Toshiba Satellite A665D-S6076 15.6-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite A665D-S6076 15.6-Inch LED Laptop (Fusion X2 Finish in Charcoal) (Personal Computers) 

We've only had this machine for a few days, but it's been great. I am still having trouble getting my head around the fact this machine sells for $579 on Amazon. Wow. This replaces an older Shuttle XPC that has served us well for many years. The Shuttle is now happily residing in the man cave. Only a few minor complaints:

1) Not a big fan of the multi-touch action on the touchpad. It's a bit jumpy and sensitive. It's too easy to "pinch" and you find yourself with really big or really small text on your web pages, even when your hand is just close, not necessarily touching. I have a MacBook Pro for work, and this multi-touch pad isn't even close to working as well, but then this machine cost about a third of what the MacBook did. I can totally live with it. It's mainly my wife's machine anyway, and she prefers a mouse, so it's a non-issue.

2) Web cam is cheesy at .3 MP, but it gets the job done.

3) Screen is really glossy. I wish there was a matte option. You can get quite a bit of glare in a sunny room.

That said, there are also many pros:

1) Very snappy overall. I've always been a fan of AMD due to their architecture and cost/speed ratio. I never thought it made sense to split hairs with performance metrics on a personal machine anyway. As long as you get pretty current technology, you'll be fine. I have been in a technology job for many years dealing with servers and such, and my experience makes me prefer AMD if I have a choice. Your mileage may vary. 4GB RAM and a nice 500GB hard drive are all we'll ever need. Wish the HD was 7200 RPM, but that wasn't a deal breaker by any means.

2) Surprisingly good sound. I streamed an Austin City Limits episode on it and it sounds incredible for a laptop. Headphones also sound much better than other laptops. Even a bit more crisp and clear than my MacBook. Very impressed with the Dolby/Harmon/Kardon combo.

3) Bang for the buck. $579? Ridiculous.

4) Not too much bloatware. I was expecting more. I only had to uninstall a couple of apps and disable a few of the Toshiba software apps that pop up in your grill when you first boot the machine up. I was expecting to spend hours uninstalling junk, but I haven't had to.

Toshiba Satellite L655D-S5110 15.6-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite L655D-S5110 15.6-Inch LED Laptop (Fusion Finish in Helios Grey) (Personal Computers) 

I'm gonna be slightly skewed in this review because I just upgraded from a netbook (MSI Wind U120), but this laptop more than does the job. I have owned it now for about 3 months, and it has kept up superbly with everything I've thrown at it. I use it to program (I'm a CS major in school) and play games like League of Legends, and it hasn't skipped a beat. For the sale price of $589, it more than does the job. 

Toshiba Satellite L655-S5098 15.6-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite L655-S5098 15.6-Inch LED Laptop (Fusion Finish in Helios Grey) (Personal Computers) 

This is the 4th laptop I have owned (HPs and a Sony before) and without a doubt, the greatest. This thing is not only beautiful but built like a tank. It is full featured, a super clean design with everything extremely well fitted. Not too heavy, and fast, with an outstanding display. I know that it isn't a top-end PC but to me, it is a super performer. I have boosted memory up to 8GB and also added a 500GB WD Black 7200RPM drive and it really gets up and moves. The eSATA/USB outlet allows super fast backups and data transfers with an external SATA disk. The SD card reader is very handy and is as fast as any card reader I have seen. The only thing that isn't quite so outstanding is the dual speakers but, hey, you can't expect booming, Hi-Fi stereo performance out of a laptop. They really are, however quite adequate. It gets about 5 honest hours per charge out of the stock battery. One thing that Toshiba seems to have done well recently is design a really efficient cooling system into their laptops. The L655 has no real hot spots. The internal fan seems super strong and the exhaust vents are super large and I don't even worry about overheating with this thing. The keyboard never even feels warm.

Toshiba has done well and I am extremely happy with my purchase. Amazon made this easy and painless with a super price and free shipping and life is good with my new dream machine!!!

Oh, just 2 negatives;
I did a baddie with Win7 the first day and needed to reload it. Luckily, I created the recovery discs immediately out of the box. The recovery went without a hitch, but I was astounded that the entire recovery procedure took over 2 1/2 hours. You MUST create those recovery discs immediately and be very, very careful.

This points to the only other negative I have found with this great piece of hardware; Toshiba's bloatware and Win7 installation is pathetic. I am relatively new to Win7 but I am studying up on it and getting there fast. I have a fresh Operating System disc and am preparing to do a cold installation of it using device drivers from the Toshiba web site. Will get back later and report on this activity.

Update 1/26/11
Loaded a fresh hard drive with a fresh and pure Win 7 and installed all the correct Intel and Toshiba drivers without the bloatware and it made all the difference in the world in performance. Before, performance wasn't exactly sluggish but wasn't spectacular either. Now, everything from start-up and program performance is like snap, snap, snap. The operating system partition is also about 1/3 smaller in bytes. I thought this was a great system before but now its like having a new, top performing system. WOW! What a computer!

