Review Toshiba Qosmio X300 Gaming-Notebook
Toshiba goes Gaming!
Toshiba's Qosmio X300 is a dream come true for gamers. The moment one starts with unwrapping, it becomes clear that this is not a common notebook. The design, colours, and size of the case make the Qosmio X300 as outstanding as a Ferrari or Lamborghini on the street. But not only the design, but also the notebook’s hardware, performance, and communication equipment are very impressive, as the following review will show.
Toshiba offers its gaming flagship in two variants. One is the version we are going to test, the Qosmio X300-11L (Core 2 Duo P8600 CPU and GeForce 9700M GTS, 1810 Euro), the other is the high end Qosmio X300-13E (3130 Euro), with an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor X9100 with 3.06GHz and a high end nVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX notebook graphics card. Apart from the different hardware, both versions are identical.
Update: Toshiba extended the Qosmio X300 series with two more models. In addition to the two models mentioned before, there is now also the Qosmio X300-13V (1560 Euro) and the Qosmio X300-13l (1660 Euro). These two notebooks contain only a Core 2 Duo P8400 CPU with 2.2GHz. According to the homepage, the Qosmio X300-13V is available with Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit Edition, but without fingerprint reader. The Qosmio X300-13l uses Windows Vista Home Premium as OS and includes a fingerprint reader. Please visit Toshiba’s website for further information about the individual Qosmio X300 models
Case
The case of the 17“ notebook was entirely made of plastics. It is quite robust and provides the notebook with enough stability to handle it without problems, despite its enormous size. Not an easy task considering the weight of 4.3 kilogramme. The case can even be lifted up on only one side, although it creaks slightly.
Only the area between display and keyboard, as well as the backside of the display lid showed weaknesses under point pressure.
Overall workmanship is very good. We didn’t notice any sharp edges or unattractive gaps between the components. Even the touchpad shows a pleasant, smooth transition to the case, without annoying edges or corners.
Toshiba chose full red and orange colours, and a flame pattern for the Qosmio X300. The pattern puts more emphasize on how the notebook should be used – for gaming. Furthermore, the whole surface besides the bottom has a glossy finish. Even the keyboard got this surface treatment, but it turned out to be a weakness during the test. While the glossy finish gives the big and heavy Qosmio X300 an elegant touch, it also makes every fingerprint visible. Therefore after the first gaming or working sessions on the notebook, it becomes clear that the keyboard needs a lot of care and cleaning to prevent it from degenerating.
Although Toshiba didn’t implement a closing mechanism despite the size of the notebook, it doesn’t seem to be a problem for the Qosmio X300. The display lid of the test sample shut neatly and stayed that way even during transport. Opening the display is thus very simple, user friendly, and noiseless. Once opened, the hinge keeps the display firmly in position.
Worth mentioning is also the height of the case. The notebook is 43.2 millimeter high at the front and “grows” to remarkable 62.5 millimeter at the back. Finding a suitable notebook carrying case for the Qosmio X300 is thus not going to be easy, and the notebook is certainly not going to score high in the mobility and battery life sections of this review. The Qosmio X300 is obviously designed to be a desktop replacement and as such it is a serious competitor to many desktop computers and other gaming notebooks.
Interface Equipment
The Qosmio X300 offers all current interfaces, like USB, audio ports, FireWire, etc., which are well distributed around the case.
The front is free of connections, apart from a WLAN and Bluetooth switch, as well as the DVD drive. In our opinion it would have been better to put the optical drive on the left or right side of the notebook, because of the carriage, but that is a matter of taste.
Located on the right side are a volume control, audio ports for earphones and microphones, two USB 2.0 ports, modem connection, and a 5-in-1 card reader (SD memory card, memory stick PRO, MultiMediaCard, xD-picture card).
On the back side of the Qosmio X300 are a Kensington Lock, FireWire, power supply, fan, HDMI port, VGA-out, and the LAN connection.
The left side is rather empty in comparison. There are only a combined eSata/USB connection, a standard USB 2.0 port, and an express card slot 54.
