Toshiba Qosmio E10 review

Toshiba's Qosmio E10 is the first notebook we've seen to use Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Using Media Center, the E10 can show and record television using its built-in tuner, play DVDs and allow you to view pictures on its LCD or a connected TV.

The E10 comes with a Media Center remote control, an infrared output for controlling a set-top box, an input for a standard television aerial and a cable for connecting to a TV via SCART. Media Center can download TV schedules from the internet and the E10 has plenty of internet connection options thanks to a built-in modem, 802.11g wireless networking and an Ethernet connector.

It takes a little time to set up properly, but after a few minutes we were able to play DVDs and music, watch TV and record programmes to the hard disk. The E10's 80GB hard disk is larger than those fitted in most notebooks, but it won't hold nearly as much video as desktop PCs.

Media Center is at its most useful when paired with a decent TV set, but the E10 has an extremely bright and equally reflective LCD screen, which is great for watching DVDs. We were surprised that Toshiba didn't choose a widescreen display and even more surprised that our review model had a dead pixel in its screen that shone bright blue during the dark sequences of our test DVD. The hardware volume control also seems a bad choice, as using a hardware dial means that the volume cannot always be turned up effectively using the remote control.

As well as Media Center, the E10 has two quick-start modes that allow you to watch TV or play DVDs without booting up Windows. These work well enough, but in most cases you're better off using the superior Media Center interface.

The E10 is built around a 1.7GHz Pentium M processor, 512MB of RAM and an nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200 graphics adaptor. With a score of 86 in our Computer Shopper benchmark it's got all the power you need for office tasks, surfing the web and even some smaller video-editing tasks. However, it limped through our Doom 3 test averaging 3.3fps, so if you want to play games you'd better look elsewhere. More importantly, it also performed badly in the battery life tests, managing only 116 minutes.

The Qosmio E10 has an identity crisis. Centrino notebooks are at their best when on the go, and Media Centers when permanently tethered to a television. The E10 doesn't fill either role particularly well. If you're in the market for a Media Center notebook this will do everything you want, but if not there are far better computers available.