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SINGAPORE - Throw away all conventions of practicality when it comes to the Toshiba Qosmio G50-AV870.
This hunk of a laptop has an 18.4-inch widescreen display. Colleagues who caught a glimpse of it greeted me with words that could not be printed in a newspaper.
This glossy bulk of plastic runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz processor with 4GB of memory and 500GB of storage. It is preloaded with Windows Vista Home Ultimate Edition and gives a commendable performance as a laptop geared for multimedia, scoring 4.8 on the Windows Vista Experience index.
Graphics processing is provided by an Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT, with an HDMI port for high-definition output.
There are ports aplenty on a machine this big. Hidden behind a plastic flap at the right of the machine are an ExpressCard slot, a memory card reader (SD, SDHC, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro, MMC and xD picture cards), a FireWire port and USB 2.0 sockets.
There's a full keyboard (also glossy) with a numeric keypad, as well as Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi (802.11a/g/*) and Gigabit Ethernet.
What sets this beast apart from other laptops is Toshiba’s addition of its Quad Core HD processor, which is based on the Cell chip in PlayStation 3. This processor helps to accelerate playback and editing of HD content, real-time upscaling of movie files and DVDs to HD, and gesture-based input.
The latter feature allows you to launch applications, control the mouse and movie playback by tracking your hand gestures with the built-in webcam.
For instance, you can move the cursor by showing your fist and moving it around. Opening up your palm can pause or play a movie. It's an interesting method of input but we find that it sometimes fails to keep up with our movements.
Plus, your hands do get pretty tired. If Toshiba is serious about gesture-based input, it needs to develop more compelling applications to take advantage of it so that the feature won't seem like a gimmick.
The Quad Core HD processor can index faces in your movies, so you can search for a face or a facial expression within your media library. If you've got a big movie catalogue, this could come in handy when you’re searching for a movie featuring a particular actor.
The built-in harman/kardon speakers provide a great audio experience with just the right amount of bass and treble, whether you're watching movies or listening to music.
While the big display is rich and colourful and can display HD content at resolutions up to 1080p, it isn't quite as bright as we would like it to be, even within indoor environments.
If you're looking for a portable multimedia movie experience that can dish out HD performance admirably and you don't mind the extra weight (all 4.4kg of it), the Qosmio G50-AV870 (S$4,299) could be your ticket. - TODAY/fa
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