Toshiba Qosmio X305 User Review

by Perry Longinotti

Gaming notebooks have been around for a few years now and getting a good one has been easy assuming you have heaping piles of cash. For those of us on a budget, we were stuck with mid-range GPUs and big compromises in the visual settings of our games until Gateway's FX line came out last winter. Today we'll be looking at Toshiba's answer to higher performance on a budget, the Toshiba Qosmio X305/300 gaming notebook.

It's easy to say a notebook has game and the throw some vague slides on a company website (cough, Apple) but the nice thing about this segment is that imposters are quickly uncovered. Your notebook can either play a game as the developer intended (at or near max settings) or it cannot. Sure, you can suffer through some games with all the visual settings dialled-down on mainstream notebooks but that isn't what this segment is about. These notebooks are extreme machines – "Sharks with freakin' laser beams!"

First the vital statistics – this model is very close to the X305-Q705 (detailed descriptions further down):

• Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 2.0GHz CPU with 25Watt TDP
• NVIDIA GeForce 9700m GTS 512MB
• 17" Display With 1440 x 900 Resolution
• 320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
• 4GB 1066 MHz DDR3 System Memory
• Super Multi 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
• 4.1 speakers with Dolby Home Theatre
• MSRP of $1,499.99 ($1,699.99 CDN)

Build and Design

Starting with the Satellite P30 series a few years ago, Toshiba has been easing themselves into the gaming notebook segment. Last year's X200/205 was armed with dual GPUs in SLI and was a pretty big hit. The X305 has big shoes to fill in order to make the right impression – so Toshiba started by ramping up the looks.

It won't be confused for a ThinkPad

While there is no accounting for taste, I think the X305's hot rod inspired flames look appropriately hot. Its lid has multi-hued metallic red flames (Metallic Bordeaux Fire Shark according to Toshiba). Red plastics wrap around the chassis and extend around the keyboard. Near the hinge the plastic is translucent and backlit. The palm rests are black textured plastic.


It is rather busy in the dark - very disco!

When placed on a flat surface, the X305 exhibits no warped plastics or chassis. Four large rubber feet raise the notebook about a quarter inch from the surface allowing plenty of room for air circulation.

Handling the X305 the second thing you will notice is that this notebook feels quite sturdy overall although there are some weak spots. The cool-looking lid feels thin and flimsy and the right palm rest flexes. Given the X305's weight you might expect some chassis creaking as you carry it around, but there isn't any. With the exception of the keyboard, that we will get to in a moment, everything else is pretty firm.

Like most notebooks these days, hinge tension works in place of an LCD latch mechanism. Mechanical hinge latches are not mechanisms that I miss - those were typically the first part to fail on a notebook.


No screen latch

At 9.1 lb. and 2.5" thick you won't want to tote this around college campus. Width is 16.25" and length is 12" – a bright red manhole cover comes to mind when thinking about the X305's portability. For its intended purpose of gaming, moving between rooms occasionally and being shown off at LAN Parties the weight won't be an issue.


Tower of power - Toshiba Qosmio X305 on a Gateway P-6831FX

Screen

Toshiba chose the LG Philips LPLA101 LCD panel for the X305. This 17.1" display is bright with good contrast, color saturation and a 1440 x 900 resolution. This resolution is a good match for the 9700m GTS video card. You will be able to run most games at native resolution. The screen is usable at the lowest brightness setting but most people will probably settle on 50%. Horizontal viewing angles are good with no color inversion at really sharp angles. Vertical viewing angles were typical of TN panels with inversion of colors past a certain point – but that's no a big deal, that is what the hinge is for. Above the display are the webcam and microphone.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Reviled though it may be, Toshiba is pushing the European style keyboard layout in Canada. Weep for your poor wretched Canadian cousins. The X305's keyboard is finish is glossy – a motif that is being extended throughout the Toshiba line up. It looks good but the keys are a little slippery. Also, the base flexes a lot and the short key travel makes this defect very noticeable. Key clicks are loud getting progressively worse as you move to the right. Next to the Acer 6920g keyboard I would rate this as the worst I have used this year. It is possible that the US keyboard is better. Here is a quick video that captures the flex.

