Welcome to a Laptop Battery specialist of the Toshiba Ac Adapter
The Toshiba Satellite U840 Ultrabook (PSU4RA-00Q00C) is a 14in model that's not as thin and light as the company's 13.3in offering — it weighs 1.7kg and is about 20mm thick with the lid closed. It's a notebook that caters to users who want something a little bigger and perhaps more comfortable to use, but it does have one slight drawback in the area of comfort: its keyboard. If you can get used to its shallow and stiff-feeling keys (as we did), you'll enjoy this model. It's a laptop that provides good overall performance for office work and multimedia tasks, and it offers a good set of connectivity features.
The styling of the Satellite U840 is basic and it doesn't stand out, nor look overly boring — it's definitely not up to the standard of the premium HP Envy 14 Spectre, for example. It feels well made for the most part, although we did notice some slight clicking in the left side of the chassis and sometimes on the touchpad as we navigated, without pressing too hard against it. It is a 'clickpad' type of touchpad, which has the left- and right-click buttons located under the pad, and the whole pad clicks, but the clicking we noticed was not due to this. It didn't happen often though. The hinges that hold the screen could stand to be a little stronger; on some occasions, the screen tilted back a little on its own as we lifted the laptop with adapter such as Toshiba PA3755U-1ACA Ac Adapter, Toshiba Qosmio X300 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Qosmio X505 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Mini NB200 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Mini NB305 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Dynabook AW2 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Dynabook AX2 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Equium L30 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Equium M70 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Portege M600 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Portege M603 Ac Adapter, Toshiba Qosmio F45 Ac Adapter.
The screen itself is adequate for general-purpose use, such as browsing the Web and working on documents, but it does have shallow vertical viewing angles that cause colour shift and contrast loss when the screen is not perfectly positioned. It's also a glossy screen that will reflect light and possibly cause grief unless you use the maximum brightness level. It has a glossy bezel around it, which counters the brushed style of the base. The native resolution is 1366x768, which is standard, but we wish it was 1600x900 to make better use of the extra screen size compared to a 13in model.
Like many Ultrabooks, the U840 has a sealed chassis, meaning you can't easily replace the battery or any of the components via access panels. Phillips-head screws hold the base in place, and these are concealed with rubber plugs. Vents are located on the bottom, as well as the rear of the base, and warm air is pushed out by a fan through the rear vent. It doesn't make a lot of noise, even when it's running at full speed when the CPU is under a heavy load. That said, you should expect some slight whirring, even when using the notebook for Web browsing. Despite having a conventional, spinning hard drive and 8GB of RAM, the base didn't get excessively warm during our tests. It got moderately warm at the rear — near the heat sink — when used on an uneven surface such as a lap, so you will have to be mindful of the vents and try not to block them completely (cue awkward sitting positions).
There is a useful array of ports located on the left and right edges of the base, and these include: USB 3.0 (1), USB 2.0 (2), separate microphone and headphone ports, HDMI, 10/100 Ethernet, and you also get an SD card slot. Two speakers are present — one on either side of the chassis — and while they are adequate for casual listening, their quality is not great and the sound separation due to their positioning can sometimes be irritating, depending on how you are sitting.