Toshiba Qosmio X775: Toshiba's Gamer Grows Up
by Dustin Sklavos on August 17, 2011 12:25 AM ESTConclusion: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
The Toshiba Qosmio line has always been kind of an anomaly in the marketplace. These notebooks were the biggest of the big, and plenty powerful to boot. With the X775 Toshiba has reevaluated some of their design points and the result is a leaner, meaner gaming machine. The Qosmio has gone from being a gloss-infested blinged-out curiosity into a real competitor, its price having dropped as much as its weight.
Taken on its own, the X775 is a perfectly reasonable option that I certainly wouldn't fault anyone for picking up. While the screen quality still leaves a lot to be desired and Toshiba still has some way to go to catch up with the rest of the market where aesthetics are concerned, all the performance is there, and I do like the evil red backlighting.
Toshiba's $1,449 MSRP for our review model is too high, but thankfully NewEgg is willing to sell it to you for a far more reasonable $1,299, and they even sell the souped up 3D model at $200 off of Toshiba's asking price. As far as gaming notebooks are concerned, that lower $1,299 price point helps take Alienware's superior M17x R3 out of contention with the X775. In fact, visiting NewEgg, our Qosmio ranks among the most affordable gaming notebooks and it's tough to really argue in favor of any of the like-priced alternatives. HP's Envy 17 sports a superior 1080p screen and arguably more attractive build, but the Radeon HD 6850M is going to be slower than the GTX 560M in the Qosmio and won't benefit from technology like Optimus. Likewise, out in retail ASUS is happy to sell you a G74 with a GTX 560M and 900p screen for $1,199, even bumping up the RAM to 8GB...but you'll sacrifice the Blu-ray drive and worse, ASUS hasn't enabled Optimus on the G74 series, negating one of the major benefits of the GTX 560M. The G74 is also nearly three pounds heavier.
Ultimately there are two major compromises you'll have to make with the Qosmio X775: you'll have to decide how you feel about the notebook's aesthetics, and you'll have to decide if you're willing to live with the mediocre 900p screen. If these are sacrifices you can make, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better deal on a 17.3" gaming notebook...just don't pay what Toshiba's asking.
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arvee - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
Nice to see two drive bays, a must-have feature for me now. But 2 RAM slots? What?You guys really need to take a look at the MSI GT780 for a review. I got one a month ago and am (mostly) in love, it was an easy decision to skip past the ASUS for this baby. My only complaint is about the keyboard but I suspect it may be particular to me and I have I'll be sending it back to them to check it out when I have time.
Apart from the excellent specs on the MSI compared to the competition, I love the look of it because I'm not much of a gamer, more of a power user and I don't need awkward looks when I take it with me on business trips.
-- Rod
randinspace - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
About the keyboard on your MSI laptop: it's NOT just you, their build quality just sucks... Fortunately humans are adaptable creatures and I've somehow gotten used to the keyboards ridiculous unresponsiveness after a few months with the laptop I have that was made by them.arvee - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
The GT780 has a custom keyboard made and branded by Steelseries, they're using it as one of their major selling points. I am slowly getting used to it but shifting from the *beautiful* das keyboard on my desktop is quite an adjustment!fgmg1 - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
What is up with the off-center touch pad? I used a couple laptops with the touch pad centered around the space bar (with a number pad) and found it very difficult to find my way to and from the keyboard and touch pad.Maybe I'm old fashioned and like my touch pads aligned center of the screen, but I kept fingers kept falling to the left (or off) of the touch pad. Perhaps my movements were strictly keyboard-to-touch pad and back; I was just using the notebook as a normal user, browsing the web and such.
Either way, I was able accommodate, though throughout the process it felt somewhat unnatural. I almost felt as if I should shift my body slightly left for the keyboard/mouse -- which I did.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
The idea is that if you're typing, you'd have your palms resting to the left and right of the space bar, and you wouldn't want them on the touchpad. It looks a little odd, by my personal experience is that if the touchpad isn't directly below the space bar, I repeatedly brush it while typing -- that can suddenly move the cursor so I'm typing somewhere else, which is very annoying.Paedric - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
Would it be possible to have the GPU temperatures?Meaker10 - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
They can contain castrated Nvidia cards, 128bit mem buses (instead of 192bit) and the associated ROPs are gone too.I am now running a 16F2 barebone (GT683R based) and IMO offers the best value proposal. It comes with an attractive list of features:
15.6" form factor.
2 HDD bays (plus optical)
4 mem slots.
1920x1080 screen
Good speakers
Good cooling (that does not draw air from below so you can use it on your lap)
Darkstone - Thursday, August 18, 2011 - link
That is not true. All asus models i can find have 1.5GB or 3GB of memory. This means a memory bus with a multiple of 3. Thus, 192 bit.Meaker10 - Friday, August 19, 2011 - link
http://event.asus.com/my/2011/productguide/PG_Aug-...Oh look, all 15" models come with 2GB of ram.
jabber - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 - link
Sorry but was it a 16yr old that designed the styling for that?If I pay that much money for a laptop then I want it to look a little grown up at least.
Just a mess.
And all those horrible stickers all over it. Horrid! Yes I know they can be peeled off but they make windows laptops look a mess in the showroom.