Verdict: More suited to watching HD movies than playing games.

While laptops such as the Alienware and Dell are squarely aimed at gamers, others, such as the Sony VAIO and Toshiba Qosmio G40-10E with their more understated designs, are obviously aimed at a more mainstream audience.

With its off-white and dark grey colour scheme, the Toshiba seeks to offer something a little different to the usual silver and black look. The end result isn't totally convincing, and the Custom PC team was divided in its opinion: those members who thought the white looked dirty, and others who appreciated the change from the norm. Opinion converged, however, on the ugliness of the circular media controls and plasticky speaker grilles. However, aesthetics and design are notoriously subjective topics. If anything, the keyboard of the Qosmio has a better layout than the impressive Sony VAIO, with Toshiba managing to separate the function keys slightly from the rest of the board. In short, apart from the lack of a dedicated numberpad, the Qosmio's keyboard is as easy to use as a full-sized desktop keyboard.

The Qosmio is less impressive when it comes to gaming specs. The 2GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 is the slowest mobile CPU in this Labs test, and gaming performance promised to be further hindered by the 'all mouth and no trousers' GeForce 8600M GT. Much like their full-sized desktop equivalents, the mobile versions of the GeForce 86-series don't cut the mustard. The slow 4,200rpm disk also didn't bode well in terms of performance, but at least the 250GB capacity provides plenty of space for movies.

To the top right of the keyboard is a Harman Kardon logo, which indicates that this specialist audio company provides the Qosmio's speakers. These are situated at either side of the monitor, with two additional circular bass reflex drivers on the laptop base. The beefier-than-normal speakers complement the high-resolution 1,920 x 1,200 screen, and there's a very expensive HD-DVD drive, which is capable of burning HD-DVD-R discs and can play the latest film titles in the HD-DVD library. The inclusion of a Windows Media Centre remote confirms that this laptop is all about being an all-in-one media centre, rather than a dedicated gaming machine. Instead of a DVI port, the Qosmio sports an HDMI output for hooking up to an HDTV, along with S-Video out and a coaxial input for the analogue/digital TV tuner. Bizarrely, considering its media PC pretensions, there's no S/PDIF out for digital audio.

As we found with the other laptops in this test, the GeForce 8600M GT GPU isn't powerful enough to play Oblivion, Dirt or Company of Heroes at full detail settings. The Qosmio didn't return a playable frame rate in any of our game tests, so if you want to play modern titles, be prepared for some drastic compromises in graphics detail and a reduction in screen resolution to well below the native 1,920 x 1,200 of the TFT.

The laptop performs much better when it comes to playing films. The Harman Kardon speakers proved to be louder, with more bass, than any of the other laptop speakers on test, so the MGM lion at the start of our test film actually sounded like a lion; this is an astounding feat, considering the size of the drivers involved. The screen is good compared with many mid-range offerings, but against tough competition - especially from the Rock and Sony - the Toshiba's colours were a little watery, and contrast and brightness quickly drops out of the image when viewed from an angle.

There are five USB 2 ports dotted around the sides of the Qosmio and, while it doesn't have Bluetooth or FireWire, an ExpressCard slot and built-in WiFi partly compensate for this. The Qosmio's ultimate gadget, though, is the biometric fingerprint scanner, which can be used to prevent a Russian spy from booting up the laptop and stealing your data.

Despite some nice touches, such as the fingerprint scanner and Harman Kardon speakers, the Qosmio's specs are pretty underwhelming considering its hefty price tag of £1,899. The Qosmio's strongest ability is playing high-definition films, which sound good, thanks to the Harman Kardon speakers.

However, even if your main activity on a laptop is watching video, it's difficult to recommend the Qosmio when the Sony is faster, much better-looking and has a nicer screen. The situation is made worse for the Qosmio when you consider that the excellent Rock also has a better screen, although you're limited to a lower-resolution panel and DVD player.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

• Intel DG45FC - Motherboards
• Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD - Hard disks / storage
• OCZ Core Series 30GB - Hard disks / storage
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
• Multiwinia - Games