Customer Reviews

Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q860 TruBrite 18.4-Inch Gaming Laptop (Black\Red)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I purchased this laptop as a desktop replacement and I use it for gaming, watching movies, writing software, and basic Microsoft Office and web browsing tasks. Overall I am extremely pleased with it and would highly recommend it to others. Here's the breakdown:

PROS:
- This is an extremely fast machine. It boots up in under a minute with Windows 7 and I have yet to notice the occasional lag with starting up programs that I experience with most Windows PC's.
- Newer games like "Dragon Age: Origins" run extremely well on this machine with all of the graphics maxed out
- The screen on this computer is beautiful. The color quality and contrast are extremely good and there is a ton of screen real estate. Some people have complained that it isn't full 1080p but I find that the 1680x945 resolution makes icons and text the perfect size for this size of screen.
- Multitasking works great with a dual-core processor (four virtual cores with hyperthreading) and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. I routinely have 12 Firefox tabs up while watching videos in iTunes and editing four or five MS Office documents. A lot of computers don't like this but the Q860 handles it wonderfully.
- The battery life is over three hours, which is pretty good for such a behemoth.

CONS:
- This is an extremely heavy laptop and I wouldn't recommend it for frequent business travel. That being said, I do use this laptop for grad school and haul it back and forth to class one day a week using a Toshiba 18" gaming backpack and it isn't terrible on my back. I would definitely recommend a backpack if you want to carry this thing around as a normal laptop shoulder bag would probably destroy your neck and shoulder.
- Both Toshiba and Amazon claim on their websites that this keyboard is backlit but unfortunately, it isn't. Amazon customer service handled this issue extremely well after I reported it, so I can't complain about this too much. All X505-series keyboards are compatible so you can probably pick up a backlit one off of eBay if that's a big deal to you.
- There is a decent amount of junkware pre-installed on this system, although not nearly as much as on the last Dell computer I bought. It's kind of annoying that Toshiba does this on a high-performance computer that will probably be purchased by people that don't want or need it.

OVERALL:
- I did a large amount of research before buying this laptop and as of this moment, there isn't a better value out there in gaming laptops than this. It lacks some of the higher-end features such as dual graphics cards, a 1080p display, and solid-state drives, but for the money you can't do better than this. I am now selling both of my desktops and I plan on making this my sole computer.

AT 10 pounds, it is a bit much to lug around, except within the home, but otherwise this machine is a beauty. Lightning quick, great sound and video quality. Handles any and all applications, videos etc wonderfully.

I use with a wireless mouse. Has plenty of ports and capability to expand. Wireless connection in seconds

Negatives: The DVD drive is a bit touchy to close (need to hold it in..not automatic close)and the keyboard area surface is shiny/high gloss, so you have fingerprints everywhere.

Battery life seems to be at least 3-4 hours (have not had it long enough to check it out.

I have a notebook for travel, so this machine fills the bill for me.

Pros

-Size is AMAZING (could also be a con, due to lack of case selection available)
-Speed - The Core i5 430M (2.26) with Turbo Boost is nice, outperforms my Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4).
-RAM - 4GB DDR3 is expandable to 8GB.
-Graphics - The GeForce GTS 330M GDDR5 1GB is an excellent mobile video card.

Cons

-No restore discs shipped with the system.
-No back-lit keyboard
-No Bluetooth
-Screen is too reflective, very hard to sit on my shaded porch and see the screen.
-Touchpad seems a little choppy. But I use my A4Tech mouse 95% of the time anyway.

All non-issues to be honest, but some people might find these a problem

Other

-The glossy finish is a fingerprint magnet.
-The media keys are a little irritating, I just disabled them, no biggie.
-I did a LOT of research before I chose this. My next choice would have been an Alienware M17x, but this is a much better buy.

All in all, this is a magnificent system, Excellent cost to performance. You wont find a better gaming system at this price.

Excellent unit. Was debating between the i5 and the i7 system. Decided for the difference in cost, the i5 was fine for my purposes which is mainly editing video, photo, etc. A little gaming once in a while. The screen size on this unit is gorgeous - actually the computer is very sharp - not overdone - just classy.

This is the second system I have had. Had to send the first one back because it would not boot up on Day 2. Amazon was fantastic to send out a replacement.
I spoke with Toshiba customer service regarding the failure and they said it needed a "power purge. Said the cure was to turn it off, take out the battery and hold down the power button for about 10 seconds.

Regardless, I sent the unit back and requested a replacement because I didn't want to keep a unit that had a problem straight out of the box. However, I have enough experience with Toshiba computers to know they generally make a solid product. (You can get a defect in anything from time to time!) The replacement unit has been great and have had no problems whatsoever.

I will admit when it didn't boot, I was EXTREMELY thankful to know I had bought the Square Trade 3 Year Drops and Spills Warranty! I didn't have to use the warranty because of Amazon's great replacement policy, but it is good to know the unit is WELL protected regardless of cause for the next 3 years. By then technology will have advanced enough that I'll be ready for a new unit. Major peace of mind. The cost of the 3 year warranty was $299 which averages just 27 cents a day over 3 years. I'd hate to drop the computer in 2 years and 10 months and know I could have had $1200 toward a new system...Money well spent.

