[5] Every entry in the Satellite Pro 400 series feature a rechargeable lithium-ion battery (upgrading from the NiMH batteries of its predecessors), a keyboard-integrated pointing stick (trademarked AccuPoint), and a hot-swappable expansion bay on the right side of the machine that allows users to slot in a floppy drive, a CD-ROM drive, or a blank to save on weight.

[6] Additionally, models before the 440CDT were designed with a single speaker, positioned at the front of the machines, for playing audio without headphones, but only in mono—a source of frequent criticism.

[20] The Satellite Pro 400 series was an immediate hot-seller for Toshiba and helped the company overtake IBM as the global market leader for notebook computers in the mid-1990s.

[34] Bruce Brown of the same publication called the 400CDT's battery life "terrific" and found the laptop performant in Windows but noted frames dropping while watching Video CDs in full screen.

[36] PC User's Clare Newsome praised the 400CDT for the ergonomics of its keyboard, the quality of its mono speaker, and the richness of its LCD but criticized the external floppy drive for being overly bulky.

[13] The Sydney Morning Herald's Sue Lowe deemed the LCD superior to offerings by Digital (HiNote) and Texas Instruments (TravelMate).

[39] Windows Magazine's Jim Forbes rated the 400CDT's processing speed and multimedia capability on par with desktop computers of its processor class while finding disk performance above average.

[40] Reviewing the 410CDT, Byte ranked it the best laptop out of 13 competing models, beating out IBM's ThinkPad 760CD on account of the 410CDT's superior performance, battery life, and LCD quality.

[41] Home Office Computing's Rick Broida called the 410CDT "an excellent choice for multimedia presentations and a capable desktop surrogate", albeit with a hard drive he deemed undersized compared to its competitors.

[48] PC World praised the 430CDS's battery life and rated the performance more than adequate but found the passive-matrix LCD subpar and the unit itself overweight compared to its competitors.

[49] Home Office Computing's Rick Broida found the 430CDT's design somewhat outdated and bemoaned the mono speaker but praised the LCD and called the keyboard "one of the industry's most comfortable".

[6] John Hilvert of the Australian PC World was less impressed by the HPA LCD, calling it "a little blotchy and hard to adjust to get a great view".

[17] The American PC World deemed the performance average for a laptop in its processor class and called the redesigned keyboard pleasant to use but found the battery life subpar and like Broida criticized the lack of an internal modem.

[50] Reviewing the 460CDT, Computer Dealer News called the laptop's processing power middle-of-the-road but gave it high marks for its usability and feature set.

[52] Reviewing the 490CDT, Joel Scambray of InfoWorld found the laptop overweight and its case overly thick, writing that "it's hard to ignore the leaner profiles and larger displays of the other entrants".

[55] Keith Kirkpatrick of Home Office Computing called the 490XCDT more well-designed and versatile than Dell's Inspiron 3200, albeit with weaker graphical performance.