As one of only a handful of 17-inch gaming laptops we've seen since the launch of Windows 8, the Toshiba Qosmio X875 already stands out from all the slim ultrabooks and convertibles we've reviewed recently on that basis alone.
Toshiba Qosmio X875
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
It actually goes another step further, by jumping onto the hot hybrid hard-drive bandwagon, with a new 1TB drive. The $1,879 X875 features what Toshiba calls "the industry’s first 1TB 2.5-inch high-capacity hybrid hard drive," with an 8GB flash memory cache. Toshiba says the new drive, which was developed in-house, reduces read/write times and application startup times. Other configurations run from $1,199 to $2,299.
Having used the X875 for both gaming and everyday tasks, it's certainly extremely fast, as one would expect from a laptop with an Intel Core i7 CPU and Nvidia's high-end GeForce 670M graphics card. This laptop also includes a screen compatible with Nvidia's 3D Vision stereoscopic 3D platform, as well as a pair of 3D glasses. But, after an initial flush of interest a couple of years ago, very little has been said since about 3D on laptops (or on televisions, for that matter), and neither gaming nor Blu-ray video viewing in 3D is an entirely satisfying experience.
Rather than 3D, one feature I wish had been included is a touch screen. We have yet to see a Windows 8 laptop with high-end, gamer-level graphics and a touch screen -- so far, it's been one or the other.
For budget gamers, Lenovo's current 15-inch IdeaPad Y500 offers decent PC gaming for under $900 (with a single GeForce 950M config), but as a step up, the Toshiba X875 is one of the last true heavy-duty desktop replacement laptops.