EVERYTHING you see, feel and experience about the Toshiba Qosmio F50 can be described in one word: big.
That includes everything from its movie-friendly 15.4-inch WUXGA display to its awesome gaming muscle.
When closed, this silver notebook looks simple yet stylish. Open it up and its over-the-top elements, such as a black surface with bold chrome trimmings and loudspeaker fittings, bear an unmistakable 'Ah Beng' imprint.
Toshiba Qosmio F50
$2,799, from authorised Toshiba dealers
These aside, the F50 has enough power and performance to satisfy power-hungry users like gamers and multimedia lovers. Under the hood of this 2.9kg monster is a top-end Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz processor with 4GB DDR2 SDRAM.
In the belly of this beast is a whopping 400MB of shock-absorbing hard disk space. A fingerprint reader prevents unauthorised users from using this notebook.
You get pretty good gaming graphics performance thanks to the combination of a high-end processor, maxed-out memory and the Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics chipset with 512MB video memory.
It scores 4,456 points on the 3Dmark 06 benchtest. While any score over 4,000 points is good in my book, the F50's score is 490 points lower than an almost similarly configured Acer Aspire 8920G.
On the MobileMark 2007, the F50 hits a Performance Qualification score of 228 points. So, apart from video and games, this notebook has more than enough juice to run graphics applications like Adobe Photoshop.
The F50 is also equipped with Intel Centrino 2 technology that promises a good balance between performance and battery life.
The result is fairly significant - according to MobileMark 2007, battery life is 116 minutes. Previous pre-Centrino 2 audio-visual machines I have reviewed rarely 'lived' beyond 70 minutes.
Toshiba's new Quad-Core HD processor will please multimedia lovers. Users can edit and process video files faster.
More importantly, it upscales or boosts ordinary DVD-quality images to high-definition.
For audio, the F50 comes complete with a powerful Harmon Kardon subwoofer and bass reflex system. Expect cinema quality audio from this portable device.
You also get a built-in TV tuner. Plug in a TV antenna cable to the TV tuner and you can watch free-to-air TV programmes on, for example, Channel 5 and Arts Central.
The FM tuner allows you to listen to radio programmes too.
For couch-potato ease, use the remote control to pause or play videos from a distance.
As expected of a machine in this class, the F50 has all the must-have and good-to-have connectivity options. There is wired and wireless LAN for networking and Internet surfing, a multi-memory card reader for easy transfer of data to and from the notebook.
A high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) port means you can channel high-definition video from the notebook to another screen quickly.
Equally good is the software bundle. Apart from the usual DVD player and Adobe Reader, there's bonus software such as Ulead DVD Movie Factory, a video-editing application.
Final say
A complete gaming and digital lifestyle notebook. Just ignore some of its "Ah Beng" quirks.
This article was first published in Digital Life, The Straits Times on Oct 15, 2008.
