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Written by Sasa Pantelic
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Friday, 05 December 2008 |
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Page 1 of 2  Toshiba’s trump card in area of affordable gaming notebooks is model F50. Although Toshiba’s X300 notebook series is meant for gamers and F50 doesn’t belong to that series, it does have certain qualities that can attract low-budget gamers that want to buy notebook. Despite the fact that Toshiba notebooks from A300 , P300 and F50 series have different looks, they share some design elements that Toshiba calls Fusion design.
In case of F50 model that design is enriched with Vibe design elements. Main difference can be seen if you observe stripes on notebook cover. On A300 model those grey stripes are horizontal while on model F50 are vertical. On F50 model those lines are strait except their endings that are curved. That wavy look can be observed on many details and that is main characteristics of Vide design. We actually liked that “new” look but some of our colleagues didn’t like it as much as we do, so there’s no accounting for tastes. Although we liked new design elements we didn’t like piano finish on all surfaces. Thanks to all these design elements F50 notebook series has certain futuristic looks. If you got impression that this model is thin and slick we must tell you that you are in delusion. Even we were surprised by thickness of this model. This charming chubby notebook can brag with lot of details but slim figure is not one of them.
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After powering up this notebook you will witness very nice light show. Numerous white light emitting diodes come to life creating interesting effect. Some of those diodes are actually touch sensitive buttons that have functions of multimedia controls. Like on A300 model there is one LE diode above touch pad that helps finding it in the dark (touchpad, not the notebook itself). If you are not a fan of those kind of things you can always turn lights off. Of course multimedia buttons will continue to function but will not be illuminated. Glittery keyboard is very attractive especially to ladies, but this type of design has two flaws. First is obvious: it is magnet for fingerprints, but the second one is not that obvious. If you are not good in blind typing and you need to look at keys while typing, there will be situations when light will reflect from keys in a way that it won’t be possible to see marks on each key. Of course you can always move a notebook or head to see markings clearly. This fault is not present only on Qosmio F50 model but on all notebooks that have piano finish keyboard keys. Bending of keyboard is noticeable in the middle but that won’t distract you from typing. Touchpad and its keys are one of the best that we saw so far on any notebook. “Chromed” volume wheel is one of interesting details on Toshiba Qosmio F50. It is located left from touch pad and, of course, it is illuminated.
When we looked at display we were disappointed. Noticeable reflection, average viewing angles and low resolution are not attributes of display on notebook that costs more than 1000€. But then we looked under the hood and understood why Toshiba integrated this kind of display in this model. Newest Intel platform, powerful graphics card, top quality speakers (Harman Kardon) with subwoofer … To cut the long story short: great multimedia system with accentuated gaming fragrance.
On some notebooks we couldn’t make nVIDIA graphics cards to work in full potential while they were working on battery power, while on Qosmio F50 we couldn’t make GeForce 9700M GTS to lower frequencies in same situation. We tried everything from selecting every power profile to creating our own profile and nothing resulted in a way we wanted to. This, of course, resulted in lower autonomy results but this is not a big problem because Qosmio F50 isn’t meant to be used as mobile workstation for long time period.
One of the problems on this model can be large amount of preinstalled applications. Boot up takes too long and large amount of applications started during boot up process are in most cases unnecessary. So our suggestion, if you decide to buy this model, is to spend some time uninstalling unnecessary software. This can result in faster boot up process and better stability and performances of notebook.
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