Photo: Toshiba

The Toshiba is mostly black, with a liberal spread of scarlet red. It looks like a high-performance Toshiba gaming laptop, which may be attractive to some but off-putting to others. If red isn’t your thing, steer clear. If it is, and you prefer your machine look like it can put in the heavy legs, short of putting aerodynamic slits on their machine, the Toshiba Qosmio X500-128 looks the part.

Display

The glossy display, at 18.4-inches is enormous. Really, it is huge, making this laptop less and less like a laptop, to be fair. The display’s aspect ratio is the contemporary 16:9 but with an unusual resolution of 1680×945. And, at 18.4 inches, its an absolute energy sapper. Added to that it weighs in at a hefty 4.6kg, so this desktop replacement notebook isn’t meant to be used on your lap, so to speak. It’s meant for a desk where power is not a concern.

With regards to the screen’s actual performance, we were disappointed relative to our expectations. Naturally, gloss makes outdoor use a no-no – but given the heftiness of it all, you aren’t planning on doing that are you? Additionally, the viewing angle is respectable along the horizontal plane. Where it is not so impressive is on the vertical plane, with colour and brightness being lost with the slightest movement.

Input devices

The keyboard on the Toshiba Qosmio X500-128 is fantastic. Given the unreal proportions of this desktop replacement notebook, you’d expect the keys to be well spaced, which they are. An isolated number pad is also included, which is always a plus.

On the other side of the coin, the touchpad on the Toshiba Qosmio X500 is atrocious. Inputs on the buttons are hit and miss, with frequent unresponsiveness being the order of the day. The actual touchpad has difficulty tracking mouse movements, leading to an overly jerky and laggy experience. How Toshiba, who have among the best input devices in all of computing, could let this ship in this condition is beyond us.

Performance

The one area we expected not to be disappointed in is in performance, with the Toshiba Qosmio X500 obliging. Our two biggest concerns were how competent a media player it was, since the massive screen plus built-in Blu-ray ROM leant itself to this. Our second concern was how it performed in gaming stakes, especially considering that bizarre resolution.

With regards to Blu-ray playback, there’s nothing to report here but the good. The omission of 1920×1080p is disappointing, but hi-definition content slightly scaled down still looks great, and most users will be hard pressed to see a difference.

On a gaming front, we ran the gamut of resource hogs, with Crysis, and Modern Warfare II, and Dirt 2 to put it through its paces. With Modern Warfare II and Dirt 2, the game ran over the minimum 30fps one expects on full resolution with settings on high and anti-aliasing at 4x. Crysis, as is normal with Crysis, was not at all agreeable with that, so with setting scaled down to 1024×768 resolution and medium, it stabilised over 30fps. Clearly the Nvidia GeForce GTS360M and the Intel Core i7 720QM matched with the high RAM count makes this a very capable gaming laptop, though getting an external mouse is a must.

The verdict

In all, the Toshiba Qosmio X500 is a fantastic gaming laptop. It isn’t at the absolute bleeding edge of what desktop replacement notebooks or gaming laptops can achieve, but it’s pretty close. With the Intel Core i7 720QM and the Nvidia GeForce GTS360M doing the heavy lifting, this Toshiba gaming laptop wins on all counts. Buy this. It’s great value for money. But don’t forget to get a mouse to go along with that because the trackpad really is that bad.

Photo: Dell

Since its acquisition of Alienware, a lot of effort has been put into the Dell gaming laptop range. The 17.3-inch Dell Studio 1749 could very well be their best effort yet.

Specs

A beastly Intel Core i5-520M 2.4GHz processor powers the laptop, with an ATI Radeon HD 5650 doing the heavy lifting graphics processing. The Dell Studio 1749 comes with 4GB DDR 3 SDRAM, with a hard drive capacity of 500GB, while the monitor is a 17.3-inch 1600×900 glossy screen.

Aesthetics

The outside of the Dell gaming laptop has a glossy black finish with Dell’s logo taking its usual central position. While the outside looks great, the inside is not altogether exciting. The palm wrest area is metallic silver whereas the keyboard area is black, too, making the attempted two-tone effect look decidedly dated in a generation where laptops look best when they are one colour. This machine is also a magnet for smudges and dust, suggesting a lot of effort needs to go into keeping it clean. It isn’t the lightest laptop in the world either, coming it at a considerable 3.65 KG, with dimensions of 39×414x281mm.