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On the right side of the keyboard where flex is most pronounced you will find a full numeric keypad. The positioning of the Del, Home, Pg Up, Pg Dn and End keys is unorthodox. Above the keyboard and centered between sharp looking Harmon/Kardon speakers are media control buttons (exactly where they belong - Acer I am talking to you). Additional speakers are situated near the palm rests as well.

Toshiba's touchpads often need a bit of twiddling to get them setup the way I like them (fast with a light touch). The X305 was perfect right out of the box. Unlike in past years, Toshiba has elected to keep the touchpad simple and uncluttered with chotchkas &ndash; a smart choice. Buttons are firm and rattle free. There is no Apple-like two finger tapping or multi-touch. The top of the pad glows red while the notebook is on.

First Boot

The installation is relatively clear of junk. Toshiba's utilities are present, but in some cases they are redundant with Windows offering the same functionality. There is no point having two programs that do the same thing running in memory &ndash; a good example being the Wi-Fi configuration. Uninstalling these will free up some memory and remove a few unwanted background services.

A Bluetooth setup utility pops up on first boot to help you configure any keyboard mice or other peripherals you may have. I like this feature but it is a bit odd; Toshiba reminds you to setup a wireless mouse but not to create backup discs? On a related note, lack of an included Vista restore disc is a disappointment. This notebook is not a $399 door crasher - Gateway provides recovery discs with its notebooks.

A novelty is the Toshiba face recognition feature. A cynic might say that this is just a cheap way to add biometric authentication to a notebook without the added cost of a fingerprint reader. After all, even the most basic notebooks have an integrated webcam these days. I was not able to get this working but there was an update on the Toshiba site and are many reports of people using this successfully.

Toshiba also includes a voice recognition and command utility and it works incredibly well. This is a very good accessibility feature. You launch programs, perform tasks and navigate the web. It does a good job of isolating out background noise, but watch out if you have a talkative 5 year old in the room because the results can be pretty funny (or scary if you are working on anything important).

A Norton 360 three-month trial is included. This is a pretty resource intensive antivirus solution &ndash; I prefer the Windows firewall, defender, malicious code updates and a freebee like Avira.

Performance

First let's look at the CPU. Toshiba uses Intel's Core 2 Duo P7350 CPU. This is a Penryn-3M medium voltage chip. What does this mean?

• It's made using 45 nm process making it smaller and cooler running.
• It has 3 MB of level two cache versus 2 MB in last year's value processors.
• Benefiting from the Penryn architectural advancements makes it about 15% faster than last year's Merom-based budget CPUs clock for clock.
• The latest front side bus speed of 1066 MHz is used.
• Medium voltage means that it consumes less power, improving battery life.
• Miserly power consumption produces less heat, about 25% less than last year (25 Watt TDP versus 35).

Next up is the chipset, in this case Intel's PM45 (Cantiga) north bridge and ICH9-M south bridge. First the PM45; In addition to supporting the faster Front Side Bus speeds it also bring support for DDR3 which is both faster and uses lower voltage. Although not relevant in this particular review, PM45 also adds AMD CrossfireX support. Perhaps Toshiba could change things up a bit in the future with a Crossfire offering &ndash; two mobile 4850 GPUs would be pretty amazing.

DRR3 memory is not easy to find in stores and comparatively expensive (although this will change rapidly). Toshiba equips the X305 with 4 GB of DDR3 operating at 1066 MHz - nearly double last year's 667 MHz standard. This notebook should be able to handle a total of 8 GB when the 4 GB modules begin to ship. When comparing gaming notebooks be weary of models that skimp by using the older DDR2 RAM.

