Specs at a glance: Toshiba Satellite U845W-S414 Screen 1792x762 at 14.4" (135 ppi) OS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit CPU 1.9GHz Intel Core i7-3517U (Turbo up to 3.0GHz) RAM 6GB 1600MHz DDR3 (non-upgradeable) GPU Intel HD Graphics 4000 (integrated) HDD 256GB solid-state drive Networking 100 megabit Ethernet, Single-band 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0 Ports 3x USB 3.0, HDMI, card reader, headphones, microphone Size 14.5" x 10.1" x 0.81" Weight 4.0 lbs Battery 54WHr 4-cell Li-ion Warranty 1 year Starting price $926.50 Price as reviewed $1499.99 Other perks Webcam, backlit keyboard, Kensington lock slot, Intel Wireless Display

One of the issues with today's Ultrabooks (and with PC laptops in general) is differentiation—so many of the parts and features are similar across different models and manufacturers that it's hard to stand out from the pack. Ivy Bridge processor? Integrated graphics? 1366x768 screen? Everybody's got those. What else you got?

With its Satellite U845W, Toshiba is doing something that is at least different, if nothing else: this laptop takes the same insides used in other Ultrabooks and adds an ultra-wide 1792x768 display with a 21:9 aspect ratio, taking aim directly at movie buffs and multitaskers who need or want lots of horizontal elbow room for their windows. Is this super-wide screen enough to give the U845W an edge over other Ultrabooks, or does it push the laptop too far into niche territory?

The screen

The 21:9 1792x768 screen is marketed as being ideal for two things: watching movies in their native aspect ratio, and placing two windows next to each other. The screen's diagonal size is 14.4", but the extreme aspect ratio actually makes the U845W nearer the height of an 11" notebook while still retaining the width of a 14" or 15" model.

With two windows taking up exactly half of the screen, there is indeed a lot less horizontal scrolling than on a standard 1366x768 screen, though it's not banished entirely—most Web sites are designed around a minimum 1024x768 canvas, so the roughly 890-pixel-wide window still isn't quite wide enough to see everything.

To enhance the utility of the wide screen to heavy multitaskers, Toshiba has included a Split Screen utility, one of the most useful OEM add-ons I've encountered recently. It allows you to resize a pair of windows to take up disproportionate parts of the screen—allowing, for example, one window to take up a 1024 or 1366-pixel-wide space, and the second window to use the remainder. This can be useful in cases where you've got a browser or a document that needs more space, and another program like an IM or Twitter client that only needs a narrow strip.

Widescreen movies do indeed look nice on the panel, though 4:3 and 16:9 content ends up with even wider horizontal letterboxing than before—the laptop's wide screen is useful for those who like to watch videos while they work or browse the web, however. The laptop's speakers are loud and don't distort at high volumes, though as is the norm for laptop speakers, there's not much bass going on.

The U845W's TN display is mostly unremarkable—modest horizontal viewing angles, poor vertical ones, and slightly dull colors—but the main drawback of the screen is that, while the added width is nice to work with, the main problem with the 1366x768 screens that so many laptops are saddled with isn't horizontal resolution, but vertical resolution. 1792x768 is merely the 21:9 version of 1366x768, and by the time I had used it for a few hours I was already wishing for a bump to 2100x900 (which, incidentally, would also resolve the problem with viewing two 1024x768 windows side-by-side).

Construction and aesthetics

The U845W is part "midnight silver" aluminum (though to my eye it's a bit closer to burgundy), and part rubberized black plastic. The nice part about the latter is that it doesn't act as a fingerprint magnet, though dust does readily stick to it. Its port layout is decent but not exceptional—two USB ports and a 100Mb Ethernet port on the left; a card reader slot on the front; and another USB 3.0 port, an HDMI port, and headphone and microphone jacks on the right.

Open the laptop, and you'll be greeted by a hard plastic wrist rest and Toshiba's standard backlit Ultrabook keyboard—the same one used by the 16:9 Satellite U840 Ultrabook, the upcoming U925t convertible laptop, and others. It's not my favorite; the keys are a bit shallow and mushy even compared to other chiclet keyboards, and they are slightly rectangular—they're just as wide as the keys on keyboards from ASUS, Apple, Acer, and the like, but for some reason not quite as tall. Like all keyboards, you get used to it with some time, but it just doesn't feel as firm as I'd like.

The trackpad is a large, textured plastic multitouch affair with no dedicated buttons. With the latest drivers installed, it works predictably—tap-to-click, right clicking with two fingers, and sort-of-inertial two-finger scrolling are all available. The two-finger scrolling makes a go at being inertial, but the end result is sketchy. The version of the drivers I used also had a "coasting" option enabled by default which makes the scrolling continuous until you move the mouse, which you'll either have to get used to or disable in the trackpad's settings. Clicking the lower-left and lower-right corners of the trackpad (where the buttons would be on an older-style trackpad) also invokes left and right clicks.

