Toshiba Satellite L40 Laptop Review and Benchmarks in Malaysia

After my Toshiba Satellite S40t review, I received another Toshiba laptop for review – Toshiba Satellite L40, which looks identical to S40t until you lift up the lid and see a NVDIA GeForce sticker at the left palm rest and no touch screen display.

Read my Toshiba Satellite L40 laptop review below to find out more about the mid-range laptop’s features, performance, good vs. bad.

You are invited to read my Toshiba Satellite S40t review before continue.

Specs and Price

Toshiba Satellite L40 has many different configurations you can buy according to your requirements.

The following is the hardware specs of the L40 review unit I received (one of the best configuration):

• Intel Core i5–3337U @ 1.8GHz
• 14.1-inch LED backlight screen, resolution 1366×768 pixels
• 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM (expandable to 16GB)
• 750GB Hard Disk
• Intel HD 4000 graphics
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M with 2GB video RAM
• Onkyo® Stereo speakers enhanced with DTS Sound
• DVD-RW drive
• 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0
• HDMI out, Bluetooth, LAN port
• HD web camera
• Windows 8 (64-bit)
• Weight 1.95KG

The recommended retail price for Toshiba Satellite L40 (Intel Core i5) is RM2199.

Design and Features

The review unit I received is glossy white colour, pure white, white from outside to inside, so white that you can’t find other colour on it! If you love white colour, you will fall in love to white L40 and hug it to sleep.

By the way, white colour can hide fingerprints and smudges quite well.

While I am examining L40’s body, I realised that L40 and S40t (read my review here) has the same input/output layout: DVD-RW drive, LAN port and a USB 2.0 port is at the left side; VGA out, HDMI out, 2x USB 3.0 ports, headphone and mic jacks at the right side; SD memory card reader is at the front.

Both models have the same tiled keyboard with glossy frame and matt key. The keys are not enough tactile feedback for my personal preference. I like the top row of playback control keys allow me to control music player with single key press.

I am glad to see L40 is too has Onkyo stereo speakers above keyboard. The DTS sound enhanced speakers gives you good and loud surround sound for music playback and gaming. I would like to have more bass though.

L40 has a large touchpad but it has some touchpad issues. It supports Windows 8 scrolling and swiping gesture but page scrolling is not smooth and mis-detects gestures a lot. Please help yourself and buy a mouse for L40.

Unlike S40t with touch screen display, you can not touch L40’s screen to navigate around in Windows 8. I was guilty for poking L40 display few times and wish it response to my fingers.

Without a touch screen panel, L40 can save the cost to give you better graphic performance – dedicated graphic card. Read on to find out the L40’s performance.

Performance

With Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM, and  a dedicated graphic card, how is the Toshiba Satellite L40’s performance?

In my personal experience, I noticed L40 sometimes briefly stop responding for 0.5 second then continue its work. I also see Windows spinning cursor (indicate that it is working) quite frequently, probably busy disk activities.

Here’s PCMark 8 scores for L40:

• Home: 2520
• Creative: 2595
• Work: 4205

Compare with other devices:

[table id=1 /]

I wonder why L40’s PCMark 8 performance (Home) is so much behind S40t? The latter is Intel Core i3 @1.9GHz and the L40 review unit is Intel Core i5 @1.8GHz.

Thanks to dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M graphic card, L40 has no problem to play most 3D video games at medium video quality.

Here’s 3DMark 11 resutls for L40:

• Fire Strike: 953
• Cloud Gate: 5033
• Ice Storm: 47403

Compare with other devices:

[table id=2 /]

Toshiba Satellite L40 battery life is about 3 hours with my usage: web surfing on WiFi, streaming music at 80% screen brightness.

I noticed that L40 gets warm quiet fast. You can feel the right palm rest is warm just few minutes after boot up the laptop. I definitely not recommend you to use L40 on your bare laps.

Photo Gallery

Conclusion

The Good

• great sound output
• full array of built-in ports
• dedicated graphic card
• affordable price

The Bad

• touchpad issues, movements are not smooth
• right palm rest gets warm fast

I can not help but compare Toshiba Satellite L40 to Toshiba Satellite S40t (read my review here).

They look alike, have same speaker, keyboard and not-so-smooth big track pad. L40 does not have a touch screen display but it has better processor and dedicated graphic card.

Both L40 and S40t are in same price range, I would recommend L40 to casual gamers who do not care about Windows 8 touch features.

➤ Toshiba Malaysia

I would like to thank TOSHIBA for the opportunity to review Toshiba Satellite L40. This is a free product review with honest write-up. Interesting to submit your products for review? Get in touch with me.