Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV650 Review

Laptop Magazine recently reviewed a laptop with a HD-DVD drive. It isn’t cheap or small, but it has some great features.

An HDMI port, which carries high-def audio and video, lets you output movies to an HDTV, but at a slightly lower-quality 1080i setting. Also, for three grand, we think Toshiba should have included this calbe in the box. Another caveat is that you can’t output HD-DVD movies in instant-on mode; you need to be running InterVideo’s WinDVD HD application in Windows.

In our tests, an HD-DVD version disc of The Bourne Supremacy looked stellar on the AV-650’s screen, even from wide viewing angles, as well as when outputted to an HDTV. By the time you read this, 30 HD-DVD movies will be available, and more are promised by the end of the summer.

Unfortunately, while you can watch HD-DVD discs, this drive is read-only. That means you can’t burn to high-capacity discs as you can with the pricier Sony VAIO AR Series, which sports a Blu-ray drive. With that system, you can back up to 50GB of data or burn high-definition movies you’ve captured with an HD camcorder, albeit at a very slow 1X speed.

You would think that having a HD-DVD drive would mean and instant five in the ratings, and you would almost be on the mark. They gave the Qosmio G35-AV650 a 4.5 out of 5. It lost the last half point for being expensive, heavy, and not being able to burn HD-DVD’s. Picky guys aren’t they? Well, it still got an editor’s choice badge.

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