Toshiba Qosmio X505 Review

Aimed at both media enthusiasts and gamers,Sony VGP-BPS9 the Qosmio X505 is Toshiba’s largest and most powerful desktop replacement machine featuring a quad core processor and a mid-range nVidia GPU.Sony VGP-BPS9A/B Does the X505 live up to expectations? Read our review to find out.Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad X60

Our Toshiba Qosmio X505 review unit has the following specifications:

• Intel Core i7 720QM (1.6GHz, 6MB L2 Cache) Sony VGP-BPS9/B


• Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit


• 18.4-inch WUXGA glossy screen (1920x1080)


• 6GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM


• 64GB Toshiba SSD


• 500GB Hitachi HDD


• nVidia GTS 360M, 1GB VRAM


• Internal fixed Blu-Ray optical drive.


• Realtek 802.11n Wi-Fi, Atheros Gigabit Ethernet Sony VGP-BPS9/S,Acer Aspire 4710


• LED Backlit Keyboard


• 12-cell 8000mAh battery


• One-year warranty


• Dimensions: 17.4 x 11.6 x 1.63 inches


• Weight: 10.5 pounds, not including the 2 pound power adapter

Build and Design

Our first impression of the Toshiba Qosmio X505 is that it is big,inspiron 6400 battery heavy and is a champion when it comes to build quality. When it comes to design, the X505 has a very sophisticated look. The piano black finish with metallic red highlights could appeal to people who never would have considered a “flashy” notebook. The glossy surface is a fingerprint magnet though. inspiron 1525 battery Even the LEDs on the notebook match with the black and red theme.

Despite the X505's all-plastic design,Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad T60 build quality is superb. The base of the notebook uses high quality plastic that should brush off bumps and bruises easily.xps m1330 battery The palm rest and other areas of the notebook are satisfyingly firm and gives us the impression that the internal design and structure of the notebook was carefully planned.HP 510 The LCD housing does a good job of protecting the screen as well.dell d620 battery We were not able to produce distortions on the screen with poking or prodding on the back side of the LCD housing, and it also resisted twisting motions well.

A notebook this large has to have a solid screen hinge to support the weight of the LCD,HP Pavilion DV9000 and Toshiba delivers in that respect. The hinge is firm enough to keep the notebook closed and open when needed,Sony VGP-BPS8 but the screen wobbles a little when bumped and the hinge occasionally squeaks. It also takes some effort to open the notebook.

Screen and Speakers

The Toshiba Qosmio X505 comes with a glossy 18.4-inch CCFL backlit screen with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 (the 16:9 equivalent of WUXGA).Sony VGP-BPS8 Colors are bright and vibrant,Sony VGP-BPS10 text is crisp and sharp and videos are smooth and clear. With a maximum measured brightness of about 141 nits, it is a little dim compared to LED backlit screens and will be unsuitable for outdoor use,Sony VGP-BPS9 but indoors (like on the desk that this notebook will rarely leave) the screen is stunning.

The X505 has eight distinct levels of screen brightness that can be adjusted by using Fn+F6 and Fn+F7 key combinations.Sony VGP-BPS2 The brightest settings on the notebook won't wash out colors or strain the eyes, and the dimmer settings for the screen are great for darkroom entertainment. During normal use, we would usually have to leave the screen at one of the four highest brightness levels for comfortable use.Thinkpad T60p

Notebook screens tend to have poor vertical viewing angles,Thinkpad T61 and the X505 is no exception. Colors and text fade fast when viewing the notebook screen from above or below. Horizontal viewing angles are much better and are quite impressive. Thinkpad R60 Even at the far left or right field, the screen is still easily readable and the visual quality of text, images and videos were consistent throughout.

