authorized repair center. I did this and was told it would take about three days. Two days later the repair center called me and told me that Toshiba will not allow them to work on Satellite Computers and that they had to send the computer to Toshiba, I said okay. Two days after that the repair center called again and told me that now Toshiba will not even allow them to send it back. I will have to drive to the repair center pick up my defective computer call customer service and order a box. It takes two, to three business days for the box to arrive, you then have to put the computer into the box and send it to Toshiba, where it will arrive in another two to three days, then you have to figure it will take another two or possibly more days for them to repair the computer and then another two to three business days for the computer to arrive at your doorstep. So if you can go without your laptop for over a week then you will have no problem with Toshiba's new repair policy for its Satellite computers.
I'd give it a 3.5, but I can't. I'm writing this review on the Tosh. Overall, I'm satisfied. The keyboard is a lot more responsive than my former Tosh laptop which was so bad, I bought a Logitech USB keyboard to get around needing to use the Tosh keyboard. The screen is really good, crisp with good color. The actual look of the overall computer is good. The silver painted keys don't show dust, but the little tiny graphics on the period key and the dash key are not for people like me who are not touch-typists. They're obviously designed by a graphic designer for appearance and are too small. Other complaints are that the speakers are almost worthless. To hear anything, I suggest you buy a pair of Logitech USB speakers along with this thing. And while you're at it, get a USB hub. Two USB ports in this day and age are not nearly enough. Another complaint is that you have no external switch to turn the Wi-Fi card on or off. Okay, one last complaint just in case your're buying this thing for the face recognition. It's not very good. Something tells me you need to be in a brightly-lit room and be very good at holding your head extremely still. I found the face-recognition to be unusable.
Definitely worth the price.Pros:FastGreat screenLightweightCons:Battery lifeSpeakersI deducted one star as it came with one burnt pixel, I do not have time to send it back for replacement, so...Overall great product and worth ordering. Amazon shipping as always excellent, fast and free!
I'm not a laptop expert, and only ask for reasonable performance, reliability and durability. This Satellite, so far, has beat my Dell, and HP hands down. I have to wait another year or so to compare it to my Acer, which has been my favorite up to this point. I'm not a power user, so there may be better Machines for that, but for the everyday use of a older "baby boomer" I think it's great.
I set this up with Ubuntu 64-bit and it works like a charm. It didn't have any silly driver issues (as I did with my previous (HP) laptop. It's solid, quiet and doesn't have the myriad of LED's glaring at you that seem to be so popular on other brands (HP). The keyboard has a good feel and spacing and clear (simple, legible). The touchpad buttons are a bit clicky but I only ever use an external mouse anyway.I play World of Warcraft on it through wine over the wireless network and it works beautifully. Exactly what I wanted !
I had this laptop for only 2 days when I noticed a small crack on the screen in the top left hand corner. Over the next week, the crack got larger and larger until the screen was totally ruined. Naturally the warranty does not cover this kind of damage. I am very upset by this. I don't know if it was faulty packaging or a fautly product, but it was pretty much a waste of money for me.
I have had this unit now for almost a year and a half. The upgrade that I received to Windows 7 went off without a hitch. However, the Wireless card is barely supported in the Linux world. Even the driver that I received from Realtek for the RTL8192E is wrought with slowdowns and disconnects. If you plan on replacing the OS on this one with a Linux OS, you had better search elsewhere.
I bought this laptop for college and i was pretty impressed at first but things started to go down hill fast. For one thing i thought face recognition to get into windows would be sweet but it rarely works especially if you get a haircut and takes a lot of time to register you. Also it asks you mid password type to do this sometimes which gets old about the 3rd time i used it. Also right when my warranty ran out i got the blue screen on my computer. After installing some of the best anti virus software so it could not be virus related. Now i have to shell out 250 dollars+ for a new hard drive... Thanks toshiba last time i buy anything from you
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