Customer Reviews

Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q870 TruBrite 18.4-Inch Gaming Laptop

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This review is broken into several parts for those that would like an in depth review, or would like to know specific details.

Seller: Best Custom P.C. LLC

As soon as Amazon allows me to, this company will be receiving five stars. They are the best company that I have ever dealt with (this includes offline stores as well.) They answered all of my questions quickly, and were polite and personable in their responses. I received a handwritten thank you note with my order (I ask you, when have you EVER received a hand written anything from a business, much less from the owner?)The system they sell you is double checked by two computer professionals, and everything is tested. They ship quickly, and are one of the few third party vendors that will provide you with tracking information.

Qosmio x505-870:

General:
First off know what you are getting into. This machine is not some cute little Vaio. Don't misunderstand me it looks awesome, but when Toshiba says desktop replacement they MEAN desktop replacement. To put this in perspective I have a Macbook Air which is a thirteen inch laptop. I can literally put it on the Qosmio in the upper right hand corner and it will come to the "w" key to halfway down the touchpad. To put it another way, I can open the Mac's screen and still watch a youtube video behind it on the Qosmio's monitor. There for, I don't understand some of the other reviews where they complain that it is heavy. This isn't a netbook. It isn't completely immovable though. Just understand this thing is HUGE, and lugging it around isn't going to be fun for long walks in Manhattan. The keyboard is backlit, and full sized with a numeric pad. On your left there are touch media keys that I like. Again, I have read some complaints that they are too easy to hit and I do not understand this either. Unless you are terribly uncoordinated or your hands are the size of Kobe's I don't know how you will hit them accidently. The battery has 12 cells, and with Eco mode will last a good amount of time for a machine this large (3 hours give or take.)

Parts:
The monitor is clear and crisp with a 16:9 ratio, the keyboard is snappy and comfortable, and the speakers are great for a laptop. The i7 processor is a beast, but the Qosmio handles the heat easily. I have yet to feel it get hot at all ( and I do use it as a "lap" top.) It has 4GB of RAM @ 1066MHz which is not the fastest, but good enough for just about anything you'll throw at it. The Blu-ray player is a steal for the price, and will flash labels onto burned DVDs (does NOT burn Blu-ray.) Computer has three USB ports, an eSATA/USB port with sleep/charge for your phone. One firewire 400 port, Bluetooth, one HDMI port,10/100/1000 ethernet, 5 in 1 memory card reader, PCI slot, and 2nd hard drive bay for another HD. Hard drive is a 500GB @ 7200 rpm. My only nitpick is the touchpad, it supports multi touch, but is tiny. However, wireless mice aren't really expensive, and the pad isn't horrible, just kind of out of place (The ones on the Macbooks are about twice as big). This is an amazing piece of hardware, and if you want a powerful computer this is your machine.

After exhaustive research, I decided the Toshiba Cosmio x505-870 powerhouse had the best specs for the best price. This was the next in a long line of Toshiba laptops for me. I was hooked after my first one about 10 years ago. Due to the design, durability, price, and support, Toshibas have always been my first choice and I would, and do, recommend them to everyone that asks. The Cosmio X505-870 is my new passion. My only complaints are minor and cosmetic. The slick surface of the keyboard and the awkward multimedia and power buttons are the only hindrances I have found. The new, positive design elements far outway the problems though. The toned-down color scheme, the disable button for the touchpad, and the beautiful 18.4 screen(although not full 1080p) to name a few. There were some issues with the BIOS that Toshiba addressed directly, so I would suggest updating the BIOS immediatly after creating your restore disks. I don't think it would be possible to regret the purcase of this system, and I recommend it whole-heartidly.

For the price this is 1 amazing laptop! I've thrown Star Trek Online, Bioshock 1 and 2 at it and everything played fully maxxed out w/ great frame rates. Left 4 Dead 2 even looks impressive on it! The Blu Ray drive has come in handy as well for watching movies and shows. The only complaint I have is that it is a fingerprint magnet...but honestly it is only a small complaint.

I bought this laptop about couple of months ago, from Tiger-direct cause for some reason or another Amazon price jumped overnight on that particular laptop, and tiger offered 12 months no interest and for an additional $29.00 they guarantee they will buy back the laptop for at least 40% of the purchase price depending on the shape it's in at that time. Anyhow, this has nothing to do with he review.

The review:
I'm not gonna sit here describing the machine, the specs are well listed by the MFG. Let me start by saying that I consider myself a computer savvy, I'm not stingy when it comes to buying a good system, and I've always bought Toshiba laptops, and it seems to always be the case, the machines are beautiful well built but always have out of the box drivers issues, and stupid little bugs that arise from negligence, more than anything else, and I could imagine how frustrating it would be for the non computer savvy. I always tolerated this fact hoping that my next Toshiba won't have these minor annoying stupid bugs, such as bad Blue-tooth Driver, Bad Graphic card driver, Bluray Drive with no supporting oftware, bad BIOS that causes blue screens,only three USB outlets, etc.. etc...
As far as this system goes, I was able to upgrade the buggy BIOS, downloaded new one from Toshiba site, I got the blue-tooth headphones to work (needed to roll-back to an old driver? then about a week ago Realteck posted a driver that worked), but the most serious problem that this machine has is a bad driver for it's Graphic card, the machine and during light operations, goes blank, then wakes up with a message DISPLAY DRIVER STOPPED WORKING AND HAS RECOVERED, then comes back to life. Worst of all, is when watching a movie or doing some CAD drafting, the SCREEN OF DEATH COMES ON (The blue screen) and shuts your system down. I downloaded the latest driver NVIDIA had, still didn't work. All and all the machine with little more attention could be a five star. I do agree with the other 3 star reviewer, that the machine has a five star potential if given a good support team.