When we typically see that a notebook with Harman/Kardon speakers,Inspiron 6400 Battery there are high hopes that we are going to have a great listening experience. The two very large front speakers live up to our expectations with excellent audio in the treble range, but the bass range is non-existent. Music fades when there is low volume in the treble range. For a notebook this large,Dell XPS M1330 the lack of perceptible bass is a big disappointment.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The X505 has a comfortable keyboard that easily outperforms many other notebooks.Inspiron 1525 battery The LED backlit keyboard uses a fairly standard layout and design that has a great amount of feedback but is just a hair too springy.HP 530 The spacing and feel of the keyboard is just about right and we think many people will like it.

At first, the glossy finish on the keyboard was a drawback; the keys seemed to grab our fingers a little bit.Pavilion DV2000 After a day or two, with a sufficient amount of oil building up on the keys, that problem was resolved. The only unresolved problem that is that we cannot find a way to turn the LED backlight off on the keyboard...

The large amount of palm rest real estate on an 18.4-inch notebook means that the X505 has a full size keyboard,Compaq 6715b battery a number pad and a few inches to spare. Toshiba uses that space by including eight capacitive touch special function buttons to control media playback, volume and power settings on the notebook. It's a nice feature but there are two big problems with these buttons: they are easy to accidentally trigger and they always beep at you when you hit them. Even the mute button beeps at you when you hit it.

Like the keyboard,Apple A1060 the touchpad requires a little bit of oil to build up for optimal use. At first we found ourselves running off of the flush touchpad, but we adapted quickly. The tactile feedback provided by the touchpad was excellent and its responsiveness was equally satisfying after we updated the touchpad drivers. The touchpad also has an on/off button (and a giant red LED indicating if that the pad is on or off) that you can deactivate if needed. The two large touchpad buttons are red and hard to miss, but they are also difficult to work with since they require a lot of force to get them to register a click.

The Synaptics touchpad on the X505 also has a few other productivity features like circular scrolling,Acer Aspire 5100 Battery multi-touch zoom and multi-touch rotation motions, and even two-finger scrolling, which required us to space our fingers uncomfortably far apart for the touchpad to acknowledge the gesture. The rest of the features worked well.

Ports and Features

Let us be real – this is an 18.4-inch desktop replacement machine. Toshiba has the room to put any type of port on this computer that they want, and they did a good job of including the essentials. With three USB ports, one combo eSATA/USB port, audio ports, a Firewire 400 port, SD card slot, Ethernet port, VGA out and HDMI outputs, the notebook has almost everything a user needs. The X505 also has an ExpressCard/54 slot above the optical drive so you can expand upon the notebook as you see fit. There is even space for a DisplayPort connector on the notebook, but we are unsure why Toshiba chose to omit that feature. Our only complaint is that we wish there were more USB ports. The VGA port might baffle you a little, but Toshiba smartly figured that a lot of HDTVs have VGA ports dedicated for computer connections (and not all HDTVs have enough HDMI inputs). Let’s have a quick look around the notebook.

HP Pavilion HDX 16t

Overview

Ah, how sweet it is when a computer is designed to be beautiful both inside and out.Sony VGP-BPS9 Such is the case with the HP HDX 16, which sports a stylish silver-streaks pattern on the lid and keyboard (including sending the streaks through the track pad) to go along with the 16” flush-glass 1920x1080 16:9 HDTV ready LCD. While that’s the most stunning part of the computer, our model also came with a P7350 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz, a 512MB nVidia GeForce 9600M GPU, 4GB RAM, a 250GB HDD and a Blu-ray player. The cost will thin your wallet a little,Sony VGP-BPS9A/B but for a pretty potent portable (well, semi-portable) like the HP HDX 16, we’ve seen worse.

