Toshiba Qosmio F50-10Z review: Toshiba Qosmio F50-10Z

Priced at a reasonable £899, the Qosmio F50-10Z offers a wide range of multimedia features. It also houses Toshiba's new Quad Core HD processor, a chip separate to the main CPU that aims to boost video performance -- something we first heard about back in June. You can imagine, then, our excitement to review the lap and find out how performance stacks up.

7.5

Toshiba Qosmio F50-10Z

The Good

DVD upscaling; bright screen; good range of multimedia features; price.

The Bad

Gesture-control feature; restrictions when viewing upscaled video; tacky chassis design.

The Bottom Line

While the over-the-top chassis won't suit all tastes, the Qosmio F50-10Z offers a decent mix of features and performance for your money. But while Toshiba's Quad Core HD processor does a reasonable job of upscaling DVDs, it has few other practical uses

Design
Aesthetics were clearly high on the agenda for Toshiba when designing the Qosmio F50, but the glossy black and silver chassis looks and feels just a little tacky. A bewildering array of lights adorn the already over-the-top chassis -- thankfully one of the touch-sensitive buttons lets you turn the unnecessary ones off . Harmon Kardon speakers, controlled by an old-fashioned dial, manage to produce deep and rich, if not incredibly loud, audio.

The keyboard is sturdy and features very little flex, but the glossy coating is way too slippery for extended periods of typing -- a prime example of style over substance. Various ports are dotted around the chassis, including four USB (one of which doubles up as an eSATA port), one mini-Firewire, a multi-format card reader and an aerial socket for the hybrid (analogue and digital) TV tuner. There's also an HDMI output, though to make full use of this you'll need to add a Blu-ray drive, as only a standard DVD rewriter is included.

Features
With a resolution of 1,200x800 pixels, the bright 15.4-inch widescreen display is good for 720p HD video, but not 1080p. True HD aside, Toshiba makes much of its Quad Core HD processor that's housed within the Qosmio F50. This aims to provide extra oomph when video editing and watching films, as well as let you control the laptop by using hand gestures via the built-in webcam.

But is this Quad Core HD thing really worth shouting about? If you're only interested in the gesture feature, the answer is a resounding 'no'. We gave it a fair crack of the whip, but it was a painful process with most of our gestures being completely ignored.

For movies, though, the Quad Core HD processor does perform quite well. We tried out the Upconvert feature (upscaling to the rest of us) while watching Ocean's Thirteen and video did appear more detailed, though closer inspection does reveal a heavy amount of sharpening that can end up making certain scenes look worse.

There are also some important caveats regarding Upconvert. You can only use it with the included Toshiba DVD Player software and, more importantly, it won't operate when the laptop's running off the battery. When activated, you also lose certain features, such as fast forward and rewind, and the laptop fan soon ramps up to an annoying level.

Performance
With its Core 2 Duo P8400 (2.26 GHz) processor, 4 GB RAM and Nvidia Geforce 9600M GT (512 MB) graphics, the Qosmio F50 returned some decent benchmark scores. In PCMark 2005 it notched up 5,445, while the 512 MB Nvidia Geforce 9600M graphics card helped drive it to a score of 4,920 in 3DMark 2006. Battery life wasn't quite so hot, though, at 88 minutes in the BatteryEater Classic test and two hours and 13 minutes in the less strenuous Reader test. But weighing in at a hefty 4.1Kg (including power adaptor), it's unlikely you'll be using much away from the mains.

Conclusion
While the Quad Core HD processor works well when upscaling DVDs, the gesture-control feature is next to useless. That said, the Qosmio F50-10Z is reasonably priced at £899, it has plenty of features and, as long as the over-the-top chassis doesn't put you off, it serves well as a mid-range, entertainment-focused laptop.

Edited by Marian Smith