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Toshiba might not have the greatest pedigree when it comes to gaming laptops, but the latest Qosmio certainly has a specification to be proud of. With a quad core processor, dedicated graphics, Full HD 3D screen and a Blu-ray optical drive on board, this large laptop has the potential to challenge desktop PCs for features and performance.
If its red and silver metal effect finish wasn’t enough of a hint, the red keyboard backlight is a dead giveaway that the X770 is aimed at gamers. The dedicated GeForce GTX 560M graphics card inside has 1.5GB of memory, and is certainly powerful enough to play games. It reached a superb 54.7fps in our Dirt 3 test – we could even increase the resolution from 720p to 1080p and still get a playable 32fps. With this much power to hand, most modern games should be playable, but you’ll have to sacrifice resolution or detail settings if you want to play in Nvidia 3D Vision mode – a single pair of glasses is provided. Our benchmark results were roughly halved by switching to 3D.
Desktop performance is strong, thanks to the quad-core Intel Core i7-2670QM processor running at 2.2GHz. It can reach 3.1GHz using Turbo Boost for a temporary speed increase and it appears with eight separate cores in Windows thanks to Hyper Threading. In practice, this meant it could power through our multimedia benchmarks with an overall score of 79 – more than enough for even intensive tasks, and 8GB of RAM means multitasking shouldn’t be a problem either. With 1TB of storage spread across two hard disks, you’re unlikely to run out of room in a hurry. One disk also has 4GB of flash storage as a cache, which helps the X770 resume from sleep in around three seconds, although it still took around a minute to reach the Windows desktop when booting from a full switch off.
For the most part, we were impressed with the 17.3in display – its Full HD 1,920×1,080 resolution is incredibly sharp and colours are vivid, even when wearing the 3D glasses. It occasionally struggled with vibrant reds, making them look oversaturated and unrealistic, but image quality in general was great. Viewing angles were superb, even with the limited amount of screen tilt, and even the glossy display finish didn’t make light reflections a major issue.
We weren’t blown away by the keyboard. It has flat isolated keys with a reasonable amount of travel – there wasn’t a huge amount of tactile feedback from each key press, making us wonder whether they had registered. There’s at least room for a full-size numerical keypad, as well as a row of touch-sensitive multimedia keys nestled between the stereo speakers.
The touchpad directly below the keyboard tray is disappointingly small considering the size of the chassis, although it’s still sensitive enough to span the desktop in a single motion. There’s very little friction from the plastic surface, so it’s pleasant to use, and there’s also a button to disable it completely if you prefer to use a mouse.
If you’re looking to replace a desktop PC, you may be pleased to hear the X770 has plenty of connectivity. As well as the Blu-ray re-writer, there are four USB ports, one of which is USB3, 3.5mm audio in and output jacks, a multi-format card reader and an Ethernet port.
Unsurprisingly, battery life isn’t the X770’s forte – in our light use test, it could only manage a pitiful two and a half hours away from the mains, but at almost 3.5kg the X770 isn’t built for travelling.
It’s clear that the X770 is an immensely powerful laptop that has pretty much everything you could want in a multimedia or gaming machine, including a 3D screen. Unfortunately, the Samsung Series 7 Gamer has the edge in terms of build quality and design, as well as gaming performance, for only £20 more.
