Just recently we’ve gotten the chance to take a quick look at the Toshiba Qosmio X505 gaming notebook and all in all it looked like a pretty solid buy. This time around we’re playing around with the flagship of the series, the Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78. If you had doubts about performance and capabilities until this point, you won’t as soon as you lay your eyes on this little beast so keep on reading.
Overview
The Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 comes in boasting the Intel Core i7-2630QM processor, clocked at 2 GHz per core. With this you’ll also be getting a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M video card with 3D vision which has 1.5 GB of GDDR5 discrete graphics memory at its disposal. If you had any doubt about the power this little beast can put out, this should ease your mind, as this should be plenty of power for most applications out there.
Complementing the specs mentioned so far, the Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 also comes with 8 GB of DDR3 memory at 1333MHz, while storage is taken care of by a dual-HDD combo. You get a 500 GB HDD at 7200rpm, a Hybrid which is aimed at you installing your OS on it and a 750GB HDD at 5400rpm for storage. Both of these are obviously Serial ATA.
Multimedia wise you get a 17.3 inch display with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, the display type being FHD TruBrite TFT LED Backlit. The display is 3D ready coming with the NVIDIA 3D VISION kit which consists of the glasses, USB 2.0 type A to 5-pin mini-B cable and the 3D Vision IR emitter being embedded in the bezel of the display.
The textured finish of the Toshiba Qosmio X775 looks brilliant!
Connectivity wise, the Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 comes with 3D stereo webcam and microphone, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, LAN port, memory card reader, 1 USB 3.0, 3 USB 2.0 ports as well as a HDMI port. Not exactly desktop replacement territory but it will have to do.
Design
Design wise the Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 comes with a very stylish case design. Toshiba used their X2 Fusion finish, which means that the Qosmio X775 is covered in row after row of asymmetrical stripes. These look great in my view as they do also a good job at keeping finger prints at bay as well as giving the notebook a rather aggressive look. However, the lower part of the lid is “transitioning” towards a red glossy finish, which didn’t exactly appeal to my esthetic sense, but that might just be me.
At the top of the keyboard you will get to feast your eyes on a ton of media controls. As such you can easily gain access to the Media Control Bar, power, Wi-Fi control, 3D control, play, pause as well as the volume control. You can also get access to the Eco Utility button which will downgrade your system in order to reduce the power consumption, however I don’t really think that helps to much considering the size and the components this baby comes with.
All in all the design looks rather aggressive and the Toshiba X2 Fusion finish does a great job at livening the place up a bit, however, as a personal preference I would have kept it all in the overall silver finish.
Display
One of the things which I enjoyed about the Asus G74SX was its display. That matte finish, the excellent viewing angles as well as the excellent color, brightness and contrast of it, managed to truly impress me. With the Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 the situation is rather similar. The colors look extremely vivid and you can really feel the images come to life on the 17.3 inch full HD display of the Qosmio.
The display of the Toshiba Qosmio X775 brings images alive
When checking out the viewing angles, I can say that the initial impression remained as these are very wide and you can obviously see that the main focus of this notebook is that of media playback and multimedia content in general. When it came to 3D the glasses were pretty much the same as with a number of other devices with the NVIDIA 3D Vision kit.
The 3D does its job excellently here as well, with movies really coming to life and the 3D effect doing its job flawlessly. Note that you can also convert 2D DVDs to 3D however this won’t work with 2D Blu-rays, but this is rather annoying as the images weren’t obviously designed for this type of treatment. When in games, the 3D effect is a nice gimmick yet the specs aren’t exactly up to the task, as the framerate will drop in most titles.
Performance
In this field the Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 should do pretty well considering the Intel Core i7-2630QM, the 8GB of DDR3 RAM as well as the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M residing inside. As such, PCMark Vantage returned 7,948 points, PCMark 07 came back with 3,085 points, numbers pretty decent for this category however I felt that there are cheaper solutions which can offer more punch for their money.
When spinning up 3DMark 06 we’ve gotten up to 14,941 points, while 3D Mark 11 returned with 1,946 points. 3DMark Vantage managed to reach 9,750 points and Cinebench OpenGL test came back with 40 fps. Not bad marks, however, as previously stated there are alternatives if you wish to look for power and I often felt that you end up paying extra for a slower setup.
Temperature
The temperature of the device is probably one of its strongest attributes. Despite the high grade components, the Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 manages to keep a cool head. When simply streaming a video, the device managed to settle at around 27 degrees Celsius on the touchpad (81 degrees Fahrenheit), 29 degrees Celsius between the G+H keys (85 degrees Fahrenheit) and 28 degrees Celsius on the bottom (83 degrees Fahrenheit).
The keyboard of the Toshiba Qosmio X775 stays cool at all times
Pricing and availability
The Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 can be picked up at the Toshiba webpage for $1,899 with shipping taking around 1-2 business days. You can also buy the Qosmio X775 on Amazon, pricing here starting at around $1,800. All in all, I do feel that there are some good alternatives, but that might be just something of a personal preference, yet if you are on the market for a powerful multimedia notebook which can easily carry its weight in games as well, the Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 is a worthy competitor.
Final thoughts
All in all the Qosmio X775-3DV78 ca pull its weight around. It has solid specs, good build quality and the 17.3 inch display makes it worth the money. Combine that with an i7 and a GeForce 560GTX hiding under the brushed exterior and you have quite the system. One of the biggest bonuses of the system is its audio system which manages to produce some of the highest quality effects and one of the best sounds out there.
All in all, I do recommend the Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 for anyone looking for a powerful multimedia/ gaming notebook. Stay tuned for more!
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