Design
There's nothing revolutionary about the X505's plastic design. It took the previous Qosmio X305-Q725 chassis and slapped on a fresh laminate made up of decorative patterns and colors. There's a fiery red tint trims on the edges of the system, and everything in between is covered in a piano black finish. It's a sanctuary for fingerprints and smudges, though, and lacks the clean look of metals. The Alienware M17x, on the other hand, is elegantly designed and covered completely with aluminum metals. At 10.6 pounds, the X505 isn't the heaviest desktop replacement laptop despite having one of the biggest screens at 18.4 inches. The Falcon Northwest Fragbook DRX (12 lbs) jams in more parts, while the M17x (12.5 lbs) brings a whole new meaning to the term, "heavy metal."

Few will complain about the gorgeous 18.4-inch screen. It's the biggest screen that'll actually sell on laptops these days (HP and Dell are both phasing out their 20-inch laptop behemoths) and at least an inch larger than the 17-inch ones found in the Falcon DRX and the Alienware M17x. The 1,920-by-1,080 resolution is ripe for high definition videos and detail-oriented 3D games. It has a mushy typing experience on the full size keyboard, perfect for those who have sensitive fingers. Next to the keyboard is a numeric keypad. The M17x has a firm backbone under its keyboard, so the keys bounce back a little quicker. Like the M17x, the X505 also has LED backlights under the keyboard—great for night vision, though it doesn't have the M17x's alternating color schemes.

The noise levels from clicking the mouse buttons were too high for my tastes, but the touchpad was pleasant to use. There are feather-touch multimedia keys that sit to the left of the keyboard, which were annoying at times (my left hand inadvertently triggered the volume keys numerous times). Worst of all, there are eight of these key and they all make this annoying beeping sound every time you brush against them. Keep in mind, though, this is a pre-production machine, so Toshiba can easily fix these sensitivity issues.

Features
The X505-Q850 includes a gamut of laptop features. Video-out ports alone include HDMI-Out, DisplayPort, and VGA-Out. If the 18.4-inch widescreen isn't big enough, you can use any of these ports to stream content to a larger display. After the HD DVD debacle, Toshiba has finally jumped on the Blu-ray wagon, as the X505 now includes a BD-ROM drive that doubles as dual layer DVD burner.

The laptop has support for up to two storage drives: This configuration comes with dual 400GB, 5400rpm drives; the production unit will come with a 64GB SSD, in which the operating system will reside, and a 320GB HDD will serve as additional storage. In contrast, the Fragbook DRX can support up to three drives. The pair of speakers is its only concession, given the original X305-Q725 came with four: two above the keyboard, two on the palm rests. They sound great nonetheless.