Design

HP has given its HDX a sleek “titanium liquid metallic” look,Sony VGP-BPS9/B with silver and charcoal lines racing along the charcoal lid and palmrest. The lines on the palmrest streak right through the shiny silver trackpad, the trail turning to gray for the duration. HP has harnessed the HDX16 with a number of pale purple glowing icons as well,Sony VGP-BPS9/S beginning with a luminescent HP logo on the bottom left corner of the lid. Above the keyboard resides a glowing power button along with glowing touch buttons for multimedia control and wireless internet.inspiron 6400 battery Slightly above that is a speaker bay which spans the length of the keyboard, and after a small HP logo there is nothing above that save the LCD and integrated webcam. The surface of the lid and palmrest is glossy and smooth, matching the look, although this did leave the expected telltale fingerprints.

Size and Weight

The HDX16 is not small,Sony VGP-BPS8B weighing in at 7.3 pounds and with dimensions of 14.9 x 10.0 x 1.7 inches. Still, it is small enough to fit into standard laptop bags without issue, and light enough that you can lift it and move it around if you need to,inspiron 1525 battery although you won’t want to much. Although we wouldn’t mind it lighter, we found that the HDX fit comfortably on our lap, with the screen sturdy enough to avoid wobbling while typing or readjusting. The size is a little thick when you’re holding it,Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad T60 but not prohibitively so, and we do admit that the extra bulk gives an impression of solidity, rather than the flimsy feeling some smaller laptops give.xps m1330 battery

Keyboard

The keyboard is full size and includes a number pad, although the latter is somewhat shrunken.dell d620 battery The keyboard was comfortable to type on and relatively quiet. Above the keyboard are the lighted touch sensitive multimedia controls along with wireless internet control, which certainly look stylish above embedded in the silver frame of the keyboard,HP 510 and we’ll talk more about them later.HP Pavilion DV9000 The trackpad is placed just left of center and is smooth to the touch. Unlike other trackpads where occasionally our finger would stick uncomfortably after a long scroll, we never felt that on the HDX16. There is also a button placed directly above the trackpad which turns it on or off. While it didn’t come up often due to the limited portability,Sony VGP-BPS8A it’s an appreciated convenience to be able to easily press that off button after plugging in an external mouse.Sony VGP-BPS8

Display quality

The HP HDX16 shines in this category, literally.Toshiba PA3399U-1BAS The 16” LCD with a 1920x1080,Sony VGP-BPS10 16:9 1080p resolution viewed on a glossy flush-glass display delivers stunning colors and brightness. The HDX is clearly designed for this, and while our model did not come with a TV tuner it can be easily customized to do so. Our model did come with a Blu-ray player, which looked beautiful on the LCD.Sony VGP-BPS13A/B The gloss does have the expected problems of glare, especially when outside, but the brightness is powerful enough to at least combat that to a degree, and indoors there is no problem. Angled viewing was also surprisingly good, with slight distortion only at extreme side and upper angles,apple a1060 battery although viewing from below is difficult.

Connectivity description

The HDX16 still some decent connectivity options, most of which are nested on the left side of the unit.apple a1045 battery Some of the noteworthy features include HDMI, eSATA, and Firewire (which even Macbooks don’t come with anymore).

If you read only one side of this machine’s connectivity, let it be this one.Fujitsu lifebook s6510 battery We start off with a VGA port, followed by an ExpressCard 34/54 slot. Next up is the Ethernet port, HDMI, the eSATA/USB port, a standard USB port, Firewire, and the integrated remote. Not bad for one side. The exhaust is also hidden underneath the back left corner of the HDX, so don’t be surprised if that side gets a little hot.

The right side’s features are a little simpler, with the power cord,Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad X60 a third USB port, the Blu-ray drive, and a fourth and final USB port.

The front of the unit has a few more small features hidden neatly underneath the tapered edge.Acer Aspire 4710 On the left we have the multicard reader, and on the right we have the audio in/out (note, there are two audio out jacks, which means you and your friend can both watch that movie on the airplane without splitting up your earbuds.)

The rear of the unit doesn’t house much of anything,Dell latitude e6400 battery as the LCD pivots back to cover this side, leaving no options for connectivity ports.

