If you’re looking for a high-powered gaming notebook with all the goods, the Toshiba Qosmio X505 offers the best combination of performance and value we’ve seen lately. This 18-inch system delivers remarkable performance by combining a powerful Intel Core i7-720QM CPU with an Nvidia GeForce GTS 250M graphics card, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, and dual storage drives, one of which is a high-speed 64GB SSD. The tastefully-designed rig also includes a bevvy of entertainment options, including a Blu-ray drive, a gorgeous 18.4-inch full HD (1920 x 1080) display, and a pair of Harman/Kardon stereo speakers. If you can afford the modest sub-$2,000 price and live with its 10.4-pound weight, this is the multimedia machine to beat.
Design
At a size of 17.4 x 11.6 x 1.6 inches and a weight of 10.4 pounds (11.6 pounds if you include the 1.2-pound power brick you’ll need to carry), the Qosmio X505 is barely portable. But large gaming notebooks aren’t intended for long trips; they’re meant to maintain a smaller footprint and travel more easily than a desktop. If you need a system you can take with you to a gaming party, or (if you’re a college student) something you can lug home with you for holiday breaks, the X505 more than fills the bill.
Like the Toshiba Qosmio X305 we reviewed in February 2009, the X505 has a red and black color scheme. However, this time around, Toshiba has replaced the gaudy red lid and translucent red plastic accents on its older system with a piano black chassis that has a matching black lid with several tasteful red accents—including metallic red trim and mouse buttons, and red system lights, including one that illuminates the touchpad. Compared to other gaming notebooks we’ve seen—including the pricey Alienware M17x—this is a design that even a gamer over 30 can display with pride.
Ports
The Qosmio X505 has all the ports you’d expect out of a multimedia/gaming rig, including a 5-in-1 memory card reader, audio in/out, Ethernet, an ExpressCard/54 slot, FireWire, HDMI, a Kensington lock slot, RGB, and 4 USB 2.0 ports, one of which is a combo eSATA/USB port. The eSATA/USB port supports Toshiba’s Sleep-and-Charge feature, which allows users to charge USB devices, such as MP3 players and phones, even when the system is asleep. The X505 also comes with a Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR radio for connecting wirelessly to headsets and phones.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The spacious 104-key keyboard includes a full numeric keypad, and lights up to help gamers who are playing in dim rooms. We completed the Ten Thumbs Typing Test (www.tenthumbstypingtutor.com) in our usual 80 words per minute with a 2-percent error rate. However, we wish the keys were less glossy; our fingers slipped around periodically as we typed. We also found ourselves hitting the Caps Lock key by accident when we we were trying to hit the left Shift key while touch typing.
To the left of the keyboard are a set of media control buttons for playing discs, lowering/raising volume, muting the speakers, launching Windows Media Player, and opening Toshiba’s Eco utility, which lets you see how much electricity the system is using and adjust the power settings accordingly.
The touchpad has a comfortable, lightly-textured surface that made it easy for us to navigate around the desktop (or play games) with a great deal of accuracy. However, the X505 falls short when it comes to multitouch support. Using the pad, we were able to zoom in/out on images and Web pages by pinching, but we could not rotate images or scroll with multitouch gestures like we could on other recently tested notebooks, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s.
Screen and Webcam
The Qosmio X505’s 18.4-inch screen delivers brilliant images at an impressive full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080. In our tests, colors remained bright and vibrant at a 45 degree angle, and washed out only slightly at a full 90 degrees to the right or left.
The X505’s 1.3-megapixel webcam produced sharp, clear images. Toshiba also bundles a utility that lets you fine tune the brightness and contrast of the cam. While talking on Skype in a dim room, our image was sharp and motion was smooth, but fine details of our face were harder to make out. However, when we changed the webcam’s profile to Conference mode, the image quality improved dramatically.
Multimedia
You can enjoy a movie very comfortably with a room full of friends on the Qosmio X505, without attaching an external display or speakers. When watching an episode from Heroes, both on Blu-ray and on standard DVD, images were sharp and colors vibrant, though the screen was so sharp we could see every imperfection in the Blu-ray version when sitting close to the screen. Even the pores on characters’ faces were visible.
When watching the final scene of Dark City, one we often use to evaluate multimedia performance because it moves rapidly from night to day, colors were true, and background noise was minimal.
