What do you do to try to stand out from the ultrabook crowd? If you're Toshiba, you make a super-wide-screen ultrabook. The Toshiba Satellite U845W almost looks like a concept laptop, but it's very real, and is targeted as a back-to-school laptop. That extra-wide screen you see isn't an optical illusion: the 14.4-inch display has a native resolution of 1,792x768, 426 pixels wider than the average laptop display. It's not far off the resolution of a higher-quality 1,600x900-pixel screen, but it's laid out in a 21:9 aspect ratio that conforms with Cinemascope's 2.35:1 format. That usually means letterboxing when you watch on a normal TV or display, but not here. It's part of a new line of 14-inch Toshiba ultrabooks under the Satellite brand.
The specs match what you'd expect: a third-gen Intel Core i-series ultrabook CPU, an option of either a 500GB hybrid hard drive with 32GB of flash storage or a 256GB SSD, and up to 8GB of RAM. A generous three USB 3.0 ports are studded around the sides, supporting Toshiba's Sleep & Charge and Sleep & Music technologies. There's also an Ethernet port, an SD card slot, and HDMI. The Satellite U845W weighs around 3.5 pounds, according to Toshiba, depending on configuration, and is 0.82 inch thick: thicker than most 13-inch ultrabooks, but around the size of many 14-inchers.
The U845W (left) compared with the regular-screened U845 (right).
While the U845W has a wider footprint, its depth is shortened. Toshiba videos suggest the U845W will fit perfectly in an airline tray, though we haven't tested that firsthand. You can see the difference in dimensions between the U845W and its more affordable and normally-proportioned sibling, the U845, above. Also note the U845W's two-tone color scheme. The darker parts are rubbery-soft to the touch.
Will the U845W be a surprise cult hit, or something more akin to the Excite 13 tablet? Time will tell.