Upgrading:

Upgrading is possible through HP’s site. There are five Intel Core Duo processor options,xps m1330 battery beginning with our model (2.0 GHz P7350) and going all the way up to pretty top of the line stuff like the 2.8GHz P9600. RAM can be had in 2GB, 3GB or 4GB options (remember to get a 64bit version of Vista if you want to use more than 3GB RAM), and the HDD can be upgraded from 250GB to 320GB.

Features

The HP HDX16 comes with a number of features, but most of the exceptional ones focus on multimedia enhancement. The most noticeable of these is the set of touch sensitive buttons above the keyboard. These buttons, from left to right, allow you to bring up the “HP MediaSmart” panel, followed by the standard rewind-stop-play/pause-fast forward buttons, and an eject button. There is also a touch sensitive slider for volume and even for adjusting treble/bass, as well as a mute button. These sliders are convenient and certainly pretty, but unfortunately they’re a little touchy (minding the pun). During movie playback we tried to adjust the volume up and down, and after a short time doing this a delay began to accrue, and there was no way to remove the adjustment panel in the center of the screen which blocked out our movie. The other touch buttons also became unresponsive during this delay. We could forgive HP if the delay lasted for just a few seconds, but we were forced to have our movie interrupted for almost five irritating minutes. Over time one could probably get used to the extreme sensitivity, but the sliders seem like they might have a little more style than substance.

There are a few other nice features on the HDX. Continuing on the touch button theme, there is a touch button to turn wireless connectivity on/off which worked fine (as did the mute button – the buttons were reasonably accurate, unlike both sliders) and was convenient. There is also an integrated fingerprint reader. It’s interesting to note that not only can the fingerprint reader log you into your computer, but you can also use preinstalled software to register your fingerprint to certain sets of passwords, enabling you to log yourself into your favorite websites securely without typing (or remembering your password). The integrated webcam, Blu-ray disc, and stylish finish are also nice additions.

Gateway NV7915u

The Gateway NV7915u is a budget desktop replacement that serves up an impressive mix of features for the money.Sony VGP-BPS9 When we reviewed its predecessor at the end of last year, the Gateway NV7820u, we said it was a "fine example" of the company's "best bang-for-your-buck retail laptops." With a new processor and a lower price, this updated model offers more bang for fewer bucks. At $599,Sony VGP-BPS9A/B it's one of the cheapest laptops you'll find at retail with Intel's Core i3 processor. The laptop offers clearly superior performance to similarly priced laptops that use older Intel and AMD processors, particularly when multitasking. Plus, its large 17.3-inch display works well for juggling multiple windows or sitting back and watching a movie. Only minor nits like poor battery life (most desktop replacements are anchored near an outlet anyway) and an awkward mouse-button bar temper our enthusiasm for the otherwise stellar Gateway NV7915u.

The black-and-silver Gateway N7915u is set apart from similarly hued laptops by a subtle honeycomb pattern on the glossy lid.Sony VGP-BPS9/B Inside, the keyboard deck is matte black, with a glossy black strip running across the top of the keyboard. Two round hinges hold the display in place, and we'll save you some hunting by telling you that the power button resides on the side of the right hinge.Sony VGP-BPS9/S The laptop weighs 6.9 pounds and measures 1.4 inches thick, which makes it one of the lighter and thinner desktop replacements.

The keyboard has a unique look and feel with its wide, flat keys.inspiron 6400 battery We found typing to be comfortable; the keys are quiet with perfect travel. A dedicated number pad is integrated seamlessly to the right of the keyboard. Above the keyboard is a row of touch-sensitive keys. It includes standard buttons such as volume controls, turning on and off wireless,Dell latitude e6400 battery and locking the touch pad, Sony VGP-BPS8B and a programmable launch key for opening a file, folder, Web site, or application, and another button that launches software for backing up files. Play, pause, rewind, and fast-forward are mapped to the Function keys.