The laptop's super-wide size may cause problems with bags or other accessories—my laptop bag is made to carry 13" and 14" laptops, but the end of the U845W sticks out a bit. The U845W also weighs in at a hefty-for-an-Ultrabook four pounds, while the thinner 11" and 13" Ultrabooks often weigh between two and three pounds.

Internals and performance

The U854w uses Ivy Bridge processors and chipsets and the Intel HD 4000 integrated GPU, which should tell you pretty much everything you need to know about its performance. Our review unit included a Core i7-3517U CPU running at 1.90GHz, the exact same chip found in the ASUS UX31A we reviewed, so I'll point you in that direction if you're looking for benchmarks. Cheaper versions of the notebook also ship with a 1.7GHz Core i5-3317U, the same CPU in the Acer Timeline A5 we reviewed—either way, Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks continue to be just fine for most general computing tasks. The bottom of the laptop does get warm while the laptop is working hard, and when the single system fan kicks in the laptop can get pretty loud—in normal use, though, it wasn't unpleasant to handle or to listen to.

Our review unit also included a zippy 256GB SSD, though lower-priced versions can come with standard spinning hard drives paired with small SSD caches. However, the U845W falls behind a bit in its networking capabilities. While others in this price class usually offer gigabit Ethernet and dual-band 802.11n wireless, our review unit offered only 100Mb Ethernet and single-band 2.4GHz WiFi.

Toshiba rates the SSD-equipped models at 9.05 hours of battery life, and the hard drive-toting models at 8.36 hours. This will obviously vary based on usage and screen brightness, among other factors, but the manufacturer's estimate seemed just a bit optimistic based on our time with the device—expect to get battery life in the in the high six-hour or low seven-hour range with all of Windows' default settings.

Repairability and upgradeability

The U845W has eleven Phillips head screws on its underside, one of which is hidden under a small rubber nub in the center of the laptop. Remove them, and the bottom of the laptop pulls away without much effort. There is a small cable that connects the power jack to the motherboard which comes off with the bottom case—you'll want to be careful with it while taking the laptop apart, and of course make sure to reconnect it during reassembly so the laptop will power on.

Opening the laptop gives you access to the RAM, mSATA hard drive, wireless card, and hard drive (for models with a mechanical hard drive). Interestingly, the SSD-only models appear to use an mSATA SSD and leave the main hard drive bay empty to save weight. You can see the area where a hard drive (probably a 7mm high version) would go below the memory and to the right of the SSD and wireless card.

There is a single available RAM slot in the U845W which can support up to 8GB of RAM, making for a total of 10GB when you factor in the 2GB of RAM soldered onto the motherboard. Any other upgrades or repairs would require further disassembly of the laptop, putting them well into warranty-voiding territory.

Windows 8 experience

The U845W's odd screen size is actually very well-suited for Windows 8, which will expand to take advantage of additional vertical pixels but is still very horizontally-oriented. The Start screen can display extra columns of tiles, and the Snap feature in particular becomes less obtrusive when you've got more space to work with.

Toshiba is also offering beta Windows 8 drivers that enable the native trackpad gestures: swiping in from the right edge of the trackpad with one finger brings up the Charms menu, swiping in from the left will cycle through your running apps, and swiping down from the top invokes app-specific menus. The beta drivers are a little cranky—not every gesture I made registered—but we hope the production-quality drivers will be a bit better.

Conclusions

The Satellite U845W has some interesting ideas, especially for multi-monitor multitaskers—given the choice between its wide 1792x768 display and a standard 1366x768 display, I'd be very tempted by the wider option. However, that same wideness can make it awkward to carry, and it's a bit on the heavy side compared to its other 13" brethren.

It's a very interesting idea and Toshiba deserves points for originality, but standard 16:9 computers with 1080p displays (like the ASUS Zenbook Prime) can still fit more on their screens than the U845W, and they do it in a standard-sized package that weighs less to boot. Even 1600x900 16:9 displays are very close to the U845W in terms of the amount of data they can show on-screen: Toshiba's widescreen experiment compares pretty favorably to the 1366x768 screens that glut the Ultrabook and low-to-mid-end laptop markets, but in most cases a higher-resolution 16:9 display is going to be a better choice.

The good:

Wide screen can be useful for multitaskers or movie watchers, especially in Windows 8 or on the desktop using Toshiba's Split Screen utility.

21:9 content looks good without the letterbox, though other aspect ratios suffer a bit.

SSD-equipped models are nice and quick.

Well-suited for Windows 8.

Not too hard to get into and upgrade, though 2GB of RAM is soldered to the motherboard.

The bad:

Vertical screen space is still at a premium.

TN panel is only average, which makes it less than ideal for movie watching (one of the U854w's main selling points).

Keyboard is a bit shallow and mushy.

Slow networking interfaces.

A bit heavier than standard 13" Ultrabooks.

Oddball form-factor may cause problems for those with smaller laptop cases.

The ugly: