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Toshiba's Qosmio F750: World's First Glassless 3D Notebook

By Leo Boon Yeow - 8 Jul 2011

Toshiba's Qosmio F750: World's First Glassless 3D Notebook

Glassless 3D Entertainment Machine

We had the opportunity to get our hands on one of the most powerful (and expensive) notebooks in the market, the Toshiba X770. It turns out that during this time Toshiba had its younger sibling the 15.6-inch F750 in gestation too. They were both revealed recently in an extravagant affair of smoke and lasers.

The display quality is very high, and provides for multiple viewing angles (as well as multiple Beyonces easily).

 

Featured as the world’s first glassless 3D notebook, the Toshiba Qosmio F750 appeared in its full glory right after a brief performance. Our first impression of the Qosmio F750 is its bright red top, which runs in sync with the tradition of Qosmio's fiery red colors. When we flipped open its lid, one thing we realized was the absence of chiclet-styled keys. With most of the industry going in that direction, it was strange as to why Toshiba chose the flushed keyboard route instead. We found that it still looks very pleasant, however, and don’t have any complaints about them.

Power and LAN ports are found at the back. The battery release latch is also there.

The biggest plus about the keyboard however was the inclusion of the number pad, something which is becoming common on 15.6-inch or larger notebooks. This means that the placement of the trackpad is slight off center so that you won’t have to worry about it while typing. And if the trackpad is still a concern, well there is a physical button for you to toggle the trackpad on and off.

The flush keyboard actually looks nice. The palm rest area is also decked out with an aesthetically pleasing carbon fiber pattern.

Another regular feature of Toshiba’s Qosmio series -- the Harman Kardon speakers -- are still there and they still sound as good as ever. Paige Shi, Toshiba’s Product Marketing Specialist proved it to us by blasting one of Beyoncé’s latest videos, much to our delight. Paige also pointed out something music lovers will appreciate -- the “Sleep-and-Music” feature. What it does is to allows users to play their music, even with the notebook turned off.

And if so far you’ve been impressed with the Qosmio F750, then you probably wouldn’t want to miss the hero feature -- glassless 3D. So how does it work? Well there is a camera that tracks your face, and adjusts the projection of the images according to the position of your eyes. While facial tracking and recognition is not new, it is the first time that a manufacturer saw fit to use it on a notebook.

The Toshiba F750 uses the HD webcam to track faces, and adjust the projection of the 3D image according.

We tried it, and it does work as advertised (check out our video). The only problem to this is that there is a physical limitation to this technology. Only one person can experience the full effects of the 3D technology because the camera can only track one person.

To fully optimize the 3D technology incorporated into the Qosmio F750, Toshiba also saw fit to deck the machine out with the Nvidia GeForce GT 540M with 3D Vision. Yes that’s a mouthful for a graphics accelerator. But one of its great party tricks is being able to convert existing 2D content into 3D.

It sounds great as a concept. In reality, the quality of the original image has to be down-sampled to project two images simultaneously. The end result is you may be able to watch 3D movies, but it won’t be as sharp. The Full-HD and CSV LED back-lit screen on the Qosmio F750 was exceptionally bright and sharp, so flaws of any kind were just that little bit more noticeable.

The 3D Toshiba Qosmio F750 is available for sale in August. If 3D isn’t your thing, you can always go for the 2D variant. We'll get the pricing details soon, so be sure to check out hardwarezone.com.sg often if you have your eye on one of these beauties.

It comes with the usual connectivity options, as well as a Blu-ray drive -- a must on the more premium notebooks these days.

The Qosmio F750 is actually one of the better looking gaming notebooks we've seen. It looks even better than its older sibling, the X770.

The back of the lid is what makes the Toshiba F750 look so good. It's bright red and covered in a "3D Wavelet" pattern.

LED lit touch sensitive buttons are always welcome. The multimedia control panel also features a "3D" button that turns 3D off or on.  

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