Toshiba X305-Q725: Quad-Core Gaming Notebook

Design and Appearance

While we have looked at plenty of 17" notebooks, many of them tend to look similar - in part because quite a few companies use the same base ODM design. The Toshiba X305 is certainly not the same as other 17" notebooks, which as you probably can guess is good in some areas and not so great in others. The gallery includes high resolution photos of the X305 from various angles for those that would like a closer look.

This notebook is clearly intended to stand out from the boring laptops and make a statement of power. The X305 comes in a bright red "flaming" design that is sure to turn heads, and perhaps it's also meant to convey just how "hot" this system can be. In some areas, this is without doubt the fastest laptop we've tested, but that has more to do with the quad-core CPU than anything. Other laptops also support high-end quad-core processors, and you will find that any laptop with similar components is going to offer about the same performance. Of course, finding a laptop with similar specs isn't necessarily easy, as there aren't a lot of high-end DTR systems that support mobile quad-core Penryn chips.

The optical drive is moved to the front of the X305, which may or may not please you. We don't use optical drives all that much, so it's really not a concern or selling point - it merely is what it is. Toshiba didn't bother with a Blu-ray drive, which is a little surprising considering the target market and price point; upgrading to a Blu-ray reader would have added less than $100, and that would arguably be a better choice of where to spend money than some other included options. Then again, if you don't plan to watch Blu-ray movies, it's not an issue - and you can always add a BD-ROM/BD-R in the future should you choose.

We already discussed most of the port options. A few interesting items we didn't mention yet of the volume knob on the right side. This is a pseudo-analog dial, which can be a bit more convenient when you want to adjust the volume quickly. However, you need to reach a certain threshold in terms of how fast you spin the dial to get the system to recognize that you are adjusting the volume, so fine-grained tweaks can be a bit tricky. The only other item to mention is the WiFi on/off switch on the front of the laptop.

The keyboard is one area we really feel can make or break a laptop, particularly in a DTR system where presumably you will do most of your typing. It is possible to adapt to any keyboard layout, certainly, or you could use an external keyboard, but most people will use what comes as part of the laptop and they'll want it to "feel" right. We like the keyboard layout, including the number keypad, as it provides access to all the commonly used keys. Our only concern is the more ethereal "touch" aspect, which can vary greatly between individuals. It's not bad, but the keys do feel a little soft, and personally I like a keyboard with a bit more texture. The glossy/smooth keys work fine, but I'd still rate the keyboard in the Dell XPS M1730 as being better - plus it includes LED backlighting as an added bonus. One nice feature that the keyboard includes are shortcut "zoom" keys (Fn+1 and Fn+2), which quickly switch between resolutions. We would like to see this functionality on more laptops in the future - especially laptops with higher DPI LCDs. It's not perfect, but it's better than going through the display settings dialogs under Vista just to switch resolution for a while. (Now if Microsoft could just figure out a good way to not rearrange all your desktop icons when you change resolutions….)

Overall, the design is pretty much what you would expect from a 17" notebook with support for dual GPUs and quad-core processors. It's large, heavy, and can be extremely fast. The power brick is huge, adding a couple more pounds to the total carrying weight - and if you ever go on the road, you will definitely want to bring along the power brick, as battery life struggles to break the one hour mark. There are quite a few different X305 models, with the main difference being the selected components - note that the X305-Q725 we're looking at only includes a single GPU, while the X305-Q708 includes dual 9800M GTS and a QX9300 CPU - and costs $1700 more. We'd like to see the option for a 1920x1200 LCD - preferably one that can provide color accuracy and a color gamut to match the rest of the top-end components - but that's one of our few complaints with the design. We would also really like to have an integrated GPU with the option to shut off the power-hungry 9800M GTX, but so far few manufacturers have offered such an option with high-end mobile GPUs, which is truly a shame.