Underneath the X305 there is a depressing lack of access panels. You will need to completely tear down the notebook to access its socketed CPU and MXM 3.0 module. If anyone from Toshiba reads this consider the following:

1. Most people keep their notebooks for 2-3 years.
2. During this time Toshiba probably makes zero dollars off its existing clients.
3. A simple-to-install MXM module for a notebook would provide a revenue opportunity.
4. Gaming notebooks owners might buy a $300 GPU upgrade or two during the 2-3 year life of their notebook.

Seems pretty simple to me &ndash; and the future proofing and novelty of this would be worth a press release and some juicy marketing bullet points. It would be nice if one of the big brand notebook makers would support this (Dell's upgradable XPS line was rather half-hearted). A company like OCZ will probably beat them too it though with their D.I.Y. notebook line.

NVIDIA's GeForce 9700m GTS GPU powers the X305. Many people will consider this the most important part. The 9700m GTS is based on the G94 GPU &ndash; a significantly more powerful part that is used in the 9800m series. Really, this should be considered part of the 9800m series. It delivers excellent gaming performance. Here are some of the salient points:

• 48 unified shader units (versus 64 units in the 8800m GTS and the 9800m GS)
• 512 MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory running at 799 MHz - 51.1 GB/s bandwidth
• 530 MHz Core, 1325 MHz shaders
• Pixel fillrate 8.5 GPixel/s, Texture fillrate 17 GTexel/s
• General Purpose GPU support: CUDA applications and NVIDIA PhysX
• PureVideo HD including HDCP HDTV output.
• PowerMizer power management technology to reduce temps and power use.

What do these bullet points mean? The core and shader speeds are faster than the 8800m GTS, but the 9700m GTS only has 48 unified shader units. This means (everything else being equal) the video system in the X305 delivers about 75-80% of the performance of an 8800m GTS or 9800m GS.

You probably want to know how it plays games right? First the synthetic results - the X305 scores 7,325 points in 3DMark06. This is good score that puts the X305 in the same ballpark as rivals like the Gateway P-6860FX. 3DMark is easy to optimize for and does not really stress the GPUs as much as games do so let's see how the X305 fares in the following games:

• Call of Duty 4 &ndash; engine used in the Quantum of Solace game
• Crysis: Warhead &ndash; Cry Engine, the most demanding game engine
• Gears of War &ndash; Unreal Engine 3, licensed for use in many games

All games were tested at the X305's native LCD resolution 1440x900. Games were tested using FRAPs while playing through the first ten minutes to arrive at the minimum, average and maximum frame rates measured in frames per second. This will give you a good idea of what playing demanding games on the X305 will be like.

Call of Duty 4 uses the DX9 graphics API and doesn't require the 9700m GTS's DX10 support. It is still a demanding game and is a staple of LAN Parties. As you can see from the following chart, the game is fully playable at maximum settings and 4xAA. The only hiccup was when audio seemed to be loading - a second of two of stuttering. You can see how that affects performance below:


Call of Duty 4 - 40 fps maxed out

Anyone familiar with Crysis: Warhead will not be expecting to play it on very high settings on a 2008 notebook. It is simply too demanding. But the game is playable on medium settings. Here are the details:


Mainstream/Medium setting is just barely playable


Gamer/High setting is simply too much - and there is a level above this!

Gears of War uses Epic's Unreal Engine 3, this is one of the more popular and more demanding game engines. It is used in many current games like Mass Effect, Bioshock, and Rainbow Six: Vegas. Upcoming titles include Borderlands, Aliens: Colonial Marines and Mirror's Edge. The X305 aced Gears of War, running fully maxed out in DX 10 mode with anti-aliasing turned off. Results looked like this:


Gears of War - 43 fps maxed out DX 10, no AA

As you can see, the X305 delivers a very good gaming experience. To put this in perspective the detail levels, resolution and frame rate of these games easily eclipses what is possible on a console. These results are very good and place the X305 in the rank of the Gateway P-7811FX. If you are lucky enough to live in the USA, you can buy the SLI version of the X305 for $1,999.99 for significantly better performance (probably very close to double). The dual GPU X305 is a category leader in terms of power and bang for buck.

