Toshiba Qosmio G30 review

It's not perfect though, as you'd expect with any format taking its first tentative steps. The HD drive will play your films with no problems, but there are many more advanced features of HD-DVD that it won't support, such as the Picture-in-Picture modes and planned internet interactivity. It's also not one of the fastest at burning DVDs, compared with the latest laptop drives.

Happily for all, there are no compromises elsewhere in the Qosmio G30. Inside sits one of Intel's powerful yet efficient Core Duo processors and 1GB of memory, which helped it complete our 2D benchmarks 27% faster than the reference desktop PC. This demonstrates that corners certainly haven't been cut in order to fit the new drive into the specification.

This is a Media Center laptop, so gaming isn't a priority, but the Qosmio features the mobile version of nVidia's superb 7600 series graphics chip, the GeForce Go 7600. If you want to play the latest games you'll need to lower the resolution, though - in Call of Duty 2 at our standard 1280 x 1024 settings, it chugged through at 17fps. Lowering that to 1024 x 768 boosted it to 26fps, so reducing a few of the detail settings from there should see you through to a playable frame rate.

Impressive features

The Qosmio weighs an intimidating 4.8kg, so it isn't really designed for life on the go. This being the case, we were surprised when this laptop lasted for three hours and 19 minutes in our light-use test - a good result. And it took only two hours to charge up the battery from the mains - again, a good result. In our DVD battery rundown test the Qosmio lasted for just over two hours, enough to get you through most movies.

As you'd expect, the Qosmio has integrated Wi-Fi, so you can browse the internet away from your desk. There's also a six-in-one media card reader, so your photos can be transferred regardless of what camera you use, and Bluetooth serves the same purpose for most modern mobile phones. The keyboard is well laid out and comfortable. If we have a complaint it's that it doesn't use the full width available. We'd prefer to have seen a number pad next to the standard keys, for example - and the shiny finish around it very quickly picks up unsightly fingerprints.

The Toshiba Qosmio G30 is undoubtedly a groundbreaking laptop - there's currently no other way to play HD-DVDs in the UK. By the time the first discs arrive though, living room HD-DVD players should be available, so there's no need to rush out and buy this laptop just to plug it into your TV.

If what you really want is a Media Center laptop, and the HD-DVD support is just a bonus, you won't find one more stylish, powerful and future-proof than this. Unless you're absolutely desperate to buy now, however, we recommend waiting until the price drops a little.