Toshiba Next with 3D Vision-Powered Gaming Laptop

It has hardly escaped anyone that 3D has been the focus of the entire consumer electronics industry for the last couple of years. Gaming is arguably the most successful and “mature” application for new stereoscopic technology. Nvidia launched its 3D Vision technology at CES 2009 and it looked great from day one, but it has taken a while for laptop manufacturers to put the tech to good use.

Acer was quick to launch a couple of 3D-capable laptops, but they were a bit too weak in the graphics department to qualify as gaming laptops. Asus, however, successfully adopted 3DVision in its G51J 3D laptop and coupled it with a graphics card powerful enough to cope with the latest games. Lenovo later followed – also with a decent graphics card that should be able to play most recent titles (remember that there’s some overhead for calculating 3D games).

Now the turn has come to Toshiba, which has just launched its Satellite A665 3D Edition, with what looks like very capable hardware. Just like Asus, Toshiba has also opted for an Nvidia 3D Vision kit with active shutter glasses to go along with the laptop’s 15-inch, 120Hz monitor. On the inside, the A665 is configurable with a quad-core Core i7 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce GTS 350M graphics card and a 12-cell (!) battery. Here are the rest of the specs for the Toshiba Satellite A665 3D Edition (some are most likely optional and come at a premium):

• 15.6-inch diagonal HD TruBrite™ LED Backlit widescreen display with 120Hz scan rate
• Intel Core i7-740QM quad core processor5 with TurboBoost technology
• NVIDIA GeForce GTS 350M with 1GB DDR3 discrete graphics memory
• NVIDIA 3D Vision™ kit with active shutter 3D glasses and emitter
• Blu-ray Disc™ Rewriteable (RE) and DVD SuperMulti drive with LabelFlash3
• Premium audio with harman/kardon? stereo speakers and Dolby Advanced Audio™
• Windows 7 Home Premium operating system
• 4GB DDR3 RAM
• 640GB hard drive
• 802.11b/g/n wireless⁹ and 10/100/1000 Ethernet
• Bluetooth? V2.1 + EDR (available on select models)
• Toshiba Hard Drive Impact Sensor
• TouchPad with Multi-touch Control
• 12-cell battery
• One eSATA/USB combo port with Toshiba USB Sleep-and-Charge and three USB 2.0 ports
• HDMI port
• Built-in Webcam with Toshiba Face Recognition
• Microphone input port with Toshiba Sleep-and-Music
• 5-in-1 Memory Card Reader and ExpressCard slots