Speakers and Audio

Audio performance is excellent. The speakers are worth every bit of the Harmon/Kardon and Dolby labelling on them. With four speakers and a sub woofer the Dolby software has a lot to work with and the results are great. Games sound much better on the X305 than on the Gateway 6831FX, but the 4.1 speaker arrangement only 'expands' the sound rather than delivering true positional effects.

Audio is a very important part of playing online games as audible clues can help you find your opponent faster. In order to really isolate sounds, many players use high quality headphones. I was hoping that the 4.1 audio output of the X305 might eliminate the need for headphones. Sadly, the positional effect is probably not strong enough to play competitive first person shooters without headphones.

Dolby Setup Utility

For home theatre purposes the X305's HDMI output of audio is excellent and Toshiba even includes a utility to configure this output. Realtek's codec features mini jack autosensing, so when you plug in a set of headphones or line-out a pop up helps configure things.

Heat and Noise

After playing games for an hour I was struck by the lack of heat. So I ran Gear of War for 10 hours, still no heat issues. Toshiba has put some thought into the X305's cooling system. There are two fans that suck cool air in from beneath the notebook blowing it over the CPU, GPU and venting out the rear. Temps on the exhaust can reach 65oC but the palm rests remain nice and cool. In other words the heat is kept away from where you would notice it. Fan noise is not noticeable unless you flip the X305 and listen to them.

Keeping it in the family, this X305 uses Toshiba's MK3252 GSX 320 GB hard drive. It has a spindle speed of 5400 rpm, 8 MB buffer and SATA-II 3.0Gb/s interface. Temperatures during normal use hovered around 40oC. HD Tune performance was in-line with the ubiquitous Western Digital drives. Here is a screenshot:

Battery and Power Adapter

The included battery has a unique tacky plastic finish and it does not move or rattle when installed. It is rated for 4000 mAh, 14.4 Volts and 57.6 Wh. On a big power gobbling rig like this I was not expecting much away from an outlet and I was right. Surfing the Internet with only a small bit of streaming video netting exactly 90 minutes from a full charge before the X305 shut itself off. Expect to get about an hour into a DVD before it shuts down.

The massive 180 Watt power adapter adds about 1.9 lbs to the travel weight. If other PSUs are bricks, this is a paving stone. It is easily the biggest power brick that I have come across. Toshiba uses a non-standard plug so make sure that you don't forget it when you head out to the LAN Party, it is not likely that anyone will have a spare that will actually fit your X305.


The power brick is aptly named, almost the size of an Acer Aspire One!

Ports and Features

Ports on the X305 are as follows; three USB 2.0, mini Firewire, VGA, HDMI, USB 2.0/eSATA, microphone, headphone/digital and Ethernet. Inside a small compartment on the right side of the notebook are the Kensington lock port, modem/fax jack, and a memory card slot that accepts SD/MMC/MS and xD flash formats.

Toshiba designed the X305 with a front loading tray-style DVD drive. Optical recording is robust and the LG GSA-T50N covers all but the most exotic formats (CD-R 24x, CD-RW 4x, DVD-R 8x, DVD-R DL 4x, DVD-RW 4x, DVD+R 8x, DVD+R DL 4x DVD+RW 4x, DVD-RAM 5x). An 8x dual-layer multi-DVD burner is exactly what you would expect at this price point although Blu-Ray is starting to pop-up.

Conclusion

Toshiba has made some large strides from last year's X205. The X305 looks much better &ndash; they have committed to the concept of the gaming notebook and have produced something bold. Chances are people will either love or hate the design but Toshiba has plenty of staid conservative notebooks to choose from; they need something like this.

In terms of performance the X305 does very well. The CPU and GPU are well balanced and it seems to be within 10% of last year's value gaming champ, the Gateway P-6831FX. The Toshiba wins in synthetic benchmarks but falls a bit short in actual games. The cooling and audio systems are significantly better though. Less heat equals peace of mind to many people (myself included).

