Toshiba Qosmio G40 Review

After reviewing the Toshiba Tecra A8 and finding it a little uninspiring Toshiba seem to have decided to up their game and sent me an extremely impressive alternative for review.

The Qosmio G40 is a really high spec machine with all the bells and whistles you might like from a media centre laptop. My review model has all the technical details listed on the official Toshiba site so I won’t repeat them here except to say that this laptop just flies along. It’s the first time I’ve used Vista on a PC and been happy with the performance.

The most impressive part of this laptop is the 17″ HD widescreen display which is really eye catching and has a very crisp picture. The speakers are also of excellent quality and overall this would be a great device to replace your HDTV. I haven’t used Windows Media Centre before but I’m impressed with how it worked and hooked up to my cable box to allow recording of TV and also to provide that important option of pausing live TV.

The other feature I liked was the built in finger print scanner which can be used for logging in to windows but also used whenever you need to login to a website so I could just enter my details once for each affiliate network and then run my finger over the scanner when I visit their site to login.

I thought this one was worth showing to the outside world so I took it along to the Edinburgh Coffee Morning to see what others thought. This was where the main use of this laptop started to become clear. And it was clear to me it’s not supposed to be carried around! Firstly it barely fitted in my normal laptop bag and secondly it weighs a ton. Well not quite a ton but it’s heavy

Anyway once I got to Centotre the quality of the screen impressed both Mike(pictured) & Joanna(not pictured!) but the sheer size of the laptop was discussed as being it’s downfall.

Mike was talking about how his iPod Touch has started to replace carrying his laptop everywhere so we took a quick photo for comparison

I certainly know which I would like to carry around all day. But then perhaps that is not a fair comparison because I also know which I would rather watch a DVD on!

I liked the built in webcam feature too so I put this to the test although the integrated mic didn’t seem to pick things up too well.

So in summary it’s a very impressive laptop and would be ideal for replacing your TV, video and hi-fi to run a very impressive media centre without taking up much space. However it’s not one to buy if you are a road warrior!

Thanks again to talktoshiba for the chance to test the laptop - can I keep the next one?