[Review] Toshiba Satellite L15-B1330 An interesting 128GB Cloudbook

Pros: low price (see price here), Windows 8.1, Intel Celeron Processor N2840 2.16GHz, turbo up to 2,58GHz,  128 GB SSD.

Cons: 2 GB of RAM

The Toshiba Satellite L15-B1330 laptop is more like a big brother to the high-end tablets. Having an 11.6 inch screen with a resolution of 1366x768 (HD) it falls into the category of ultra-portables. It’s lightning-fast due to the SSD storage. It can handle most apps, including the Microsoft Office Suite, web-browsing, Netflix and of course it's extremely affordable price point.

This laptop is great to work on the go, as well as for people that need a tablet’s portability but can't give up on having a fully fledged keyboard. Without any further ado, let’s start out in-depth review of the Toshiba Satellite L15-B1330 (also known as B15-B1330 on Amazon).

The Toshiba Satellite L15-B1330 is very light and easy to maneuver. The 11.6 inch screen has an HD resolution of 1366x768, a standard 16:9 aspect ratio and of course, supports 720p content, having approximately 135 ppp with an LED Backlit display. It is not a retina display, but then again, you're spending $1200 less so...

As I mentioned before, this laptop falls into the category of ultra-portable laptops. Looking more like a bigger tablet with a keyboard attached, you can use it with ease almost anywhere.  

When it comes down to size and weight, the new Toshiba Satellite L15-B1330 enjoys a rather slim figure of just 0.83 inches and it's weight doesn't even "make a dent" on you backpack with just 2.9 pounds. Due to the dimensions of this laptop it's no surprise that it doesn't sport a DVD reader nor does it have a dedicated numpad. That said, it's pretty much a standard on 11 inch laptops.

Moving on to the more technical aspects of our Toshiba Satellite L15-B1330 review, it's time to talk about the internal components.

Starting off with the CPU, this laptop comes with a dual core Intel Celeron that runs at 2.16 GHz. All in all this is good enough for daily activities such as web-browsing, using the Office suite, watching movies and general multimedia.

Having 2 cores and 2 threads, running at a base clock of 2.16 GHz with a turbo frequency of 2.58 GHz, the CPU at hand isn't aimed at professional video editors but rather at the general public. That said, even though this is an entry-level processor you’ll be surprised to know that it can run most typical apps at a lightning speed (thanks in part to the SSD).

Having Turbo Boost technology is unusual for this Celeron Processor. This feature enables the processor to constantly check for the temperature and the power available so it increases its boost clock with 0.42GHz. Might not be as much as it sounds, but it can really make a difference when it comes down to the more demanding apps.

The 2 GB of RAM memory that Toshiba is packing this laptop with is enough for day-to-day use and applications that are not highly demanding in the RAM department. 

Narrowing down to the graphics card, the Toshiba Satellite L15-B1330 laptop comes with the Intel HD Graphics 4000 also known as GT2. This graphics card is on par with a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GT 330M graphics solution, achieving this performance in a fast quad core desktop CPU. 

Being integrated in a Dual Core mobile CPU means it won’t be as powerful, but it will still work great with older and less demanding games, especially if you’re willing to sacrifice a little graphics quality. That being said, this is enough power for an 11.6 inches laptop.

This is not a laptop for gaming or for video editing or other application that need a lot of raw graphics power. If you fall in the category which needs a powerful machine, you’ll probably need to look at laptops in the $700 range.

Continuing on our Toshiba Satellite L15-B1300 review, storage comes into the light of our magnifying glass. The 128GB Solid State Drive mSATA (SSD) is great when it comes down to performance and lightning-speed response. 

With only 10 seconds that it takes from pressing the "on button" to reaching the desktop screen, I'd say it's pretty fast even compared to much more expensive options.

The storage is almost 4 times smaller than the usual 500 GB HDD (Hard-Drive), but the performance gain is massive. Another thing to consider is that this kind of laptops, which have a small factor design usually come with 32GB or at most 64GB, so having and 128GB SSD for this price is a definitely a huge pro.

Moving on to battery life, this laptop packs an amazing big 2.37A 2 cell battery, usually you see this kind of battery on laptops which are 15.6 inches big, so I guess we have to thank the engineers at Toshiba for making small form factor laptops with big batteries so they won’t die if we open dozens of word documents at the same time.

As expected with this kind of power, the battery lasts roughly 6 hours on a single charge, more than enough time for you to finish your work activities at work or at school without the need to carry with you the power adapter or search every wall for power outlets. 

When it comes down to wireless connectivity, this laptop comes with a basic 802.11b/g/n wireless networking. Sadly, for those that want to go online through cable, this laptop does not include a LAN port. Again, this is pretty standard in 11 inch laptops. It does, however, include Bluetooth 4.0.

Rounding up the ports, we've got 1 USB 3.0 and 1 USB 2.0 port. I like that they still include at least 1 USB 2.0 port as it is great for backwards compatibility between older devices. Coming with an HDMI output port, you can stream YouTube or other media to a bigger screen. Another thing that I like (and isn't very usual nowadays) is that they included and RGB port, great for connecting the laptop to older monitors or TV screens.

For those of you who want to transfer from you video camera movies and photos to the laptop, don't panic, as it has a standard Memory Card Reader. 

As mentioned previously, the laptop is lacking an optical drive, which I must say that in the current times that we live in is ok, because most of the transfers are done through USB.

Another thing that this laptop is lacking is noise. As it has no moving parts (fan, HDD or optical drive) you will get a pleasurable, silent, experience.

To conclude our review of the Toshiba Satellite L15-B1330, I have to point out the following:

This laptop is great for carrying it around your office/house as it has a great battery life. 

Being light, portable, noiseless and having a long battery life make this laptop the perfect solution for those of you who want to relax or work around the house/office, without the need to carry a clunky device which will eventually tire you out.

In my opinion every laptop has its owner, if you prefer the portability of a device and don’t want to spend a more than $500 on a laptop as with a MacBook, then this one should fit your needs. On the other hand, if you need a power-hungry machine than I recommend investing more money and be ready to do a compromise with weight and battery life.

The Toshiba Satellite L15-B1330 is available for sale on Amazon, you can check for it's availability here.