Toshiba's offering also has the upside of being upgradable &ndash; but that is not officially supported nor will it be easy. CPU swaps are straightforward, simply buy a new P8400/8600/9500-series Intel CPU and take the case apart to install (easier said than done). Tracking down the 9800m GTX SLI MXM 3.0 module is going to tough and you may have to count on some eBay mercenaries unless Toshiba allows you to order the part direct from them. A quick scan of eBay shows the 8800m GTX SLI card selling for about $1,000.00.

If you can buy the Gateway P-7811FX or ASUS G50Vt-X1 &ndash; both of which regularly sell for $1,250.00 &ndash; I think they are better choices. They will be 15-20% faster than the 9700m GTS-equipped X305 and a couple of hundred dollars less. All three are brands that I would trust. If the price comes down on the X305 to make it more competitive with its rivals, or if you can find one on sale, then I think you will be happy with any of these three notebooks.

This configuration of the X305 is Toshiba's way of throwing a bone to people on a budget. I appreciate that. But if you have a bit more cash and access to the Toshiba online store then the X305-Q706 for $1,999.99 is a great value. It is the same notebook as the X305 reviewed here beefed up with two 9800m GTX cards in SLI, a higher resolution screen and 7200 RPM HDD. An additional $500 seems like a small price to pay for all the extra power. Two grand for a notebook may seem steep but comparable models from other manufacturers are common at $3,500-4,000.

Pros:

• Very good gaming performance
• Solid construction
• Available as an SLI equipped giant killer for $500 more.
• Viable alternative to Gateway and ASUS gaming notebooks available in same price range

Cons:

• Bad keyboard in Canada (don't know about USA version)
• User serviceability compromised
• You know you really want the SLI version

My Verdict:

You won't be disappointed, but you may want to spring for the more expensive configuration &ndash; it's a killer.

 

Thanks for the excellent review.
I have a question:
When the laptop starts, do you get a "please wait" screen for 1-2 min before displaying welcome and vista desktop showing?

 

Aaah! My Eyes! They Burn! J/K

That was a great review, very detailed

 

Good review!

I love the performance, but the keyboard flex, thickness & weight, the dismal battery life, and the love-it-or-hate-it looks (I hate the looks of the X305 myself) turn me off from this notebook.

That battery is only rated at 57.6Whr?? You have GOT to be kidding me. My nw8440's battery is rated at 73Whr, and its components are far less powerful than the X305 (ATi Radeon X1600-based GPU, Core Duo T2600CPU). I guess Toshiba figured that the types of people that would buy this notebook (i.e., hardcore gamers) aren't too concerned about battery life, which would actually be a pretty accurate assumption IMO.

Personally, I would like a better balance between performance vs thickness, weight, and battery life. This notebook sacrifices too much in order to get top-notch performance. The again, there are people (hardcore gamers) who would want a notebook such as the X305, which sacrifices almost everything else to get the best performance possible.

 

the looks...

 

Nice review!

 

very nice review. good looking laptop!

 

As pointed out by Dude55, I have a typo near the end. The SLI version uses 9800m GTS not the GTX.

Here are some temp readings:

 

Yeah, it's a slow starter. But 2 minutes might indicate a problem with yours maybe a borked driver?

 

The flex is disappointing, and 1920x1200 would've been a good resolution [considering the card is 256-bit] but a good, cheap gaming laptop nonetheless.

Nice review.

 

Nice review, Perry.

I agree with you that for that price range the X305 isn't the best choice. The $2,000 one with SLI is a nice value though.
I saw the X305 in person last week - I don't remember anything about the keyboard flex, but I do remember the build quality being weak in some points. Also, the one I saw on display creaked a bit. Never liked the super shiny keyboards. My HP's keyboard is sort of shiny but not slippery at all. At least the X305 has a full numpad though.
WXGA+ is a very low resolution for a 17" and would be a deal breaker for me.

Again, nice review.

