Great performance proves looks aren't everything

Some things in the PC universe can change a lot in a short period of time. We're now living in a world of touch screens, detachable keyboards, and 12-plus hours of battery life. Other things remain stubbornly the same, much like the Toshiba Qosmio X75, a thick throwback of a laptop packed with high-end CPU and GPU parts, a flashy red-accented body, and a lack of modern concessions (no touch screen here).

But, that's not to say sticking to your guns is necessarily a bad thing. Instead of a throwback, we might call the X75 a stoically traditional desktop replacement laptop. Sure, the design may get a tweak or two, and the last couple of Qosmio generations are a little thinner and lighter than the models from a few years ago, but this is still a classic anchored-to-the-desk 17-inch -- a category with fewer players right now than any time in recent memory.

The main difference in the new X75 versus the X875, which was itself only launched at the beginning of 2013, is the move to the latest generation of Intel and Nvidia parts. This system has a fourth-gen quad-core Core i7 CPU, plus Nvidia's new GeForce 770M GPU, putting it fairly close to the top of the heap, performance-wise. You could spec out a more expensive systems with more bells and whistles from Alienware, Origin PC, and others, but the Qosmio is more interested in riding the line between gaming rig and multimedia machine (hence the recordable Blu-ray drive in our configuration).

This specific config, the X75-A7298, is $1,799, and includes the Intel Core i7 4700, Nvidia GeForce 770M, a Blu-ray burner, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB HDD/256BG SSD storage combo. If you can skip a few frills, the exact same CPU/GPU combo is available for $1,199, but without the Blu-ray, SSD, and so on. In terms of performance, I've got no complaints about the value here. On the other hand, especially for $1,799, but even at $1,199, this is essentially a big aluminum-and-plastic box that feels budget-like in the hand. Everything, from the clacky keyboard to the shiny red highlights, feels a bit subpremium. At least these don't have painted-on flames anymore. And don't get me started on a 2013 Windows 8 laptop, even one intended for gaming, not having a touch screen.

If I could insert the components inside the Qosmio X75 into a nicer body, with a touch screen and silent keyboard, I'd buy one today. Instead, what we have is the guts of a great 2013 laptop at reasonable price, stuck in a body that feels a few years out of date.

	Toshiba Qosmio X75-A9278	Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch w/Retina Display (June 2012)	Toshiba Qosmio X875-Q7390	Razor Blade 14
Price	$1,799	$1,299	$1,749	$1,799
Display size/resolution	17.3-inch 1,920 x 1,080 screen	15.4 -inch, 2880 x 1,800 screen	17.3-inch,1920 x 1080 screen	14-inch, 1,600 x 900 screen
PC CPU	2.4GHz Intel Core i7 4700MQ	2.3GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM	2.4GHz Intel Core i7 3630QM	2.2GHz Intel Core i7 4702HQ
PC memory	16GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM	8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM	16GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM	8GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Graphics	3GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 770	1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 650M	3,072MB Nvidia GeForce GTX 670	2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M
Storage	256GB SSD + 1TB 7,200rpm hard drive	256GB SSD	1TB 5,400rpm hard drive	128GB SSD
Optical drive	Blu-ray\DVD writer	None	Blu-ray optical	None
Networking	Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0	Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0	Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC	Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0
Operating system	Windows 8 (64-bit)	OS X Lion 10.7.4	Windows 8 (64-bit)	Windows 8 (64-bit)

Design and features 

The look and feel of the X75 is close to, but not exactly the same as, the recent X875 model we reviewed back in April 2013. It still features a diamond-textured aluminum shell, but the light-up Qosmio logo on the lid has been moved from the center to the lower left corner. The metallic red accents have been toned down a tiny bit (no more red hinges), but you'd have to compare the X875 and newer X75 side by side to really tell them apart.

Thin and minimalist, this is not. Nor is it the wild abandon of, say, an Alienware gaming laptop with its crazy multicolor light show. Instead we're stuck in the aesthetic middle ground, or at least what the middle ground looked like pre-ultrabook.

Of course, a big part of the advantage of getting a giant laptop is that there's plenty of room for a large keyboard and big touch pad, with few concessions to space requirements. In this case, we get Toshiba's generous flat-topped keyboard -- a style that has not noticeably changed in a couple of years -- plus a full-size separate number pad. The typing experience is good, but the keys are little on the clacky side. Toshiba laptops also have oddly short space bars, which I always find adds to typing mistakes. The keys themselves are backlit -- in Toshiba red, of course, and the function keys are reversed, which means you don't have to hold down the Fn key to access the volume, brightness and other controls on the F1-F12 keys.

