The target audience of the Qosmio X505 laptop, according to Toshiba's plan, should be gamers and users wishing to purchase a multimedia center. The Qosmio X505 is Toshiba's largest laptop to date, a desktop replacement model with an NVIDIA quad-core processor and mid-range graphics card. Does the X505 live up to user expectations? Let's see.
Toshiba Qosmio X505 test configuration:
Processor - Intel Core i7 720QM (1.6GHz, 6MB L2 Cache)
Operating system - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit
Display - 18.4-inch WUXGA, glossy, 1920x1080 pixels
System Memory - 6GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM
Storage - 64GB Toshiba SSD
Hard Drive - 500GB Hitachi HDD
Graphics Card - nVidia GTS 360M, 1GB Local Video Memory
Optical Drive - Internal Blu-ray Drive.
Networking - Realtek 802.11n Wi-Fi and Atheros Gigabit Ethernet
Battery - 8000mAh 12 cell battery
Construction and design
The Toshiba Qosmio X505 gives the impression of being one of the largest and heaviest notebooks, yet very well built. In terms of design, the X505 can hardly be matched here as well, the laptop looks very luxurious. The combination of the main dark "metallic" shade and red trim elements will be able to persuade to buy even those users who usually dislike bright colors in the external design of laptops. True, the glossy finish attracts fingerprints and fine dust like a magnet. Even the LED keyboard backlighting matches the black and red palette of the surface finish very strongly.
Despite the fact that the X505 is made entirely of plastic, the build quality is excellent, not least thanks to the very high quality plastic that reliably protects the internal components during minor shocks and shocks. The wrist rest and other panels of the laptop are stiff enough to give the impression that the design and internal structure of the case were thought out thoroughly by the manufacturer. The display lid also reliably protects the matrix from damage. Attempts to push through the outer display lid and thus cause distortion on the screen were unsuccessful, and the lid also resisted twisting forces well.
A laptop of this size must have a secure display hinge to hold a display of this large size in position, and Toshiba has done the job. The display hinges are stiff enough to hold the display in any position, though the downside is that it takes a lot of force to open the display.
Display and speakers
The Toshiba Qosmio X505 laptop comes with an 18.4-inch glossy display with a screen resolution of 1920x1080 (aspect ratio 16: 9, WUXGA equivalent). Colors are vivid and vivid, text is very clear and sharp, video looks very good too. Measurements have shown that the maximum brightness is 141 nits, so it should be enough to work in bright office lighting. For outdoor use, the brightness is not enough, but such a laptop is not intended for such working conditions, since it is positioned as a desktop replacement.
The X505 display has eight levels of brightness gradation that can be set using the Fn + F6 and Fn + F7 keys. Changing the brightness of the screen does not entail fading, so even in low light conditions, you can lower the brightness without affecting the picture quality. The most comfortable setting for the eyes during everyday use is 60% of the maximum level.
Laptop screens tend to have small vertical viewing angles, and the X505 is no exception.If you look at the screen from above or below at angles in excess of 15-20 degrees, colors begin to fade. The horizontal viewing angles are much better and, one might even say, impressive. The picture on the display is very clearly visible, even from almost 90 degrees, this is one of the best display indicators on the market.
When you see a laptop equipped with Harman or Kardon speakers, you always expect great sound from such a sound system. The two large speakers located above the keyboard really sound great in the mid and high frequencies, but the low frequencies are almost inaudible. For a laptop of this size, the lack of bass sound is a disadvantage.
Keyboard and touchpad
The X505 has a very comfortable keyboard that outperforms most of the models on the market. The keyboard has a standard layout and LED-backlighting, the keys are slightly springy. The keys of the keyboard have enough space, and the user feels it while working.
At first, the glossy black coating of the keyboard keys seemed like a hindrance - the friction between the fingers and the surface of the keys was too great, but after two days of use, the problem disappeared by itself, as the keyboard surface became more slippery. The only problem was the inability to turn off the keyboard backlight.
The 18.4-inch laptop has a full-size keyboard, numeric keypad, and huge wrist rest. Toshiba used the excess floor space to house eight dedicated touch buttons to control media functions, volume and power. Of course, these are handy buttons for quickly controlling the laptop, but they also have their drawback - they are easy to accidentally press.
Although the touchpad is flush with the wrist rest, it is easy to get used to. The touchpad response time was very good and the touchpad driver was updated prior to the test. The touchpad has an on / off button and a large red LED indicator that shows if the touchpad is on or not. The large touchpad buttons are tinted red so you can't miss them, but this makes them a little tricky to work with as they require more force to press.
