Toshiba Qosmio F750 3D laptop July 2011

The world's first glasses-free 3D laptop

3D technology has so far been confined mainly to TV, with the odd 3D laptop thrown in for good measure. Now, Toshiba has revealed the first 3D glasses-free laptop - the Qosmio F750 3D. We went hands-on to see whether this groundbreaking laptop could deliver the goods.

What is it?

Aimed at 3D film buffs and PC gamers, the 2.9kg Toshiba Qosmio F750 3D is one of the heavier laptops we've seen recently, especially considering that the 15.6-inch Full HD screen is not that large. Still, the laptop looks good. It sports a glossy red cover and carbon fibre effect finish on the inside palm rest that gives the laptop an appealing look overall.

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This is the Toshiba Qosmio F750 3D, the world's first class 3 3D laptop. Now, it's going to be quite an expensive machine when it launches in August. It will be around about thirteen hundred pounds. But for that you get a lot of computing power for your money. There's a Intel Core i7 processor inside.

It also has an nVidia 540 M 2 gigabyte graphics cards inside. So plenty of power for the latest games and for video editing. All for all, it's well specified. There are four USB ports, a single HDMI port, two Harman Kardon stereo speakers, a high capacity Blu-ray disc drive, which accepts discs up to 128 gigabytes, and a full HD, 15.6-inch screen.

It's also a nice looking model. It's got this fake carbon fiber chassis here. And on this particular model, a rather fetching red back. So, overall it's a very nice looking model. The main feature, of course, is the 3D effect. Now, there are a couple of apps in the market currently that have 3D, but they rely on glasses.

This one doesn't. It relies on the webcam here to pick up your eye position and the 3D effect will appear onscreen. There's quite a few Blue-ray movies now with 3D. We did test it just for a couple of minutes, and we found the quality wasn't great. A little bit blurry, a little bit tiring to watch, even after 2 minutes.

But perhaps over time your eyes get a bit more used to it. So, we reserved judgment just yet, but we look forward to testing it properly in the future. For details and full test results of lots of other laptops have a look at the website which.co.uk/laptops.

Does the 3D work?

The standout feature of this laptop, however, is the 3D screen with webcam eye-tracking. This recognises a face and follows the eyes, attempting to give a 3D image no matter where the eyes move to on-screen. No glasses are required, unlike some laptops such as the Acer Aspire 5945DG 3D.

We found that the technology lagged behind our movements a little making the picture blurry, taking a while to re-register with our eyesight as our eyes move around the screen. This makes the view slightly uncomfortable while re-adjusting to view the 3D image. The 3D viewing angle also isn't great. You don't have to be directly in front of the laptop, but the bigger the angle, the more the image degrades.

This laptop is also able to able to play both 2D and 3D simultaneously, so you can browse the internet in one window whilst having 3D content playing in another.

What else do I get?

The Qosmio F750 3D has an impressive specification. An Intel Core i7 2.0GHz processor, 6GB of RAM and a 2GB NVIDIA graphics card provide plenty of scope for the latest games and other intensive tasks such as video editing.

Sound is provided by Harman Kardon stereo speakers, enhanced by Dolby Advanced Audio technology. Although we weren't able to test the sound quality, we're rarely impressed by laptop speakers as they lack bass and can sometimes sound distorted at high volumes. We'll be interested to see if the F750 bucks this trend in our tests. The Toshiba NB520 is a netbook with Harman Kardon speakers.

As well as wi-fi, there's Bluetooth, an HDMI socket and four USB ports, one of which is USB 3.0 offering faster data transfer from peripherals such as USB 3.0 external hard disks.There's also a Blu-ray disc drive, accepting the new Blu-ray XL format with the ability to write discs up to 128GB.

When can I buy it?

The Toshiba Qosmio F750 3D will be available from August 2011. The price has yet to be announced, but we expect it to be around £1,300.

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