 

its a toshiba , and its a japanese made computer, dont know why ppl even cared enough to write a review.


in terms of gaming, the 1st brand comes to mind of most gamers will be dell-- xps m1730, then some taiwanese made products, sager and gateway fx.

 

Nice review!

However, it's a really ugly laptop in my opinion. And it's horrificly thick!
****... well for that price they could at least have done an effort.

Even alienware did with their new Alienware Area-51 m17x looking classic.
I like them that way : sobre looks ; powerful engine. ( This applies to cars also haha )

P.S I know that the alienware is way dearer, but still. Looks my friend, looks!
haha

 

Good review, but I don't see how anyone would want to spring for this one instead of the 9800m GTS gateway with better specs and a lower price.

 

Are you sure about this? I'm not an expert on this field, but I assume most gamers would think of Sager and Clevo when thinking of gaming laptops.

I find the M1730 overpriced for what you get with relatively outdated components compared to the competition out there, even after the discounts and coupons IMO. I hope that Dell will update it very soon, its quite overdue for it.

I like the inner design of the X305 but not so much the lid. Though that lid wakes me up and energizes me just by looking at it!

 

I doubt Dell is going to have another XPS gaming notebook, they will probably transition everything over to Alienware. As a matter of fact, Dell already links to Alienware from their site.

 

i live in canada, so my only option was the x300, but i could have gotton the gateway. it has too many problems, cant be upgraded and has major heat issues.

i wish they told us about the SLI version before i bought this one, i would have payed a few hundred more for it for sure.

 

In the overview page of the X305-Q706, Toshiba describes it as having a 9800M GTX in SLI but in the specs page, its listed as having a 9800M GTS instead. Its safe to say it actually has the latter.

 

Very safe to say that.

Toshiba has three MXM 3.0 modules for this if I have my facts right:
9700m GTS 512
9800m GTX 1024 (Europe only)
9800m GTS 512 x 2 way SLI

 

Too bad the GTX module is Europe only.

I hear these MXM modules are EXTREMELY expensive. Like for the price of the 9800M GTX module alone, I could probably build an entire desktop with the 9800 GTX in SLI.

Upgradable graphics in a gaming laptop is a fantastic idea, I just wish it was far more widespread and cheaper to do. I'm still anxiously waiting for gaming-grade external graphics cards to make their way into laptops, using either the upcoming Expresscard 2.0 or ATI XGP standards, though the latter is AMD Puma only.

 

I just went to Best Buy and checked out the display X305 once more - it does in fact have the shiny keyboard, but the flex wasn't as terrible as your unit's. The flex was noticeable even with a modest amount of pressure.

 

Not necessarily true. It would depend very much on where you're from. In some areas, the M1730 may wind up being cheaper and more powerful than a roughly comparable Clevo model. Additionally, not everyone knows about Sager and Clevo.

 

Yeah, the x305 is a good machine.

and Lewdvig, you stated that the $2000 model has 2x 9800m GTX in SLI, i believe it is either 2x 9700m GTs or 2x 9800m GTS. The website shows both, but only one is correct.

good review by the way. and just an idea, u could link my x300/x305 owners lounge in there because i have a lot of tips for increasing performance.


EDIT: since the $4200 x305-q708 has 2 9800m gts's, then the $2000 x305 must have 2 9700m gts's.

 

The current X305 page states some models have a 9800M GTS in SLI.

Look at the " Go at Gaming with Both Barrels" paragraph at the top of the page.

http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/qosmio/X305

Whereas the cached page below stated it has a 9800M GTX in SLI which I checked a couple of days ago.

http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache...aptops/qosmio/X305),&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Good thing they fixed the typo.

 

http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/qosmio/X305/X305-Q706

This page 9800M GTS SLI


http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/qosmio/X305
This page 9700M GTS SLI

 

Good catch dtwn83, they certainly have some typos and inconsistencies on their page, very shameful and embarrassing I must say. Its confirmed the lower end models have a 9700M GTS and the higher end models have a SLI configuration, but is it a 9700M GTS or 9800M GTS?