In conclusion here are the Pros and Cons of this system
PROS:
1- Machine well built, nicely designed, love the lighted keyboard.
2- Bluray drive worked great after the software update.
3- Love the off switch for the tablet.
4- Sound crisp but can use more amps.
5- There is room for another HD (Solid state if you wish)

CONS:
1- Bad graphic card driver (-1 star)
2- Bad bluetooth driver (-1/2 star)
3- 3 USB outlets not enough, 2 located where the mouse pad needs to go for right handed (-1/2 star)(external HD, mouse, ZUNE Charging, done no more USB).
4- To upgrade to 6 gig RAM you have to get rid of 2RAM to make room for 4 RAM or replace both 2GIGs with (2) 3 GIGS. Marketing BS everybody does it, I'll let it slide.
5- Have to go through BIOS to turn off the control keyboard and keypads lights and to enable the USB charge while asleep.

As for the Size, it's huge, what I would like to have done, and hat what I would do next time, is to buy a smaller 15 inch high power system and when a bigger screen is needed just plug in a dam 22 inch monitor, they are cheap enough. Buy the way the Targus 17" back-pack worked great.

UPDATE:
The BIOS and Graphic updates fixed the problems. Well that's my point why the problems were not fixed before release.
Still out of the box it is a 3 star system. Toshiba needs to start debugging it's systems before release, especially the expensive ones. Well they won't do that if everyone keeps on giving them 4 stars.

This is an awesome laptop!!!!!! Im computer stupid and it makes use easy. The keyboard is a dream to use the dvd/blueray player is as clear if not clearer than my TV.

For gaming the laptop is the best computer i have ever had the pleasure of using, the graphics card can handle the highest settings in any game.

If i needed another laptop this would be the one i would buy!!!!!!!!!!!

The X505-Q870 is a big and powerful system, but it has a couple of big issues. The biggest problem is the track pad is so bad it is almost mandatory that you get mouse from the outset otherwise will get more than annoyed. The second problem is the keyboard; it is way too soft and mushy for my taste especially for a big laptop. The face recognition with webcam does really work at all, but the camers works fine. I would have preferred the fingerprint security that Toshiba had on other laptops. Getting your smartphone to charge while the laptop is sleeping does not work either, at least it did not for me despite following their instructions to set it up. Still this system is OK for my purposes.

Love the screen, great for games, movies etc. The sound is A+. The computer start-up is very fast! Most things are great especially the speed, this computer functions at warp speed which contributes to some of its quirks. I've had it for 4 months now. Two problems though #1. The plug in for the adapter is always coming loose. Move and the adapter will pop off. You are no longer charging. This can lead to unpredictability and surprise when your laptop just turns off. But don't fear I've never lost any info. The startup QUICKLY resumes where you left off. #2. The laptop mouse is touchy. I have very small hands and still when I am typing my palm may touch the pad and off I go jumping off screen, maybe even going on line when I thought I was working in Word. Who knows where my mischievious palm may lead me (I usually work with many windows open, palm touches screen moves arrow and off I go). Also, the mouse scrolls unpredictably due to the side scrolls. It can be frustrating (OOops lost that page, touched the side of the mouse pad). Overall I would purchase the laptop again now that I understand the quirks and how they happen. At first I thought wow, is this thing possessed! How in the world did that happen? Now I know and no I'm not going crazy, the laptop is just functioning at lightening speed and therefore has its quirks.

Overall, I picked this computer for the faster processor and screen size. In that regards, the laptop is great. The biggest flaw with this computer is the keypad. It lacks good tactile feel and is smaller than it should be for a computer this size. I can typically type extremely fast on my desktop computer, but with this laptop, I have to double check my typing too many times which makes me consider attaching a full size remote keypad for times when I have a lot of typing to do. The speakers are ok, not great.

I have had my Qosmio for 10 months. WIFI doesn't function on dual band 5Gig, Toshiba support admits there is a "problem" with the hardware / software wireless. Toshiba has known about this problem for some time and hasn't taken care of it and doesn't provide support for customers. 2 reason I bought the Qosmio: blu-ray and dual band, and the dual band doesn't work. Please check out the Toshiba support forms and see all the problems they have with wireless! Do not buy any Toshiba!

[...]

I suggest looking under cookware for a griddle. All this laptop is good for is cooking eggs. It constantly overheats and no matter what I do I can't fix the problem. They also put an excessive amount of bloatware on the system so you can't just use it out of the box before you put a clean OS on it. I'll be replacing this within a year. When I do I'll take a dump on the keyboard, close it up, and turn it into the crap sandwich it was always ment to be.