Keyboard and trackpad

Photo: Dell

The Dell Studio 1749 has a complete keyboard, coming with a dedicated numeric pad. A nifty feature is the backlit function for your keys, which comes in handy for use in very dark areas. The keys give a little when pressed down firmly, which is disappointing, but their saving grace is that they have the dimensions of keys one would find on a desktop, which is great.

This Dell gaming laptop has a slightly receded multi-touch touchpad with a wider surface area than most, meaning noticeably more comfortable use. The ability to scroll up, sideways, as well as a variety of multitouch functions is seamless, too. What’s particularly nice about this touchpad is that the buttons are well weighted and don’t make the awful clicking noise many contemporary laptops do.

Display and processing

The 16:9 aspect ratio on the 17.3-inch display makes for great cinema viewing, but Dell’s decision to use a glossy screen as opposed to a matte screen means it reflects horribly if in a very well lit area, meaning outdoor use is all but written off. Other than that, it’s a very competent display with a decent viewing angle and good contrast.

As for CPU performance, when run with some of the most demanding contemporary games, the Dell Studio 1749 performed well. It can run virtually everything but Crisis at a resolution of 1024×768 with a frame rate always exceeding 30fps, giving scope for running at the monitor’s native size.

Great machine

This Dell gaming laptop is pretty much the business. Its performance is fantastic, it has a great trackpad, and had it not been for the unusual aesthetic decisions and average keyboard performance, The Dell Studio 1749 would easily be one of the best laptops on the market.

With a stiff chassis, the Hewlett Packard Compaq 6730b is definitely a notch higher than HP Compaq 6735s and there is a distintive difference between the ‘B’ and ‘S’ series of HP notebooks. Compared to the ‘S’ model, this notebook is slightly squarish in size and very robust. It is a reliable machine due to the roll-cage reinforced by magnesium alloy and a strong companion. The touchpad buttons are similar to ‘piano’ keys but one gets used soon. Also the buttons are quiet and between touchpad buttons, there is a thumbnail reader as a security accessory.

With an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor, this gadget is efficient and reliable. It has an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500MHD as its graphics adapter. It has a non-glossy 15.4 inch display screen with an aspect ratio of 16:10 and resolution of 1280×800 pixels. Weighing only 2.5kg, it is pretty much the same weight as other similar notebooks. The palm rest is pleasant and has a matte finish. It is gray-colored with discreet lighter stripes that are slightly embossed. The palm rest has HP DuraFinish technology, which does not leave traces and is scratch resistant. This is a useful point as it will ensure that the machine will last long despite everyday use. The surfaces of this machine are well-finished and the notebook is high on functionality as well as aesthetics. The keyboard and frame around the Hewlett-Packard HP Compaq 6730b (NB020ET#ABU) is black coloured. The keyboard is partially spill-proof, which means that it can resist spills to some extent. An integrated webcam, Compaq 6730b, has multimedia controls in a narrow glossy black strip above the keyboard.

The new “EliteBook” line of laptops from HP has gained much popularity in the last few months. This range includes some robust and attractive laptops. The EliteBook 2730p is a sleek looking tablet PC, which is ideal for your business requirements.

With an 80 GB hard drive, and an improved 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, the EliteBook 2730p is an improved model of 2710p. Its stainless steel look compliments its sleekness. The tablet measures 12.1 inches and weigh in around 3.7 pounds, which is why it is easy to carry. You can either use the pointing stick on the Hewlett-Packard HP EliteBook 2730p, or the touchpad to navigate through the anti-glare display. The digitiser display is again a pleasure to look at, especially because it has 12.1 inches Illumi-Lite and bright colours.

Although there are many similarities between the 2710p and 2730p, the touchpad is an exception. The former only had a pointing stick, but the latter offers an option to use a nice touchpad with double buttons. It is actually a fun to make notes with the solid pen, which gives you the feel of a real ballpoint. The pen also includes an eraser and is firm enough to give you a comfortable feel.

You will find it easy to go through your daily tasks, like web surfing and writing documents, while using the 230p. It is also suitable for running multiple applications and performs other web-based activities with 3 GB of RAM and wireless connectivity. Altogether, it is a reasonably good tablet PC with user-friendly features and stunning appearance.