Toshiba Satellite X205 First Look Review (Video)

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by Jerry Jackson

The Toshiba Satellite X205 is the latest gaming notebook from Toshiba to feature the an Intel Santa Rosa processor and the new NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT for high-end performance. Built &quot;for gamers on the go&quot; and packed with an impressive set of audio and video features the X205 series promises to be a one-stop solution for all your entertainment needs.

Specs for our Toshiba Satellite X205-S9349 as configured:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor (1.80GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB)
• Windows Vista™ Home Premium (32-bit)
• 2GB DDR2 667MHz SDRAM (expandable up to 4GB)
• 17&quot; WXGA+ (1440 X 900) TruBrite display
• NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT with 246MB DDR3 VRAM
• HD DVD-ROM/DVD SuperMulti drive
• 240GB HDD (2 x 120GB running at 5400RPM)
• Four Harman Kardon speakers with subwoofer
• Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965 AGN (802.11a/g/n)
• Bluetooth V2.0 + EDR
• 1.3-megapixel webcam and microphone built into LCD bezel
• Fingerprint reader
• 9-cell (1600mAh) Li-Ion battery
• Weight: 9.37lbs
• Dimensions: 15.7&quot; x 11.3&quot; x 1.42&quot; - 2.05&quot; (W x D x H)
• Price: $1,999.99

(view large image)

Build and Design

The X205 features a distinctive red-colored lid design which Toshiba calls the &quot;Flare Carmine&quot; design. The most accurate description I can come up with is to say it looks like a red wood grain pattern. While this design looks fabulous, the glossy surface is a magnet for fingerprints and we found ourselves cleaning it more often than admiring the looks.

Audio quality was clearly as much a concern for Toshiba engineers as gaming performance. One of the first things you'll notice about the X205 is the design of the speakers above the keyboard. That said, as soon as the system boots up you'll notice the impressive quality of sound generated by the four Harman Kardon speakers and subwoofer. Not only are the speakers capable of loud volumes but they are clear with a wide range and little or no distortion. The media buttons located above the keyboard and between the speakers also help make the X205 an excellent mobile media center.

The keyboard itself is well built with minimal flex on the main keys. That said, the dedicated number pad to the right of the main keyboard showed considerable flex and may be problematic for some users. The touchpad is large and responsive, with backlit LEDs that allow you to quick launch applications or program functions for ease of use. The touchpad buttons have solid feedback, but they also have some travel.

The X205 has various heat vents on almost every side of the notebook. While the vents might not be much to look at, they clearly do a good job moving heat away from the system and the fan made minimal noise even during benchmarking. We haven't had a chance to see how this large notebook feels in terms of heat while on someone's lap, but since the X205 weighs in at 9.37lbs most people will be using it for a &quot;desktop replacement&quot; and won't be using this as a typical travel notebook.

The glossy lid of the X205 with a red and black design. (view large image)

The 17&quot; WXGA+ glossy screen is impressive. (view large image)

The keyboard is solid with minimal flex ... except for the number pad. (view large image)

Below is a video with a quick overview of the X205 hosted by our own Andrew Baxter:

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Ports and Features

Toshiba managed to pack an impressive number of ports into the X205. With multiple video out ports and USB ports this system is ready to be hooked up to a plasma TV and serve as your high definition multimedia and gaming powerhouse. The ports include:

• Headphone jack (stereo)
• Microphone jack (mono)
• DC jack
• ExpressCard Slot
• 5-in-1 Memory card reader
• Six USB ports (2.0)
• FireWire
• HDMI output port
• S/P DIF output port
• S-Video output port
• VGA output port
• Modem
• 10/100/1000 Ethernet

 

The front side includes a wireless on/off switch, IR port, audio line in, microphone jack, S/PDIF jack, headphone jack, volume control wheel, 5-in-1 memory card reader and display latch. (view large image)

The right side includes four USB ports, the modem port, optical drive and security lock slot. (view large image)

The left side includes the DC jack, VGA out, Ethernet, two USB ports, S-Video out, HDMI out, FireWire, and ExpressCard slot. (view large image)

There's nothing to see on the back except the large hinge. (view large image)

The bottom of the X205 features two large vents, a subwoofer, memory slot cover, and 9-cell battery. (view large image)

Performance

The $2,000 configuration of the X205 features the slowest processor in the Santa Rosa family, the T7100. While this might seem a little unusual for a notebook in this price range, performance is boosted significantly by the fact that the X205 is one of the first notebooks to feature the NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT chipset.

While the X205 is impressive even with an entry-level Santa Rosa processor like the T7100, Toshiba also offers a $2,499.99 configuration of the X205 (X205-S9359) with the T7300 (2.0GHz, 4MB L2 cache) processor, a 512MB DDR3 version of the NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT video card, and a higher resolution 17&quot; WSXGA+ TruBrite display (1680x1050) for true &quot;HDTV&quot; performance out of the box.

