By Stephen Tong
13/07/2005
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050488,39092406p,00.htm

Among the three new Qosmio entertainment notebooks to land in the region, the G20 is by far the largest and most powerful in terms of specs and the hefty S$5,499 price. Along with DVD playback and gaming power, the new range of Qosmios come complete with TV tuners unlike the original E10 launched last year. Unfortunately we don't have the benefit of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 in Asia, unlike our US counterparts, which would definitely make the user experience a lot more enjoyable.

The Qosmio G20 definitely exudes more class than the conventional Toshibas.

Design
The Qosmio G20 is one aesthetically appealing laptop to behold. The gargantuan 17-inch WXGA display boasting a very bright 500 nits is just one of the reasons. The wide viewing angle supported is another, but the colors look somewhat faded when glancing at the screen from an acute angle. With a 1,440 x 900 native resolution, users can't really maximize their display space to the max like they can with the Sony Vaio VGN-A49GP at 1,920 x 1,200 that allows for a better viewing experience. The reflective frame surrounding the keyboard can be quite pleasing to the eye, though with a few fingerprint smudges, it can become an eyesore very easily. The huge 406 x 285 x 43.1mm chassis weighs a hefty 4.3kg, excluding the equally heavy 600g adapter, meaning that you'll probably be leaving this baby at home most of the time.

As this is a multimedia notebook, the package wouldn't be complete without the full-sized remote which incorporates much-needed buttons to navigate around DVD menus. We had a well-spaced keyboard lined with a row of touch-sensitive multimedia keys just above. The standard touchpad and two mouse buttons, without the physical scroller, look somewhat minimal considering all the flamboyant features that the Qosmio has. The wheel-inspired volume control with blue-light feedback indicating the audio level change is a very welcome change from the usual tiny jog-dial designs. Another "cool" feature is the slot-loading disc drive which we were certainly impressed by. Compared with the Qosmio E10, the audio is once again a highlight, thanks to the Harman/Kardon speakers which provide decent bass and sufficiently loud audio, considering there is no sub-woofer.

The rotatable volume control comes complete with blue lights to indicate the audio level.

Features
The unit is made of powerful stuff. With a high-end Pentium M processor 760 (2.0GHz), 512MB DDR2 SDRAM and a fast Nvidia GeForce Go 6600 graphics engine sporting 128MB of VRAM, the Qosmio certainly has impressive components. The front boasts a slot-in DVD±R/RW writer with DVD+R dual-layer support, certainly enough to satisfy our burning needs. The unit actually has two seperate 80GB hard disks and for good reason--RAID-0 and RAID-1 is supported. RAID-1 allows mirroring so that the laptop writes the same data on both drives simultaneously for enhanced data protection. In short, should one of them fail, the information can still be retrieved from the other 80GB drive. RAID-0 simply allows data storage on the two drives.

Ports-wise, you have loads of connectivity choices at your disposal. With four USB 2.0, a 5-in-1 flash card reader, S/PDIF, Bluetooth and more unconventional AV options like composite-in, S-video in and D-video out, the Qosmio G20 offers almost identical ports as the original Qosmio E10 except for the added TV antenna port and xD/MS PRO support.

A slot-in DVD burner lies on the front edge.

We found it a pity that Windows Media Center OS wasn't implemented. We thus had to settle for Toshiba's AV interfaces such as QosmioPlayer, a pre-boot utility which plays (but surprisingly can't record) TV, DVDs and audio CDs though it cannot run MP3 or video files from the hard drive or disc. We'd actually love to see the other application--QosmioUI--run in place of QosmioPlayer as it supports all its AV functions including playback of image, video and music files. The problem is it runs only within Windows XP. Another problem is that we could only activate QosmioPlayer with the remote and not with the multimedia buttons above the keyboard. On the bright side, recording/watching TV and using the time-shifting (only in Windows!) function is a fool-proof process. We didn't have much of an issue handling the intuitive remote and so we can safely say that you can leave the laptop with your parents should they need to watch TV or DVDs.

Performance And Battery Life
Upon running the MobileMark 2002 benchmarks on the machine, we obtained a good result of 219. Though this score is pretty impressive when compared with all notebooks, this is not the case when gauged with other 2.0GHz machines such as the Dell Inspiron 9300 or the Acer TravelMate 8104WLMi (but do note these two units have an extra 512MB RAM).

BAPCo MobileMark2002 performance rating (all with 760 processor 2.0GHz)

Toshiba Qosmio G20 (512MB RAM) 219 Dell Inspiron 9300 (1GB RAM) 235 Acer TravelMate 8104WLMi (1GB RAM) 253

3D rendering was tested with 3DMark05 and we must say the 2,436 score result was very much to our satisfaction. As such, the Qosmio G20 is currently the second-best gaming notebook we've reviewed (as of July 2005). Do check out our feature on the Top 5 gaming laptops for the 3DMark03 results.

FutureMark's 3DMark05 (1,024 x 768)

Toshiba Qosmio G20 128MB Nvidia GeForce Go 6600 2436 Dell Inspiron 9300 256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 6800 3004 Acer TravelMate 8104WLMi 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X700 2241

Though the battery life is actually quite mediocre at 115 minutes, this more or less meets the 2 hours of power that Toshiba projected. You can choose to dismiss this result considering that you're probably going to leave this unit plugged in at home.

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Service And Support
Although Toshiba provides a standard one-year carry-in international warranty inclusive of parts, labor and the battery, we feel rather shortchanged considering the premium price the G20 goes for. A three-year coverage would have certainly been a better deal. Customers can call in toll-free to the Toshiba Global Support Center which provides 24/7 round-the-globe services and support. The contacts are clearly stated on its Web site.

The Qosmio runs on Windows XP Home Edition and includes software such as Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Sonic RecordNow! 7.0, a 90-day eval of Norton AntiVirus 2005 and Toshiba Console, a user-friendly interface to manage functions such as power management, button controls and hotkey assignment. DVD playback is handled by InterVideo WinDVD whereas InterVideo WinDVD Creator is self-explanatory. As for WinDVR 5, it supports TV functions such as time-shifting and recording.