- Left Side: eSata/USB 2.0, USB, express card slot 54
- Right Side: Volume control, audio (earphones, microphone), 2x USB, modem, Card Reader
- Front Side: WLAN and Bluetooth switch, DVD drive
- Back Side: Kensington Lock, Firewire, power supply, fan, HDMI, VGA-out, LAN
Furthermore, the Qosmio X300 has a 1.3 mega pixel webcam, which is located in the middle above the display. A few centimeter to the right, there is an integrated microphone, which is more than sufficient for occasional video chats with friends and relatives.
The Qosmio X300 uses a fingerprint reader to prevent third parties from accessing private data.
Our test sample was equipped with a wide range of communication interfaces, such as Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, wireless LAN (Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 5100), modem, and a LAN connection of type Realtek RTL8168C/8111C Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0). Toshiba really covered everything a user might need. Therefore we can give the Qosmio X300 good marks regarding communication equipment.
to topInput Devices
The keyboard of the Qosmio X300 offers a very pleasant typing feel to the user. Layout and size of the keys, as well as the clear pressure point, add to the positive overall impression of the keyboard. Additionally, the 17” notebook has a fully-fledged number pad in original size. Therefore the keyboard of the Qosmio X300 successfully covers everything in terms of functionality and typing feel. The only problem with the keyboard is the glossy surface, which is all but user friendly and easily soiled. Especially fingerprints are a big problem for the keyboard. Frequent cleaning after every use is very important, to keep the keyboard attractive. If that sounds like too much work, we highly recommend an external keyboard.
Between keyboard and display are touch sensitive multimedia buttons, which control the DVD player and other functions. However, the remote control, which is included with the laptop, is even more convenient.
Compared with the keyboard, the touch pad is low-maintenance. It connects neatly with the area below the keyboard, which has an agreeable nap finish, and has no edges or corners where dust could be accumulated. The touchpad itself has a rough surface, which react very fast and precise to finger movements. The two touch buttons made out of chrome are pleasant to use with a clear pressure point. The fingerprint reader is located between the two touch buttons.
- Keyboard and touchpad
- Touchpad
Display
According to Toshiba, Qosmio X300 models have a 17“ large TruBrite WXGA+ TFT high brightness display, with a maximum resolution of 1440x900 pixels. The display of the test sample showed very full colours, due to the heavily reflecting display, and was especially impressive while playing games. The test sample also displayed sharp and clear images during the entire test. We didn’t notice any blurring on the screen, even when playing fast games like Crysis Warhead or Hellgate: London.
The brightness of the Qosmio X300 display is satisfying. An average value of 191.92cd/m² is not bad. The lowest values and thus darkest areas were in the bottom corners, with 178.8cd/m² on the bottom left and 175.3cd/m² on the bottom right. However, this is not such a problem and hardly noticeable while playing games. The brightest point was in the center of the display, with a good value of 224.8cd/m². However, the overall illumination of 77.09% is not that good. The Qosmio X300 display, like most notebooks displays with glossy surface, is not bright enough for outdoor usage when the sun shines.
|
Informations
Maximum 224.8 cd/m² Average 191.9 cd/m² Black 0.9 cd/m² Contrast 250:1 |
The display has rather wide possible viewing angles, at least in horizontal direction. The vertical viewing angle is a bit limited, but still sufficient.
Performance
The Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor with 2.4GHz clock rate, combined with a nVIDIA GeForce 9700M GTS and 4GB DDR3 RAM (PC3-8500F) from Hyunday Electronics, provides the performance of Toshiba’s Qosmio X300. The hardware looks great on paper, but only the tests in the next paragraphs will show how well the Montevina, also known as Centrino 2, notebook deals with real world applications.
We used the benchmark test Cinebench R10, PCMark 05 and its successor, the PCMark Vantage to test the performance of the notebook. In order to test access rates and transfer rates of the Hitachi hard disk, we used the HDTune tool as usual.
The Qosmio X300 managed 2617 points in the Cinebench R10 single core benchmark test, and 4903 points in the multi core test. These results are very similar to the Acer Aspire 5930G (9600M GT graphics). But this is not really surprising, since both notebooks use the same CPU (Intel Core 2 Duo P8600). The 9600M GT achieved 3528 points in the shader test, which is about 300 points less than the GeForce 9700M GTS in the Qosmio X300.
