Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV650 Notebook Review
10.2 pounds, $2,399.99. Whoa, you sure this is a laptop man?! Wait, let’s not be quick to judge — read on.
Introducing the AV650, equiped with Toshiba’s much anticipated HD DVD drive (I know it’s written across the screen, but it’s worth mentioning again). Take that Mr. Sony notebook with built-in Blu-ray disc drive! Aside from the hi-tech drive, this Qosmio is pretty much similar to the AV600, except that this 17-inch TruBrite screened notebook comes with Intel Core Duo T2500 (2.0 GHz), the mighty NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 for its graphics subsystem, and a 200GB SATA 5400RPM hard-drive. No change to its 1GB of memory (upgradable to 4GB) though.
But from an objective viewpoint, its HD DVD drive is read-only, as opposed to the writable Blu-ray drive the competing Sony VAIO VGN-AR190G has. Further downsides would be the long delay after loading the drive and the fact that the HD DVD is wasted on such a relatively small screen. Hi-def needs a larger display for visual differences to really show. But if your still interested, handy user ratings and reviews are available at Circuit City.
The tests by Smart Company concluded that “the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV650 is an outstanding Media Center laptop, not an outstanding HD DVD player. If you want the laptop, save yourself $600 and purchase the AV600. HD is better watched on a big-screen TV anyway, and better suited for a set-top box.”