Is the Qosmio X505-Q880 good?

So I stumbled upon the Qosmio X505-Q880 during my research of possibilities of laptops, in case I can manage to get a refund from Asus. In case no one here makes it to the Asus section, recently my Gx71Gx-A1 broke and I sent it in to get fixed. Turned out, Asus decided to be a and say they can't fix it and I somehow deserve a crappy replacement (Gx71Gx-RX05) for wasting their time. And I was like: no, I don't deserve that. I've been treated so badly by their customer service that I want a refund now and to take my business elsewhere.

So after I found the Qosmio X505-Q880 and I was like, "Holy crap! This thing is awesome!" But, I learned my lesson from Asus. I took a step back and looked Toshiba up on BBB and they have an A+. It's a lot better than Asus' C. That's promising. Now, before I get too excited and start jumping up and down and giggling like a schoolgirl about this new laptop, I decided it would be best to try to find some owners of this laptop. As such, if there's anyone in this forum who has some additional material about the laptop or actually owns it, let me know what you think of it. Hopefully it isn't that big of a deal. Thanks in advance.

 

I don't own that specific model, but I have to say that from what I have seen from the quality of Toshiba's laptops, they are pretty good compared to other brands. Also, Asus is actually better than Toshiba according to this.

At any rate, both of the brands are excellent. The catch with Toshiba though is that they have worse customer support than some of the bigger brands such as HP and Acer. But I haven't had a personal experience with it - I've never had to send my Toshiba in.

For the price, you could probably do a little better, but overall it is a great notebook and it is worth it.

 

Asus has the lowest malfunction rate of any brand that carries laptops? This is surprising, considering that my Asus laptop only lasted three months.

 

Yeah, you may have been one of the unlucky few that gets the potentially defective unit.

 

I have the Q850, basically the Q880 is the refresh of Q850... My Q850 is only a few weeks old and I have been taking turns using it and the Alienware M15x.

Here is what I can say of my Q850 (comparing with M15x):
1. M15x LED Display is a lot better.
2. Q850's glossy finish may be eye-catching, but it also attracts lots of dust, fingerprints and all.. Glossy is for cars, matt finish is for notebooks...
3. Keyboard is too crowded for my taste. Blame it on the multimedia controls.

But other than that, its good.
Audio is good. But the speaker's position suck though...
On Power Saver mode, battery can lasts 3Hrs. Surprising for such a BIG notebook.

 

Have you tried talking them into giving you a G73h-A1 and you pay the difference? Doesn't hurt to try
The base G73h just blows away even the highest Toshiba X505 config and only starts at 1.6k and looks a lot better and I would bet that it runs a lot cooler too.

 

What a person thinks of visuals is subjective, while you may prefer the flashy "gamer" look of the G73, I don't particularly like it. And I'm sure there are people who would agree with me.

As for heat and thermal specifcation, unless the G73 uses an entirely new cooling system, it may well be as hot, if not hotter than the X505. I'm hoping a new cooling system is designed though, the G71 and other laptops of that era were very hot.

 

The G73 has a new cooling system where air enters from the front to the back, which is unlike the G72 where air enters from the bottom and exits to the back

Have you even seen pics of the G73? It is not flashy at all.




And you think the X505 is not "flashy" with the red accents and huge QOSMIO on the lid. Also unlike the Asus G73, the Qosmio X505 still uses FLCL lamps for its display which leads to unbalanced lighting system because it uses 1 lamp unless you cough up the extra dough for the top model with the dual lamp display for 2k.

 

Why do you think that LED backlight makes it perfect?
a) LED backlight does not make lighting balanced. Same with CCFL, backlight provided by single strip located at bottom of the screen. Uniformity of light is responsibility of diffuser, same for LED or CCFL - and I have seen a lot of shockingly non-uniform & dim LED backlit screens. To get analog of dual-CCFL backlight with LED (both at bottom and top), you need edge-to-edge LED, which are quite rare and expensive
b) Have you actually *seen* screens on both G73 and X500? Or at least proper zonal lighting benchmarks of them?

 

I never said LED was perfect. My argument was that the G73 goes for 1.6k and it has a newer display technology while the 2k Toshiba X505 still uses CFCL lamps.

 

Well, all of this is moot, unfortunately, because Asus would not accept my pleas for a refund. They also could not give me a replacement. Instead, they're going to be repairing my old G71Gx-A1 and sending it back to me. I'll buy a chillmat to help keep it cooler.

Speaking of the G73JH, it is definitely tempting. It has a lot of power for a good price, but I learned my lesson. I'm staying away from Asus for my next purchase. Their poor customer service has taken its toll on me and I won't be doing business with them again.

 

I still think that looks ridiculously "gamer" oriented, and I still prefer the "multimedia" look of the X505.

Each to their own I guess.

 

I find the flames on the old X series hideous. It's a lot better now. The X505 looks more multimedia, and the G73jh definitely looks more gamer oriented, but not particularly strongly.

 

Yeah, the old X305 looked pretty terrible, agreed.

But I'm still deciding whether the older G series like the G51 or the new G73 looks better.

 

I think it looks pretty nice.

 

The X305?

 

Because LED backlights are not mature yet to be used in big notebook screens.
They either don't provide enough brightness (white LEDs) or very expensive (RGB LEDs).
Just wait for accurate measurements of brightness & colour gamut on this new ASUS.

 

Hey,
I'm looking over Toshiba and ASUS threads to figure out which one I would like. X505-Q880 vs G73JH.

I can't find the answer to a few questions.

Is the SSD in the Tosh 2.5" SATA? I would like to can the SSD it for a 500GB drive if so.

How well cooled are the Toshiba's in this series? The ASUS would win for me if it were 18.4". The ASUS runs real cool, so was wondering about the Tosh.

I can deal with the look of the Toshiba with some paint most likely!

 

i like the x300 it has curves i just think the tone of the red on the lid is a bit to pink/bright/plasticy

 

No no, not Toshiba!
Asus is best brand I have personally used, then Thinkpad, and Toshiba as third and HP as fourth.

 

This thread looks like it's dead, Zed!