Toshiba UK has announced the launch of the new Qosmio X500 18.4-inch notebook with an Intel Core i7 processor and is so far the third company to announce a Core i7 based notebook, although this one is not for your average notebook user.
The Qosmio X500 is targeting gamers with its Core i7-720QM processor (clocked at 2.8GHz with 6MB L2 cache), although the Nvidia GeForce GTS 250M graphics card with 1GB of dedicated graphics memory will have a hard time keeping up even with its desktop counter part with the same name, as it only has 96 shaders and a 128-bit memory interface, which places it in the mid-range category of desktop graphics cards.
Other features include a pair of 500GB 5,400rpm 2.5-inch hard drives for a total of 1TB of internal storage, 8GB of 1,066MHz DDR3 memory, the aforementioned 18.4-inch display with 1,920×1,080 resolution and a 6x BD-RE, that’s a Blu-ray drive which can both read, write and re-write Blu-ray discs (as long as you buy the right kind of discs).
The Qosmio X500 also has 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, and HDMI port, an Express Card slot, a finger print scanner, three USB 2.0 ports, a combo eSATA/USB port that also allows for devices such as your mobile phone or MP3 player to charge from it even when the notebook is powered off, a FireWire port, Gigabit Ethernet, a D-sub connector, a memory card reader and webcam. There’s even a space for a DisplayPort connector that wasn’t implemented, which is a bit of a shame.
The touch pad supports multi-touch, but we can’t say that we’re overly impressed by the keyboard on this rather large notebook, as the design is fairly cramped due to the inclusion of a numerical keypad. The speakers are Harman/Kardon branded as with some of Toshiba’s other Qosmio branded notebooks. There’s also a set of touch sensitive controls for media playback etc on the left hand side.
No pricing was revealed, nor any measurements or weights, but the Qosmio X500 should hit retail in the UK from late October. You can find the press release here
