The Toshiba Qosmio G30 places itself in the same category of Sony’s Blu-Ray notebook the VAIO AR11S. Indeed, the Toshiba Qosmio G30 is a main competitor to Sony’s Blu-Ray notebook, and is also the notebook’s nemesis in terms of High Definition format. As we have discussed already in this article, the main focus of this system is not on portability, but instead on being an all-in-one multimedia solution. This focus places the Toshiba G30 in a position to being able to find a place in many atmospheres and not just being cooped up in a living room.

In terms of construction, the notebook impressed us with its tough and high quality plastic assembly. The keyboard region was also firmly built and had minimal bending when we placed pressure on it. The LCD panel was also high quality and had excellent color saturation and a good level of brightness and contrast.

From the aesthetics point of view, we honestly cannot say that the design made us scream “innovation” or “what a beauty.” Toshiba did add a number of unique and cool looking design features, and although the result wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t specifically a winner.

Our performance analyses have shown the Qosmio G30 as an excellent platform. For a system with a 17 inch screen, the battery life strangely, moreover impressively, came in to be beyond two hours.

The point that hurts this system the most, ironically, is what should actually have been its strongest point. We are ofcourse talking about HD-DVD. We conducted a number of tests using a number of popular HD-DVD titles, in particular “The Bourne Supremacy” and “Training Day.” During playback of the movies, as the pictures above are evidence to, usage of both cores shot up significantly. In more complex scenes, we experienced very noticeable drops in frame rates that could be plainly seen. During these complex scenes, image quality was still perfect, however, because of this FPS was compromised.

The main cause of this problem was that the preinstalled ForceWare drivers on the Qosmio G30 were out of date, and so naturally we tried to install the most recent drivers. Although these drivers were recognized and installed correctly, we had trouble playing HD-DVD movies using the program “WinDVD HD.” Currently, there are no updates for WinDVD HD, and at the moment it is the only official HD playback program that comes with Toshiba systems.

The Toshiba Qosmio G30 is available for around $2,999. We find it hard to actually suggest buying the Qosmio G30. The notebook is a strong performer and is packed with features, however, to us the main reason we would buy this laptop is for High Definition content, and from our tests, we believe that the performance the laptop offers for HD content just does not justify the price.