Windows Experience Index Score:

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PCMark05 comparison results:

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Toshiba Satellite X205 (1.80GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7100, NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT)	4,853 PCMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,591 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	4,153 PCMarks
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,987 PCMarks
Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB)	4,189 PCMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	4,234 PCMarks
Fujitsu N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	3,487 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks
Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400, Nvidia Go 7400)	3,646 PCMarks

3DMark05 comparison results:

Notebook	3D Mark 05 Results
Toshiba Satellite X205 (1.80GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7100, NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT 256MB DDR3)	8,742 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	3,116 3DMarks
HP Compaq 6510b (2.20GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, Intel X3100)	916 3DMarks
HP Compaq 6515b (1.6GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-52, ATI x1270)	871 3DMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	2,013 3D Marks
Dell Inspiron e1705 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	1,791 3D Marks
Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	4,236 3DMarks
Alienware Aurora M-7700(AMD Dual Core FX-60, ATI X1600 256MB)	7,078 3D Marks
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,092 3D Marks
Asus V6Va (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI x700 128 MB)	2,530 3D Marks
Fujitsu n6410 (1.66 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,273 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1210 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia Go 7400 256MB)	2,090 3D Marks

One thing we immediately noticed upon booting up the X205 for the first time is the overwhelming amount of bloatware that comes pre-installed on the system. While the X205 performed quite well in our preliminary benchmarks, the number of applications installed and running in the background will no doubt impact performance. Here is a &quot;partial&quot; list of what comes pre-installed on the X205:

• TOSHIBA Value Added Package
• Electronic User's Guide
• Bluetooth Stack for Windows by Toshiba
• TOSHIBA ConfigFree
• TOSHIBA Assist
• TOSHIBA Security Assist
• TOSHIBA Disc Creator
• TOSHIBA Extended Tiles for Windows Mobility Center
• TOSHIBA Speech System
• TOSHIBA Game Console
• Microsoft Works Version 8.5
• Sun Java 2 Runtime Environment
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0
• InterVideo WinDVD 8
• Google Desktop
• Google Toolbar
• Google Picasa
• Yahoo! Music Jukebox
• Ulead DVD MovieFactory 5 for TOSHIBA
• Microsoft Office Trial Home and Student 2007 Edition (60-day trial)
• McAfee Internet Security Suite (30-day trial)
• Microsoft Office Live
• Shutterfly digital photo service
• Napster music subscription service
• eMusic MP3 music subscription service
• VONGO internet video download service
• CNN Pipeline
• Skype internet communications

Overall, the Toshiba Satellite X205 looks to be a very impressive gaming machine. While we reserve final judgment until after our full review, it's hard to dispute the preliminary benchmark numbers. Bottom line, this notebook raises the bar for portable gaming.

 

 

How come Toshiba never packs a fast processor? I think MBP is a far better buy then this.

 

That graphics card is smokin hot!!!

 

don't think thats the bottleneck any way... .4.8 in the W E Index is not bad

 

That is one nice grapics card, it certainly has a lot of power from looking at the 3DMark05 bench.

I'm wondering how the build quality of this notebook stacks up against the A200 series. I've never been a fan of the A200 series because they felt cheap to me. Hopefully this one is different.

 

The fastest mobile GPU available now - correct?

That ugly keyboard with numpad - hate Toshiba for that. Otherwise could be really nice notebook

 

I feel nit picky, The lid is kind of ugly and the windows and processor badges being at the top is odd. Otherwise looks nice. I still love the keyboard Toshiba has been putting on notebooks lately. I love the font on the keys. Toshiba also finally uses a somewhat normal layout.

 

The 7900/7950 GTX gets the same range of 3Dmark05. Is there some real world game test that can be done? I'm assuming that the 8700 would be more powerful than the 7900, but at least in comparison to the artificial benchmarks, it's not. Do we need DX10 games to see any improvement? My overclocked 7900GS can reach 9000 3dmark05.

The screen resolution is a little disappointing. I wouldn't want 920x1200, but 1680x1050 would be a better fit.

 

I'm pretty sure that an 8 series card that scores similar in 3dmarks currently has worse performance than a 7 series card in dx9. If you look around in the gaming subforum, I think there are quite a few posts comparing real world performance, and a 7900 gs gets significantly higher framerates in today's games than a 8600, even though they score similarly in 3dmarks.

Edit: for example, the information and responses in this post

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=136138

 

Build quality could be slightly better, the keyboard has some unnecessary flex to it. Other than that it's fairly solid.

 

Thanks for the review and the benchmark on the 8700 too bad Toshiba's notebooks are quite aesthetically unpleasant to me which they would do more on that aspect. "Flame" Carmine? More like dull.

 

The numpad is above the HD-DVD optical drive.
They probably didn't have much choice...

