Toshiba Qosmio G20 review

Features
Our review model, the G20-108, ran a 1.73GHz Pentium M and came with 512MB of RAM, expandable to 2GB. This is overkill for office tasks and amateur video editing, but falls short of the high-speed gaming performance of other laptops that dare to be this big. Higher-spec models, the G20-105 and G20-114, are available for a premium.

Spreadsheets and graphics applications like Photoshop enjoy the generous real estate on the G20's 17-inch 1440x900-pixel WXGA+ screen, despite its reflectivity. The Nvidia GeForce 6600 card that drives the internal LCD can support an external monitor at resolutions of up to 2048x1536. This is especially useful because an external display may well be the only option available to you if you want to work on the G20 in daylight.

If the G20 has a specific raison d'etre, it's to function as a portable PVR. The built-in TV tuner and range of AV inputs and outputs on the G20 would make a BBC satellite van blush. Impressively, the G20 uses a D-video out port. This lets you feed a display output from the G20 into any Scart-equipped television set. Although this port should be a given for any Media Center PC, it's a rare treat. Usually we have to contend with the fuzzy output of S-video or use a flat-panel monitor that accepts a VGA input. Despite this sensible choice, there's no DVI connector on the Qosmio, making it impossible to output a pure digital signal to your display.

The G20's built-in DVD±R will burn movies or music onto a variety of optical formats. Touch-sensitive navigation buttons above the keyboard control the playback of regular audio CDs and DVDs through the Windows Media software without having to use the on-screen menus.

The two speakers on the G20 provide enough volume to make DVDs plausibly loud, but you won't have a heart attack when a Black Hawk tumbles out of the sky. For real thrills you'll need to hook up the G20 to an external hi-fi system. Alternatively, you can plug in headphones for a more intimate experience. Volume on the Qosmio G20 is controlled by a rotary dial to the right of the keyboard; as you spin this, a row of LEDs light up to indicate current levels. These reminded us of the front grill on the car in Knight Rider.

Performance
Battery life on the G20 is rated by Toshiba at 2 hours and we found performance in our informal tests matched this claim. Watching DVDs or running video-editing and other graphics applications that read extensively from the hard disk can reduce this run-time even further. Excel and Word ran well, as you'd expect from a near-2GHz Pentium M, and we were also able to play back 1080i high-definition Windows media videos onto a 40-inch plasma TV with no problems.

Giving the G20 a little more to chew on exposed the limitations of the Nvidia GeForce 6600 card. Battlefield 2, a recent and fairly demanding multiplayer game, ran at a playable rate in extremely low graphics modes, but anything above the minimum settings caused the G20 to stutter and drop swathes of frames. The G20 definitely punches below its weight when it comes to gaming, but we would expect the higher-spec options to cope proportionately better. 

PVR functionality on the G20 is excellent -- it does everything we've come to expect from desktop Media Centers with the added bonus of a dedicated Scart output for a clearer TV picture. Once you've attached an aerial and tuned in channels, Windows XP Media Center Edition lets you schedule and record programmes to the internal hard disk for playback later.

Although the G20's size and weight makes it impractical as a truly portable laptop, this wasn't what overwhelmingly disappointed us. Instead, it's the G20's glary screen that breaks the deal here. It's of benefit only in one scenario -- an extremely dark room -- and in all others, it's a distraction. In a strip-lit office, the glare makes using the G20 such a frustrating experience that we wonder why the decision was made not to use a standard LCD. These glossy LCDs might look good in the showroom, but in general use they're impractical and distracting. In this case it undermines what is otherwise a very capable PVR.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide