The X500 is a notebook PC aimed at serious gamers and others who need no-compromise performance that they can take with them. The 18.4inch display is not only very big, but also very good with bright colors, great contrast and sharp graphics. Showing full HD at 1920 by 1080 pixels, you could watch a Blu-Ray movie at native resolution. I tried the Blu-Ray version of Top Gun, and I must say it was an amazing experience for a notebook. That makes the X500 a good choice for someone needing to watch and perhaps even edit video on the go.
For everything that Toshiba has crammed into the X500, you’d think battery life would be next to nothing. But I was pleasantly surprised with about three hours of useful battery life when browsing the web. When you play a game battery life is of course reduced drastically, perhaps to about one hour, but I doubt anyone will play much without plugging in first.
The model we tested had a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 4GB RAM, 1TB hard drive (2 x 500GB drives), and NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M graphics with 1GB VRAM. In regular use, like browsing the web, photo editing, etc. Things just fly. You’d be very happy to work on this computer all day long even with heavy tasks, the performance is that good. The common benchmarks back this up: PCMark: 5591, 3DMark 06: 9674, CineBench: 26.78 fps (Open GL), 2.59 pts (CPU), BatteryEater Classic (high load): 1hr 5min, BatteryEater Reader’s test: 3hr 17min.
One design detail that annoyed me a lot was the position of the touch-controls for the audio to the left of the keyboard.
When I was playing a first person shooter, controlling the movement with the A-W-S-D keys, the little finger on my left hand kept hitting some of the controls.
Summing up this is an amazing notebook. Amazing not only because it’s the most powerful notebook I’ve ever used, but also because of the Blu-Ray burner, full HD display, 1TB storage, up to 8GB RAM and I could go on. Sure, it’s expensive, big and heavy, but wow, what a computer. It’s hard to put a fair mark on it though because it has significant drawbacks. But given that Toshiba has gone all out and not compromised much I feel justified in giving it full marks.
This is the biggest and heaviest portable computer I?ve ever experienced. I write portable because, while it is transportable, it may not be something you want to carry with you all the time.