The touch pad is recessed slightly and offers a pleasing matte finish.inspiron 1525 battery It also offers multitouch support, so you can, for example, swipe two fingers to scroll down Web pages, swipe two fingers sideways to jump forward and back in your browser, and zoom in and out by pulling apart or pushing together two fingers. We don't like the thin, indented border that frames the touch pad; Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad T60 it looks like a spot were dust and dirt could collect. We also don't like the mouse buttons--or button, as it were. Instead of two separate mouse buttons, the Gateway VN7915u features a single bar below the touch pad. For starters, it's too thin; we kept hitting the space below it when attempting to click. It's also wider than the touch pad, which looks odd, and you have to be diligent to hit the right or left side of it to make a corresponding mouse click.xps m1330 battery We found our thumb constantly hitting the middle of the bar, which does nothing but frustrate.

The 17.3-inch display features LED backlighting, a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a 1,600x900-pixel native resolution.dell d620 battery The screen is big and bright, bringing movies to life. The display is also useful for productivity,HP Pavilion DV9000 giving you plenty of room to work on documents side by side. Above the display is a low-end Webcam. It features a 0.3-megapixel sensor,HP 510 which is capable of 640x480-pixel pictures and videos. It will suffice for video conferencing, but little else. Sony VGP-BPS8A

The integrated speakers offer surprisingly big sound.Sony VGP-BPS8 We found ourselves listening to movie dialog and effects at lower than max volume--a rarity in budget laptop testing. We even found ourselves enjoying music on the integrated speakers,Toshiba PA3399U-1BAS another exercise we rarely undertake on a laptop.

The Gateway NV7915u offers a useful collection of ports,Sony VGP-BPS10 including four USB 2.0 ports split among the right and left side of the laptop. In addition to a VGA port, there's an HDMI port, which we don't see on many low-end laptops.Sony VGP-BPS13A/B Absent are an eSATA port and an ExpressCard slot. Networking options include Gigabit Ethernet and Wireless N Wi-Fi.

The laptop features a spacious 500GB hard drive; currently 320GB drives are the norm on budget laptops.apple a1060 battery And Gateway doesn't clutter the drive with bloatware;apple a1045 battery the only trials you'll find might be of interest to you: 60 days of Norton Internet Security and Microsoft Office 2007.

While other budget laptops try to make ends meet with a previous-generation processor, Fujitsu lifebook s6510 batterythe Gateway NV7915u features Intel's new Core i3 processor, one of the successors to the chipmaker's hugely popular Core 2 Duo chip. The Core i3 M330 processor is a dual-core CPU clocked at 2.13GHz. It features Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, which turns its two cores into four virtual cores, greatly aiding multitasking performance as well as the speed with any threaded application. On CNET Labs' multitasking benchmark, the Gateway NV7915u was 30 to 32 percent faster than other current budget laptops that feature Intel's Pentium T4400 chip and a comparable AMD Turion II chip. It was 35 percent faster than last year's Core 2 Duo T6600-based Gateway NV7802u laptop on the same test. The numbers decrease when looking at performance on a single application. For instance, the Gateway NV7915u was 9 to 14 percent faster than the budget laptops from Asus, Dell, HP, and Toshiba on our Photoshop benchmark.

In anecdotal testing, we experienced smooth,Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad X60 responsive performance under heavy multitasking scenarios. It played HD video seamlessly, and it loaded the files much faster than the other budget laptops tested in our spring roundup of retail systems. The Core i3 offers tangible performance increases over other budget laptops that use previous-generation parts. Aiding the Gateway NV7915u's performance is 4GB of fast 1,066MHz DDR3 memory.

Unlike higher-end desktop replacements that feature dedicated graphics,Acer Aspire 4710 the Gateway NV7915u shows its budget roots by using integrated Intel GMA HD graphics. They're capable of smooth playback of HD video, but they don't make the laptop a 3D gaming machine.