The large touch pad is a clickpad-style one, without separate left and right mouse buttons. There's plenty of room for multitouch gestures, but at the same time, I found myself frequently accidentally triggering Windows 8 swipes when my fingers wandered too close to the edges of the pad. Hopefully, as a gamer, you'll have a mouse plugged in full time.

The 17.3-inch display, which runs at 1,920x1,080 pixels, is not a touch screen, a serious omission because Windows 8, especially in its tile-based UI view, is much easier to navigate with a few strategic finger swipes directly on the screen. To be fair, none of the gamer-targeted laptops we've seen this year have had touch screens, and there seems to be a real reluctance to marry discrete GPUs with touch screens so far.

That said, the screen itself looks great playing HD video, games, and displaying Web content, even from off-axis views, although it's very glossy and you may have to shift it a bit to avoid glare.

The Harmon Kardon speakers -- a Toshiba mainstay, are excellent for a laptop, with good volume and punch. Laptop speakers will never push all that much bass, but for gaming and movie watching, it'll fill a small room.

	Toshiba Qosmio X75
Video	HDMI, VGA
Audio	Quad speakers, headphone/microphone jacks
Data	4 USB 3.0, SD card reader
Networking	Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Optical drive	Blu-ray writer

Connections, performance, and battery

Thanks to its large body, the X75 has plenty of room for ports and connections. It has dual video outputs, four USB 3.0 ports (two include a sleep-and-charge function for powering external devices using the laptop's battery), and both headphone and mic jacks, at a time when many laptops are going to a single audio port. This configuration also includes a Blu-ray recordable drive, which you can ditch to save money on a less-expensive configuration.

While I'm being a bit tough on the X75's design and lack of a touch screen, no one will have any problem with the system's performance. With a 2.4-GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-4700MQ Haswell-generation processor, plus 16GB of RAM, the new Qosmio gave us a nice performance boost over the previous X875 model. Even heavy-duty Photoshop, video editing, or gaming won't give the X75 much of a problem.

Speaking of gaming, with a current-gen Nvidia GeForce 770M graphics card, this is a better pure gaming rig than, for example, the even-more-expensive Razer Blade 14, although that ambitious 14-inch laptop is much thinner and lighter. A massive gaming desktop, such as the Falcon Northwest Fragbox will mop the floor with it, but in terms of laptops, it's hard to do better, and we ran BioShock Infinite at 1,920x1,080 and very high detail settings at 29.9 frames per second.

The nice thing is, even if you trade down to the $1,199 version of the X75, you still get the same CPU/GPU combo, although the smaller amount of RAM and slower HDD can affect performance.

One of the biggest advantages of Intel's new Haswell-generation chips in laptops has been amazing battery life. But apparently, not always. The X75 barely benefited over the previous non-Haswell model, running for 1 hour and 45 minutes in our video playback battery drain test, only a few minutes longer than the older X875. The Razer Blade ran for more than seven hours on the same test.

Conclusion 

Toshiba offers a very compelling set of components in the new Qosmio X75, and even better, gives you configurations from $1,199 to $1,999 that should fit any reasonable gaming laptop budget.

The design is still stuck in the past, painfully so, and the lack of a touch screen will have you reaching for your old Windows 7 install discs. But even with all these annoyances, if I had to pick up a serious gaming laptop without breaking the bank, the X75 would be high on my list.

System configurations

Toshiba Qosimio X75-A7298
Windows 8 (64-bit); Intel Core i7 4700MQ; 16GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,600MHz; 3GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 770; 256GB SSD+ 1TB 7200 HD

Razor Blade 14
Windows 8 (64-bit); 2.2GHz Intel Core i7 4702HQ; 8192MB DDR3 SDRAM 1,600MHz; 2GB (Dedicated) Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M; 256GB SSD

Toshiba Qosmio X875-Q7390
Windows 8 (64-bit); 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 3630QM; 16GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,600MHz; Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 3,072MB (Dedicated) HDD No.1: 1TB Hybrid Toshiba 5,400rpm, HDD No. 2: 1TB 5,400rpm Toshiba

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch w/Retina Display (June 2012)
OS X 10.7.4 Lion; 2.3GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM; 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,600MHz; 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 650M + 512MB Intel HD 4000; 256GB Apple SSD

Falcon Northwest Fragbox v3 (Overclocked)
Windows 8 (64-bit); 4.5GHz Intel Core i7 4770K; 16GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,800MHz; 3GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 780; (2) 960GB SSD RAID 0