Pros: 64GB SSD, 14 inch screen, up to 7 hours of battery life, budget price point
Cons: 2 GB of RAM
With tablets taking over the market, laptop prices have dropped significantly over the years. You no longer NEED a laptop to surf the web, watch movies and keep up with your friends on social media. No, you can do all that with a tablet.
With that in mind, laptop manufacturers were forced to innovate or die and so came the infamous cloudbooks, Microsoft's response to the chromebooks as well as the tablet crisis. So far we've seen a few interesting cloudbooks hit the market like the Lenovo S21E we reviewed a few months ago and today we're looking at the Toshiba CL45/C4335.
The newly released Toshiba cloudbook stands out thanks to its sleek design, 64 GB SSD drive and its 14 inch screen. All in all it's a pretty basic laptop that doesn't disappoint thanks to its speedy SSD and its ultra affordable price. That said, it's time to dive right to it in this Toshiba CL45/C4335 in depth review.
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Toshiba CL45/C4335 Review, Pros and Cons
14 inch HD Display and refined design
When we take a look at the Toshiba CL45/C4335, one of the first things that catch us by surprise is the size of the laptop. Specifically, this cloudbook features a 14 inch IPS screen with an HD resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels. Considering the fact that most laptops within it's price point feature 11 to 13 inch screens, it's quite uncommon to find a 14 inch screen laptop doing the rounds.
As far as the design goes, Toshiba did a really good job with this model, implementing a modern, textured resin finish in matte black that really takes things to another level when compared to its similarly priced competitors.
However, one con that should be pointed out is that the new laptop doesn't include a dedicated numpad like other 15 inch laptops. However, unless you need to use it on a regular basis it's something that you don't tend to miss that much, at least in my experience.
When it comes to size and weight, Toshiba delivers a very compact laptop weighing in at just above 4 pounds and measuring just below 1 inch. Overall, a pretty portable machine.
CPU, RAM and Graphics Card
What the newly released cloudbook gains in design and screen real estate it loses in specs. However, being a cloudbook it does move within the standard set of specs. What this means is that the CPU is an Intel Celeron N2840 that clocks in at 2.16 GHz and moves things up a notch to 2.58 GHz thanks to the turbo feature. It's a dual core CPU with 1MB of cache and a standard 64 bit architecture.
To accompany the processor we've got 2 GB of DDR3L RAM, one of the biggest drawbacks as far as we're concerned. However, it's worth pointing out that thanks to the requirements set by Windows 10 you'll be able to work comfortably despite it's limitations.
Basically what the 2 GB of RAM mean is that the laptop won't be good at handling heavy multitasking. However, browsing the internet, watching movies, skyping and editing documents should not present any sort of challenge for the Toshiba CL45/C4335.
Moving on to the graphics department, the newly launched laptop bets on an integrated graphics card. Specifically the Intel HD mobile graphics card. This is the same graphics card you'll find on pretty much all laptops below the $300 price point so we've already had some experience with it and know it does a pretty good job at handling most of the regular tasks you throw at it.
All things considered we can attest that this is not a gamers laptop. Far from it, this laptop is mostly geared towards being a student laptop: portable, efficient with everyday tasks and cheap.
This laptop is also ideal for kids who are just starting out to use computers for school since it's affordable price and basic features will offer more than enough horsepower to prep for presentations, watch movies and even do some light gaming.
SSD Storage and Long Lasting battery life
So, we've covered the Toshiba CL45/C4335's cons but we haven't gotten into it's pros (aside from the design). Now it's time to do just that by talking about the storage, one of it's strongest selling points.
You see, the new cloudbook comes in with 64 GB of SSD storage. Sure, you might argue that this isn't a lot but if you consider the fact that most $200 laptops only come with 16 or, at best, 32GB of SSD storage having 64GB sounds quite alright.
Also, if you're not going to store your movie collection on the device then it's more than enough for most users. Remember that we're talking about SSD storage which also means that it will be quite fast and roughly 10 times faster than a regular Hard Drive.
Aside from it's interesting choice of storage, another big pro for this cloudbook comes in the form of battery life. Specifically, this laptop offers up to 8 hours of use which, in a real word application varies between 5 to 7 hours of use. Not too shabby for a budget laptop if you ask us.
Ports and other stuff
Wrapping up our review of the Toshiba CL45/C4335, it's time to finish things off by talking about the connectivity aspect of this laptop. In that regard we've got 1 USB 3.0 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader, an HDMI output, WiFi b/g/n connectivity and Bluetooth 4.0 to wirelessly connect to speakers, keyboards and other peripherals you might want to use.
Of course the new Toshiba laptop includes an HD webcam as well as a dedicated keyboard key to access Cortana. It's worth noting that only Toshiba has a dedicated key for this task, though you can always access cortana through the software.
Verdict: Is this laptop worth it?
Once things come to a close there's really not much left to say in this review. All in all we think the Toshiba CL45/C4335 is an incredibly well rounded laptop with an excellent balance between price and specs. We would recommend this laptop even if it was worth $250 so at its current price, it's a no brainer
It has it's set of shortcommings, like the 2 GB of RAM or it's relatively basic CPU. However, it also has huge pros like a long lasting battery life and 64 GB of SSD storage. If you're looking for a basic Windows 10 laptop to browse the web, check social media and watch movies then this is definitely one of the best options available.
On the other hand, if you're looking to do more complex stuff like editing pics on photoshop or playing Assasins creed then this cloudbook is sure to disappoint. For it's purpose it's a perfect laptop, for everything else it's not.