Toshiba Qosmio G50-127 review

Toshiba's Qosmio G50-127 is the cheapest laptop on test this month, costing less than £1,000 exc VAT. A look at the specification, though, reveals that the G50 lacks the punch and power of some of the more expensive laptops: its 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo P8600 processor and GeForce 9600M GT graphics chip are a far cry from the Extreme edition parts and CrossFireX arrangements elsewhere.

Consequently, our benchmarks saw the Qosmio firmly in the bottom half of this month's results table. A 2D score of 1.15 just can't compete with the likes of the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds or Alienware M17, and scores of 45fps and 15fps in our low- and medium-quality Crysis benchmarks are below average too.

Elsewhere, there's little to excite in this company. The 4GB of RAM is older 800MHz DDR2 rather than 1,066MHz DDR3 as seen in eight machines this month, and six other systems offer more than the 320GB of storage provided here. There's also no Blu-ray drive.

The Qosmio's limited budget results in build quality that's below average this month: the plasticky chassis creaked and groaned throughout our tests, and both wristrest and keyboard felt spongy. It's no match for the Lenovo or Sony laptops in terms of quality and comfort.

The screen was disappointing too. The 18.4in panel was pale and lifeless in comparison to the excellent screens in the Dell, Lenovo and Sony laptops, while the 1,680 x 945 native resolution isn't quite enough to do justice to Full-HD video.

The lack of powerful components has a silver lining in the form of battery life. The G50 lasted just over four hours in our light-use test and 1hr 35mins in our heavy-use benchmark, so there's some scope for travel.

Plus, the Toshiba's audio output is superb. Built by audio specialist Harmon/Kardon, the drive units are the best we've heard this month, offering excellent volume as well as precision and clarity throughout the range.

Don't let these surprising bonuses blind you to the Qosmio's many faults, though. The lack of power and dearth of features mean that we can't recommend the G50, even with its bargain price.

Author: Mike Jennings