Toshiba A665-S6065

I'm looking for opinions from owners of the Toshiba A665-S6065. I'm considering this machine (and weighing it against the Asus K52JK-A1). My main concerns are the quality of the graphics card, and also whether the i7 processor will cause it to run very hot. Any opinions/feedback/advice would be appreciated.

 

I just bought this laptop. I have owned just about every brand of laptop including Asus, Apple, Lenovo, HP, MSI, Sony etc. This is one heck of a laptop for the price. I picked it up for well under $1k. The cooling is very effective and the laptop doesn't even get warm after 2 to 3 hours of use. The graphics card is plenty powerful for my needs (I edit high def video using Sony Vegas). The build quality is also very solid. Probably the best plastic body laptop I have owned. The only improvement I can think of is a 1080p screen, but that would add $$$ to the price. The stock hard drive is also a slow 5400 rpm Hitachi. I will be upgrading to a Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive.

In terms of the Asus, I like the innovations that Asus brings to the mobile market, but build quality with Asus is very much hit or miss. I am super picky about things like panel fit, fan noise, body flex and creaks, etc and the 3 Asus laptops I have owned have always had some issue or another. The Toshiba A665 is one of the few laptops I have owned where I am not able to find any issues with fit and finish, build quality, buggy OEM software etc.

 

Thanks so much for responding! This really makes me lean towards the Toshiba now. I don't think the 5400 rpm HD is a deal breaker for me. My main concern was overheating with the i7 and nVidia chip (which fried my last laptop) but what you said is very reassuring.

Do you like the keyboard quality? That's one thing I'm picky about, and I heard the Asus can be iffy with that. I noticed the space bar on the Toshiba is really small - does that bother you at all, or is it one of those things you get used to?

I will probably pick this up at Costco, which has it for $949 and adds one year to the warranty for free (a big plus for me) and a 90 day no questions asked return policy.

 

Costco is a great place to buy laptops. I would have bought it there , but didn't know they carried this model. I bought at mine at Fry's for $849, but w/o the extended warranty. I like the keyboard a lot. The key response is excellent and there is no flex. However, the trackpad is a bit finicky/slippery and takes a little while to get used to since it's off center.

You don't have to worry about heat at all. There is no part of this laptop that gets warm. Even the air that blows from the cooling vent is warm at best. The cooling vent itself is around 2.5 inches wide and I can see a large heat sink inside it. The cooling fan is also very strong and recirculates air with force.

 

Argh, I think I found one near-fatal flaw. From the pictures, it looks like the audio-out (headphone) jack is on the right side, all the way towards the front of the laptop- meaning the cable of my external speakers will always be in the way. What a bad spot for this, especially for right-handed people using a mouse.

 

So, I purchased this computer a few weeks back, and so far I like it except for one problem. I actually ended up not minding the location of the headphone jack (see message above), and everything else about the laptop is fine, but my goodness I HATE this 1366 x 768 native resolution with a vengeance. I really miss the vertical space I lost, especially because I mainly use this machine for reading, writing and browsing. I'm scrolling down all the time. Very annoying. So, I'm thinking about returning this thing for a machine with a better native resolution. I can see how this would be nice for people watching HD movies on their laptops, but for almost everything else it feels like working on an iPhone flipped on its side.