 

I thought the 8700m gt was just an oc'd 8600m gt. According to 3D mark 05, it seems to be roughly 50% faster than the 8600m gt.

I don't really like the Toshiba build quality. My Inspiron laptop is build a whole lot better than my old satellite m40 was although it is slightly heavier.

 

Loving this toshiba!

They made it better in every way possible!

iv got their toshiba p105-9722 with 7900gs 256mb for the same price a year ago.

now u get a santa rosa processor! a nvidia 8700! HD Dvd! 5.1 Surround sound! Two 120gig hardrives for all the same price

 

Its way too thick. I saw this at Best Buy, and it really felt as though it was 5 inches thick....Nothing like the svelte (for a 17") design of the P105. It had great specs, save for the CPU, and for what you get in it, its a pretty good deal, but its MASSIVE...

 

VERY nice... It does seem odd they would even offer the 7100 though.

As for bloatware, thats pretty horrible. I can understand them loading in 3rd party apps, because they make cash off those companies for trying to get you to buy their stuff... but why do they force you to install their own apps, like "Toshiba speech system". I cant imagine anyone using it, and the only people who keep it are those too lazy to uninstall it.

I just spent a solid 2 hours cleaning out the bloatware from my HP desktop, so i'm pretty bitter towards the stuff right now (to be fair, the bloatware on my Toshiba M70 came out a LOT easier then the HP stuff)

 

Agreed ! Love my X205 !

 

Very nice notebook. I bet that thing can game very well.

 

Yes. Very well !

 

I was thinking about this unit last month. Then it occured to me...

Interface ports on the sides? Oy vey. There should be a few USB in the back and an HDMI in the back.

 

Anybody have any 3dMark06 scores?

I see Age of wind already has an X205. Can you do some benchmarks?

 

Full specs on the $2,499 X205 can be found here on Toshiba's website: http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?seg=HHO&poid=383432&coid=-33936

And the $1,999 version:
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?seg=HHO&poid=383433&coid=-33936

Interesting to note that this Toshiba is a hefty pound heavier than other typical 17" laptops (e.g. Sony's AR weighs only about 8.5 lbs).

 

I'm at work right now. Will post some ASAP after work

 

Im SERIOUSLY considering purchasing this laptop but I'm also wavering over the Asus G2S. I personally think this laptop is quite bulky and not too pretty, and the processor leaves something to be desired.

Age of Wind, can you give me some real-world data, such as FPS on the games you currently play, etc.? Is the 8700M capable of anything worth fussing about?

Also, how is the quality of the HD-DVD player? Should this be a factor in buying this laptop, considering the cheapest standalone player still goes for 300$+?

Lastly, would this be compatible with the 8800 Go when it comes out, or will it have a different form factor?

 

can any1 provide a list of the executable names for the bloatware? I was thinking of picking up one of these... but i never know what to disable in startup

 

That would depend inf the Toshiba is MXM compatible or has some other kind of interchangeable graphics card system implemented into it, but even so, we don't know how hot the 8800m would run and how much power it'll suck in, so that could be an issue if the Toshiba is upgradeable. If it doesn't have this capability, you can forget about upgrading. Personally, I'd still prefer a Sager NP5790 over this due to its MXM compatibility alone, and perhaps that could take an 8800m if it comes out.

 

Do either of the X205 laptops come with a remote? I'm finding it hard to believe that the $2500 one with an HDTV tuner does not come with one.

 

Not meaning to be rude, but please don't tell me you think the G2S looks any better. Only a 10-year-old would find something like that appealing to the eye. Thing makes me wonder if it'll turn into a Transformer.

 

I'm typing on the X205 right now and it is a nice-looking piece of machinery. The build is fairly solid and the speakers are amazing. I've only been using it for an hour so . . . more impressions will come later. Expect the full review in the first half of next week. I urge those of you debating whether or not to buy this laptop to wait for it!

 

Great. I await it with much eagerness.

 

I wish Toshiba would have let me know the X205-S9359 model wouldn't be in stock until August before I went ahead and purchased it directly. The anticipation is killing me!

 

So, no remote control included with either of the X205s?

 

The X205-S9349 for sure doesn't, but the S9359 comes with an external HDTV tuner. It should come with a remote because you need some sort of IR hardware for the TV functionality.
I'm not certain it comes with one though . . .

 

Looking forward to these review Chaz - I'm curious as to how it compares with the Sager 5790

 

Yup, the S9359 comes with a remote.

 

Do you actually have the computer? I called toshiba today and they said that it does not.

 

If you are talking about the S9359 (t7300/wsxga/512mb vram), then yes I have the computer and I got a remote with it. I also got the HD tuner. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those things, but I got them.

 

Thank you. It is reassuring that my $2500 will be well spent. I plan on purchasing the x205-s9359 laptop next month when it hits store shelves.