Toshiba Satellite L655-S5112 15.6-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite L655-S5112 15.6-Inch LED Laptop (Fusion Finish in Helios Black) (Personal Computers) 

I've only had this laptop for a month or so but I've been happy with it so far. I bought it to replace an HP dv6000 which spontaneously died on me after only 3 yrs. I don't recommend HP laptops. I've read several good reports in newspapers and online about the Satelite series. If this one lasts longer than the last one, I'll be buying Toshibas from now on.

Toshiba Satellite M645-S4065 14.0-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite M645-S4065 14.0-Inch LED Laptop ( Fusion X2 Finish in Charcoal) (Personal Computers) 

just wanted to bring to everyone's attention that this Toshiba M-645 S4070 may not
be created equally in all retail environments. My husband suggested I check the
product specs before I pushed the final transaction button....and boy, am I glad I did. I thought I would be saving $70 plus tax on Amazon over Best buy, but found
that the processor was an i-3 instead of the i-5 and that the hard drive was 5400 rpm instead of the 7200 rpm. So, like I said....just be careful and watch your specs.

Toshiba Satellite A665-3DV5 15.6-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite A665-3DV5 15.6-Inch LED Laptop (Fusion X2 Finish in Charcoal) (Personal Computers) 

I absolutely love this laptop! I have owned it for about a month now, and never looked back or questioned my decision.
Let me start off by saying that I am an IT professional, so I not only buy equipment for myself and my family, I also influence purchasing decisions of hundreds at work, and work with equipment of every brand.
I researched laptops for about 2 months before I bought this item, but I had made my mind up after the first month - I was just shopping around for different versions after that. This is an absolutely GREAT value for the money. This laptop retails for 1299.00, and every other store I checked locally (Dallas, TX area), as well as several different online stores, were all more expensive. Amazon was (when I purchased this) about 150 dollars cheaper than average, and 50 dollars cheaper than the next cheapest.
On to the features... I am an avid gamer, and primarly settled on this laptop because of the nVidia 3D Vision. I also use this laptop as a work computer, for when I am not going to be in the office, or simply don't want to be tied to my desk that day. This laptop not only has the discrete graphics, but also has a screen that supports 3D Vision. It also comes with a pair of nVidia shutter glasses. I couldn't really determine ahead of time, but this laptop has the IR transmitter built-in. This is both good and bad. It's good that you don't have to have a USB cable attached to a little pyramid just to use the 3D, but there is a down-side: Those external IR emitters have a little wheel on them to adjust the 3d effect. From what I've read, some laptops with intergrated 3d have a key combination to do the same 3d adjustments, but there is nothing in the Toshiba documentation about it. This adjustment is important, because (if you haven't played games in true 3D yet) you will notice that not all games render 3d correctly. There is an information popup whenever you start a 3d game, telling you the nVidia rating for the game, as well as any issues that particular game has. Some of them will render objects either too close or too far away. If you have an external emitter, this is no big deal - just move the wheel, and you are good to go. If you have a Toshiba laptop, you are out of luck. Now, this isn't a big deal, as it doesn't happen that often (doesn't happen much at all with brand-new games), and even if you are playing an older game that is a little off, it doesn't ruin the effect, it's just not a totally perfect effect.
I called Toshiba about this. The agents are in India. I'm not a big fan of outsourcing, but I know that it's not the agent's fault that companies want to oursource, and it's also not their fault that they get crappy training. Anyway, she didn't have any idea what I was talking about - I'm not even 100% sure she knew that this laptop supports 3d, and was quick to tell me that they only support the hardware - not games themselves. I assured her that I only wanted the shortcut keys - not help with games. She gave me a link to a URL, that was just a list of all the shortcuts, and there is nothing there for 3d adjustments. So, I'm still in limbo to see if this adjustment is even possible on this laptop, and if so, how it is done.
Now, to the other equipment... The hard drive is massive. This model has a BluRay ROM (not burner) and a DVD Burner. There are other versions that include a BD burner, but they are much more expensive. The laptop is really speedy. Game performance was really horrible when I first got it. I updated the video drivers to the latest version, and everything started working perfectly. I can play any game I have tried with all the settings totally maxed out, in 3d, except sometimes I have to turn Anti-Alising down to 2x or 4x to get good framerates.
The model of video card included in this laptop (when purchased) was one of the few mobile video cards that supported 3D BluRay. It also comes with (along with all the usual bloatware) Corel WinDVD BD. Don't let the name fool you - this app supports 3D BluRay. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, though - mostly due to the fact that Netflix doesn't offer 3D BluRays yet. The wireless is Wireless-N, and is really fast. The keyboard has a keypad, and that's a good touch. The keys are little chicklet-style keys, but the placement and size of them are normal, so it doesn't really take any getting used to. The screen is glossy, and can produce a ton of glare, so that's the second negative thing. Battery life is horrible, but you should be expecting that if you are looking to get this much power in such a little package. On the same note, the laptop is really heavy - you could easily kill someone with it. One thing you might not expect, is that this laptop doesn't really get very hot on the bottom, so you can actually use it in your laptop - even gaming. It does a great job of routing the heat out with the fan.