The Synaptics touchpad supports multi-gesture - zoom, rotation and scrolling. All these functions work correctly, it takes a few days to get used to the touchpad.
Ports and other equipment
Let's be realistic - this is an 18.4-inch laptop that is intended to replace a desktop and has enough space to install any port, and we must admit that Toshiba made the most of this opportunity. Equipped with three USB ports, one eSATA / USB combo port, audio jacks, Firewire 400 port, SD card slot, Ethernet port, VGA and HDMI output, we can say that the laptop has everything a user needs. The X505 also has an ExpressCard / 54 slot located above the optical drive. The laptop has room for the DisplayPort connector, but for some reason Toshiba decided not to include this port in the package. The only caveat to this configuration is that I would like more USB ports. The presence of an irrelevant VGA-output may raise the user's question about the expediency of such an advanced model, but the logic of the manufacturer's engineers is that many HDTV-TVs have a VGA-port specifically for connecting a personal computer, and at the same time do not have enough HDMI ports. Below are photos of the sides of the laptop:
Left side: Ethernet, eSATA / USB combo port, another USB port, HDMI out, Firewire 400, Blu-Ray optical drive, and ExpressCard / 54.
Right side: Audio in / out, two USB ports, VGA out, power connector and Kensinton lock slot.
Front view: Wi-Fi switch, SD card reader.
Back view: Empty.
Performance
The Toshiba Qosmio X505 laptop is one of the largest laptops on the market and, due to its size, it is packed with some of the most powerful components on the market - an Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, a powerful discrete nVidia graphics card, a fast SSD storage and capacious hard drive.
As you can see from the diagrams, an SSD is 10-15 times faster than a hard drive.
Wprime CPU performance score (the lower the score, the higher the performance):
PCMark05 measures the overall system performance (the higher the score, the better the performance):
3DMark06 measures performance in games (the higher the score, the better the performance):
The Toshiba Qosmio X505 also scored 9250 points in PCMark Vantage, and 5766 points in 3DMark Vantage.
CrystalDiskMark measures hard drive performance:
Heat dissipation and noise
During light to moderate usage, the X505 is nearly silent. Sometimes you can hear a slight whirring of the cooling fan, but overall, the laptop produces very little noise during operation. Also, the laptop almost does not heat up, except for one point on the bottom lid. Considering that the laptop is equipped with a quad-core processor and a powerful discrete graphics card, it is surprising that the laptop case does not heat up and the cooling system runs quietly.
During benchmarks and 3D games, the picture changed a bit. The hotspot on the bottom lid of the laptop has gotten hotter, but the fan noise has also increased. The noise could not be called annoying, but by its presence it was possible to understand that it was a fan of the cooling system. For users who plan to use a laptop for gaming, it is recommended to raise the volume level slightly so that the cooling system will not be heard.
Standalone operation and software
The X505 is equipped with the latest components to help reduce overall power consumption. Toshiba has included an "eco-utility" program that can manage the power consumption of the notebook. It can change the brightness level of the display, the power settings of the Windows 7 profile and turn off unnecessary LED-backlighting elements. When this utility is running, a small green lamp is lit on the case, which means that you are contributing to the conservation of natural resources.
Using this "eco-utility" you can get comprehensive information in the form of various graphs about how much energy is being consumed at the moment. Even when the display is running at half its brightness, and Windows 7 is running in "balanced" mode, the computer still draws about 35-45W.
With this power consumption, the laptop lasted one hour and 35 minutes on a single battery charge. Well, this is very good for a desktop replacement.
The huge amount of unnecessary and useless software that comes with the X505 laptop deserves a separate note. These are mainly various office utilities, antivirus software, financial programs, online games and much more. The total space occupied by these programs is over 40 gigabytes, while Windows 7 and Microsoft Office installations take up only 20 gigabytes of space.
Conclusion
The Toshiba Qosmio X505 is a very large laptop that can handle most computer applications with ease. Designed for gamers and users who want only the best parts in their laptop, so it comes with one of the best displays on the market, a reliable keyboard, excellent build quality, a superbly balanced cooling system that gets the job done without annoying the user. noise.
Of course, there are also disadvantages - the main ones are the lack of low frequencies in the audio system and the excessive amount of useless software installed on the laptop.
Summing up, we can say that the X505 model is one of the leaders in terms of quality and performance, a laptop in the premium segment.
Benefits:
Massive, beautiful, 18.4-inch display
Exceptional performance while being quiet and low-heat
Excellent build quality
Disadvantages:
Incomplete sound system (lack of low frequencies)
The touchpad buttons are not very comfortable
Lots of unnecessary, pre-installed software
