The Toshiba Qosmio series is a laptop line for gamers. Big graphics cards, radikal design and 5.1 speakers. The X300 tested here has a 9700M GTS and a 17 inch screen with a res of 1440x900. A good combination.

Handling, design and build

Toshiba calls the design radical and this is the least you can say. The red flames on the back of the casing are there to remind us. Let’s be honest, you have to be a bit of a show off if you’re going to go for this one and not everyone is, not here in editorial anyway (or at least they're not admiting to it). What’s more the plastic looks a bit cheap, which does nothing to give an overall impression of solidity.


No complaints with regard to keyboard layout. It's large, well set out and there's no resizing of keys. On the right you’ll note the presence of a number pad. When it comes to the quality of the keys, we aren’t quite as enthusiastic. In glossy plastic and a little soft, they don’t really convince. This is also true of the touch pad. It’s a little small in comparison to the rest of the keyboard and the click buttons (glossy metal) lack depth.

The webcam ain’t what you’d call impressive either. It tends to migrate whites to blues and accentuates contours, creating aliasing. Another minus is the screen capture that needs to be set to a minimum if you don’t want to completely burn the colours. The microphone is also very average and muffles the voice.

The laptop has the following connectivity: 1 e-SATA/USB, 3 USBs, 2 mini jacks, 1 FireWire, 1 HDMI, 1 VGA, 1 multiformat card reader that includes SD and memory stick (rare), 1 RJ45, 1 modem and 1 Express Card (that houses a remote).

Under the laptop, two panels give access to the RAM and the hard drive.

HDMI, VGA, RJ45	e-SATA/USB, USB
2 mini jacks, 2 USBs	Remote in Express Card format

Processor Power

Windows Experience Index 5.2. CPU 5.2 - Memory 5.9 - Graphics 5.9 – Gaming Graphics 5.8 – Hard Drive 5.3.

The P8400 is the Core 2 Duo P8600’s little bro. You’ll find the bigger one in the MSI GT725. On paper the difference between the two CPUs is the clock that drops from 2.4 GHz to 2.26 GHz. In practice, on the processor tests it is 12% slower than the P8600 in the MSI and 17% slower than the T9400 in the Fujitsu-Siemens Xi3650.

All this gives the laptop 88 in our test index, whereas the Asus G50V scored 109 and the MSI GT725 102.

When reading a Full HD video, more than 60% of the CPU is used up and energy consumption is around 65 watts with peaks of 70 watts. To this you need to add the noise of the fan which is unpleasant. Once graphics acceleration is activated, consumption falls to 58 watts and 17% of the CPU is used. The fan remains at the same level: audible.

Gaming

9700M GTS: the letter S at the end changes everything, added to the fact that the panel res is "only" 1440x900 pixels. Compared to the Asus G50V, which has a 9700M GT (no S) and a 1650x1050 pixel screen, there are 26% less pixels to process! This gives you graphics quality that sits well with our test games. Crysis : "normal" quality with 2X anti-aliasing (AA) - Race Driver Grid : "high" quality and 4X anti-aliasing - World in Conflict : "high".

Very good then but the MSI GT725 does better with its significantly more powerful: ATI Mobility Radeon HD4850.

Audio

Four speakers built in around the keyboard and a subwoofer underneath are enough to impress. The sound is very good on the Qosmio. Branded Harman Kardon, we’d even go as far as to say that it’s a little marvel. Powerful, clean, no saturation or badly assembled plastic that vibrates to the bass and with Dolby/Wave Maxx software. As long as you don’t push it to a max, the Dolby Natural Bass and the Wave graphics equaliser allow you to go quite a long way in terms of sound quality.

Battery life and portability

You can’t ignore the huge charger that is delivered with this machine: 1 Kg on the scales. Add to that the weight of the laptop itself (4.3 Kg) and a battery life of 74 minutes when watching a film (Wi-Fi disactivated, screen at 100 cd/m²) and you’ll start to understand why we’re only giving one star here.