 

I am sure its 2x 9700m GTS's because the $4200 x305-q708 has 2 9800m GTS's.

 

i have this same dam problem with 2 laptops that ive had, i returned 1 after trying everything to fix it.

i then got this new one, and bootup was superfast, only keeping please wait for about 3 seconds.

now after my warrenty from bestbuy expired, the bootup please wait stays for at least 1 1/2 minutes. ITS SO ANNOYING. ive tried everything from updating the bios, all windows updates, searching for viruses, cleaning the registry, removing all startup programs, removing the flicker at the beginning, and nothing works.

and this all started after installing alot of stuff.

 

whoa, did u try the programs i recommend in my x305 owners lounge thread? my bootup time is around 60 seconds from pressing the power button to seeing the desktop.

 

wow, looks huge notebook.
not really liking the design of this notebook. the curve kills it all :/
prefer to be just square , like any sager.

anyway, thanks for the review, not bad specs

 

Yeah, I found a 8800m GTX SLI module for $1000 on eBay. Yikes.

 

Good catch! That is indeed a typo.

 

I thought notebooks were supposed to get smaller, not bigger? I wish Toshiba had kept their more stylish Qosmio design with the piano black finish. I saw the x305 in a local Best Buy and thought it was way over the top. Companies tend to forget about us gamers who like sleek systems instead of those with overdone paint jobs. Despite my personal opinions, Nice review on this notebook. I hope Toshiba (and other manufacturers) continue to push lower in price with high end gaming machines. The SLI in this system is such a better value than some of those other companies like Dell/Alienware.

 

There has to be a plastic shortage somewhere because of this thing. While I appreciate the effort on Toshiba's part, I cannot imagine anyone buying this thing over its competitors. Back to the drawing board, I think!

 

This has to be the ugliest laptop ever. Absolutely unbelievable how bad the design is.

 

It think it looks nice. If I wasn't happy with my Gateway I would buy this.

 

I personally owned a X305 and returned it when my unit started to sporadically restart possibly due to over-heating. Luckily the Gateway P-7811FX just came out for a discounted price of $1249 at the time.

On paper the Gateway P-7811FX is just grossly better than the Toshiba's offerings.

P8400 CPU > P7350
9800M GTS > 9700M GTS
1920x1200 > 1440x990
9 cell batter > 6 cell

Everything on the P-7811FX is better than the Toshiba at a better price. The only issue is finding a good P-7811FX, 1st batch of the Gateways have issues but in many cases some of the guys are just modding their P-7811FX too quickly by swapping out the CPU for higher clock speed ones, adding additional drives, and not properly cooling the unit.

 

Kudos on the review lewdvig, very well done and the pictures are excellent.

I was interested in picking one of these up, the paint job is terrible in my opinion as it can only function as a gaming laptop but I would have custom painted to something more sleeky if I bought this so I would be able to use it as my daily machine. I don't think I can deal with the thickness though. I don't need paper thin, but that thing is humongous.

 

thx for this review!

about notebook-it is too big and too "hot"....

 

Yikes, this is even more ugly than XPS1710...I didn't know that was even possible...

 

i have it and it looks amazing. its just a little big, but it doesnt have any heat problems, everything can be upgraded and its really light.

 

yeah, I thought the cooling was great

 

can you possibly post that wallpaper in full resolution. i cant find it anymore and really want it.

where is it located on the computer?

thanks.

 

That wallpaper seems to just completely disappear from the computer! I tried looking everywhere on the web for it....and no results...please post it...It's driving me mad

 

Between Toshiba Qosmio X305 and Toshiba Qosmio X300, who is the best for gaming?

 

Excellent review!
I finally able to see the X305 in closer looks!

Anyway, I like this review!
Can I put this review in my blog? see my sig for more information

 

I just added the wallpaper to the image gallery for you guys. enjoy...

 

This is a great review surprised i never noticed it plus a youtube vid included, +rep Lew

 

that's a cool looking laptop.

 

Very nice review.