Overall, the only 2 negative items I have are the lack of 3d effect adjustment, and the glare. Neither of these even come close to taking away from the 5 star rating I am giving this product.

If you are a gamer, like I, you will absolutely LOVE this laptop..

Toshiba Satellite M645-S4080 14.0-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite M645-S4080 14.0-Inch LED Laptop ( Fusion X2 Finish in Charcoal) (Personal Computers) 

+ backlit keyboard
+ amazing speakers (like, best I've heard on a laptop, amazing (though my new xps 14 is at least equal to these)
+ circular scrolling is extremely effective
+ high resolution hdmi out
+ nice slot loading dvd drive
+ FN keys accessible from the screen with the mouse
+ boots very quickly if you enable it

cons
-extraordinarily loud fan
* fan turns on at a high power level even when laptop is idle
-keyboard keys occasionally (often) fail
-extremely limited viewing angles

Update: I've since purchased a dell xps 14, and It has the gt420m that this was originally advertised as having. Having tested both the 420 far outperforms the 330 in real-world testing.

Toshiba Satellite A665-S6088 16.0-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite A665-S6088 16.0-Inch LED Laptop (Fusion X2 Finish in Charcoal) (Personal Computers) I think there needs to be a little balance to the first two reviews on here, which were obviously done by people who either had very unusual issues or aren't well versed with computers.

At $599 (after Lightning deal discount plus $100 Amazon credit) I couldn't ask for better performance out of a laptop. Performance for routine tasks is not noticeably different from my quad-core laptop with an i7 processor and 1 GB video card. For intensive multitasking it might not keep up, and it won't play demanding games, but if this is a concern you're probably not looking at an i5 processor with integrated graphics anyway. For most people no difference will be seen, as Windows normally doesn't give anymore processing power to a single task on a typical quad-core than it will give on an i5. The vast majority of the time my i7 never passes 20% of processor resources being used.

The only cons I've seen are:
1. The LED happy keyboard area (Fortunately these can be turned off under the eco settings panel.)
2. The placement of the touchpad. (I tend to rest part of my left thumb there, and I use the touchpad with my right hand. This can lead to crazy zooming in and out
with multitouch on, and no movement of the pointer with multitouch off.)

Toshiba Satellite L635-S3040 13.3-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite L635-S3040 13.3-Inch LED Laptop (Fusion Finish in Helios Grey) (Personal Computers) 

First off, I came from owning a Dell 9100 Inspiron--we're talking 9 pounds, just for the laptop, nevermind the power cord and case and any other accessories. I thought of going down to a netbook for what I usually use my laptop for, but then I thought: "What if I wanted/needed to load my Adobe design products? So I thought, although I may not, I should get something that is powerful enough to handle some of my design work, but still be very portable.

This is a nice little computer. The feel of the keyboard is good. The screen is excellent. The processor speed seems fine, even though my Dell had a 3.2 processor. Somehow or another, I keep making the screen reduce in size. (Probably just need to get used to what I'm doing.) The speakers are not very loud. All in all, I think it is a good value for the money

Toshiba Satellite L675-S7108 17.3-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite L675-S7108 17.3-Inch LED Laptop 

I never owned a laptop before this one, but this computer is everything I expected and more. I bought a good, protective case for it, a Targus, which has the Dome Protection System, and costs about $80, but is well worth it. The machine is quick, the keypad is great (except some of the punctuational key markings are a bit too small) and the screen size is very impressive. Clarity and definition are as good as you can get, and the entire machine is responsive and quick. I am impressed with the capacity, although I don't do gaming or anything fancy. For email, general business work and researching, this computer has made me a believer, and I definitely do not miss my desktop unit any longer. I travel a lot, and find the Toshiba L675 easy to hook up and use in hotels or anywhere. The case is stylish, with a clever design worked into the construction. The only downside is the speaker, which is of general tinny, low quality, like all laptops. The simple solution is to purchase a bar speaker or a set of small, compact speakers that fit in the generous-sized Targus case, and set them up to enhance the sound. When you do, you can't tell the sound quality from that of a desktop.~~

Toshiba Satellite L635-S3040 13.3-Inch LED Laptop

Toshiba Satellite L635-S3040 13.3-Inch LED Laptop (Fusion Finish in Helios Grey) (Personal Computers) 

First off, I came from owning a Dell 9100 Inspiron--we're talking 9 pounds, just for the laptop, nevermind the power cord and case and any other accessories. I thought of going down to a netbook for what I usually use my laptop for, but then I thought: "What if I wanted/needed to load my Adobe design products? So I thought, although I may not, I should get something that is powerful enough to handle some of my design work, but still be very portable.

This is a nice little computer. The feel of the keyboard is good. The screen is excellent. The processor speed seems fine, even though my Dell had a 3.2 processor. Somehow or another, I keep making the screen reduce in size. (Probably just need to get used to what I'm doing.) The speakers are not very loud. All in all, I think it is a good value for the money.