I bought this laptop and was very excited to get it home. It is a beautiful and awesome laptop. 5 months of wonderful use and finally one day the battery fell out. No big deal I will need to get that fixed when I get a chance. My laptop sat with the ac adapter plugged in on an ottoman for the night. The next morning the AC adapter was no longer working. I called Toshiba and they told me to send it in. 2 weeks later I get a call notifying me that they will need 385.00 to fix the laptop. WTF, I have a warranty and this is supposed to be one of your top of the line computers. "well we see that it was damaged" (I assure you there was not even a scratch on this laptop) Then they told me "we do not have any ac adapters they have been on back order for months." Now I have a very very expensive paper weight. Toshiba will not honor the warranty and the seller told me that is was outside of thier return policy time limit. This computer would be awesome if you did not have to deal with Toshiba when it breaks. WORST MONEY EVER SPENT

I do a lot of multi-threaded graphics & GUI programming work for research, and have high standards regarding the machine that I work on. My purchase of this laptop was the end result of a 4-month long process of searching, reviewing & comparing. As the owner of a Toshiba Satellite (which I've used for over 6 years), I was looking for a laptop that promised to be as sturdy, reliable, affordable & a joy to use.

The following were my purchasing criteria:

(1) It ABSOLUTELY MUST have a big screen! - Between my 17-inch Satellite & 15/14/13-inch laptops from various sources, nothing beats a big screen when it comes to simultaneously viewing & working in multiple code windows.
(2) A modern Multi-core CPU - For my needs, I wanted a multi-core CPU that fell on the border between mid-range & high-end that was based on a recent CPU architecture. Not-so-good experiences with AMD knocked their products out, affordability removed the Core-i7s from the table, and I don't see any difference between a Core-i3 & a Core 2 Duo. Anyways, what is more important to me is....
(3) An excellent GPU! - All of my software projects require a rock-solid GPU backed by highly stable driver support. The factors that eliminated any ATI choice were - a) My work with OpenGL/CUDA/OpenCL, b) My target users are more likely to have nVidia cards, c) nVidia's SDKs & dev tools are more feature-rich & robust, IMHO, d) I've been using nVidia for the past 12 years, and e) I'm a casual gamer - I don't care if an ATI card can play a game 10 fps faster than what I have, at whatever high resolution that I cannot use anyway; also I don't care about 3DMark scores etc.
(4) Other requirements - I generally wanted at least 4 GB RAM, at least 1/2 TB of disk space, a DVD drive that opens/loads sideways & 4 USB ports. Don't care about Bluetooth, 1080p HD, Blu-Ray, back-lit keyboard etc.

I have been using the Qosmio for a month now; the following are the plus points:

(1) Excellent CPU/GPU combination for programming - My program compile times are down by 70%! My software often needs to invoke & interact with multiple instances of other executables - I can smoothly run thrice as many external program instances. There's also a lot of heavyweight OpenGL processing in my software - again, the end performance is nearly three times better. Also good for CUDA/OpenCL - just 413 GFlops, 96 CUDA cores & non-Fermi, but the best deal for this price.
(2) The big screen absolutely ROCKS!
(3) Even though it weighs 9.5 lbs, its shape & texture make it quite comfortable to carry around.
(4) Excellent for casual gaming.
(5) Great for movies - especially Netflix online viewing in fullscreen mode.
(6) Very low machine noise - No hard disk grinding, DVD whining is low, the GPU fan(s) come on only when gaming, and the sound is not loud or unpleasant.
(7) The next-day delivery was AWESOME; the UPS guy actually waited for 2 mins. after knocking on my door, which was a very pleasant surprise. The laptop was not left on the doorstep - good job UPS & Amazon!

The following are the cons:

(1) Fingerprint magnet - I read other reviews about this, but they were understatements. The laptop has to be thoroughly wiped down at least once a day. I'm looking at this in a positive light, as now I'm forced to clean it regularly; so there's no dust buildup or dirt accumulation in any hard to reach corners etc.
(2) Weird/bad design for power cord plug to laptop - Instead of the simple plug that I'm used to, the plug to the laptop has a weird design that has sockets for 4 pins that you see in the laptop connector. Beware trying to plug it in any way other than the flat surface up - you could blow out a fuse, or worse, damage your laptop!

All in all, I feel I have gotten back my whole money's worth already. Since my professional life revolves around this laptop, the only thing I can ask for is that this machine be as reliable & long-lasting as my veteran Satellite. Hats off to Toshiba for once again delivering a solid product that's worth every dime & then some.

7 months later the AC adapter failed and there are no replacements available. When I called Toshiba after waiting for 3 weeks, they could only tell me "there's nothing we can do."

In spite of other guys I didn't have any problems with the item. I gave it only 4 start due to there is no button to switch off red lighted buttons on the left side of keyboard. They are too sensitive.

I extremely happy with my Qosmio. It's beautiful, fast, and quiet. The 18.4 inch screen is just amazing. The keyboard is very nice, too. This lappy easily replaces nearly any desktop. I also purchased the Squaretrade 3-year mechanical warranty, and you should, too.

Unfortunately, I had to return this model. After the computer warmed up, not even hot, an error came up stating that a cooling system malfunction was detected and would not proceed. I tried a few times with the same results. The company can only make an exchange, and offered no explaination for the problem. I searched around and found it to be somewhat common on this new system.
It certainly has all the features one could ask for, and was really well constructed. The mouse pad is great. The keyboard was one of the nicest I have ever used.
I did not get to see it perform. However, the GPU Nvidia 360M is a ramped up version of the older 260M, with better DDR5. Not a super performer, yet still rated a first class chip, even though it is at the bottom list.
Since stability is a must for me, I returned it and got the Asus G73jh-series. Much better specs for the same price. Asus also has the best warranty over any manufacturer. Toshiba uses a third party.