The well known PCMark 05 caused some confusion and needed four tries until it finally showed a useful result. It aborted the test three times without apparent reason. The PCMark Vantage on the other hand, worked without problems and showed a result of 3784 points the first time.
- Benchmark comparison PCMark
- Benchmark comparison Cinebench
We were slightly disappointed by the Vista performance index of only 5.3 points. However, the detail listing confirmed what we’ve already suspected. The CPU is the limiting factor of the Qosmio X300. While other components, like RAM, GPU (application), and GPU (games) received a performance score of 5.9, the Core 2 Duo P8600 and the Hitachi hard disk got only 5.3.
The two Hitachi hard disks have a capacity of 160GB each. They are pretty fast 7200r/min disks, with access times of only 15.2ms and similar transfer rates as comparable hard disks. However, a big problem was that the Qosmio X300 took relatively long to start Windows and some programs.
 |
Help |
| Cinebench R10 | |||
| Settings | Value | ||
| Shading | 3843 Points | ||
| Rendering Multiple CPUs | 4903 Points | ||
| Rendering Single | 2617 Points | ||
 |
HD Tune: 320 GB - 7200 rpm Benchmark Transfer Rate Minimum: 28.1 MB/sec |
Gaming Performance
Besides the usual 3DMark benchmark test, we also tested several games, like DOOM 3, World in Conflict, Call of Duty 4, and Grid Racer on the Qosmio X300. Thanks to support from Electronics Arts, we were also able to test the very demanding Crysis, its successor Crysis Warhead, and the role playing game Hellgate: London.
The slightly outdated 3Dmark 01, 03, and 05 resulted in 28921, 22836, and 13125 points. The newer 3DMark 06 benchmark test ended with a score of 7628 points. The Acer Aspire 5930G with a GeForce 9600M GT managed only 5678 points. Therefore the GeForce 9700M GTS is about 1000 points ahead of the GeForce 9600M GT.
- 3DMark Benchmark
The rather old Doom 3 showed the same results on all settings. It didn’t matter whether low, medium, high, or even ultra, the X300 always achieved 124 fps (+/- 2 fps).
The real-time strategy hit World in Conflict on the other hand, only achieved playable 27 fps with high details (DX10), if the resolution was lowered to 1024x768. Increasing the resolution to 1280x800 slowed the game to unplayable 14 fps. The game was much smoother in DirectX 9; both resolutions ran with an average of 46 frames per second.
The next candidate was Crysis and Crysis Warhead. Crysis ran smoothly with an average of 74 frames per second at a resolution of 1024x768 and low details. Even with medium details the Qosmio X300 managed 30 fps, which is still smooth enough. However, the frame rate dropped to only 18 fps with high details, which is clearly not enough for proper gameplay.
Crysis Warhead on the other hand, ran on the Qosmio X300 with the setting „Gamer“ (identical to high settings in Crysis) and 1024x768 with 20 to 25 fps. Our test sample managed up to 80 fps with minimum (low) details and it didn’t even go below 50 fps during busy gameplay. The Mainstream settings (medium details) resulted in an average of 40 fps, thus about 10 fps more than Crysis with equivalent settings.
We drove our virtual BMW in the racing game Grid Racer with a resolution of 1440x900 and 4x MSAA and an average of 35 to 40 frames per second. But the frame rate occasionally dropped below 30.
The next test for the Qosmio X300 was the destroyed London. Unfortunately, it was only possible to choose the native resolution of 1440x900 pixels in Hellgate: London. The game ran with smooth 55-60 fps indoors and in DirectX 9. However, outdoor areas were more demanding and the frame rate dropped to 30-35. The overall performance was pretty good, especially since we set all details, including shadows and anti aliasing to very high.
We also wanted to know how the nVIDIA GeForce 9700M GTS would handle Hellgate: London in DirectX 10. We set the details to high again, but disabled shadows and anti aliasing, to give the Toshiba Qosmio X300 a real chance to deliver a smooth performance. This worked surprisingly well indoors with 55 fps and even with activated AA it managed an average of 35 fps. However, the game slows to unplayable 10 to 15 fps outdoors, despite deactivated shadows and AA. Even worse is the result of 5 to 10 fps with activated AA.
 |
|