Toshiba 3D laptop hands on

If there’s one thing that’s almost inescapable in consumer electronics these days, it’s 3D in just about everything.  We had a chance to give Toshiba’s new Satellite A660-042 3D laptop a run for it’s money at the Toshiba-sponsored Primer Party, as part of NXNEi, ahead of it’s public release.  It’s the first major release of a 3D laptop in Canada, though others using the Nvidia 3D Vision technology are available at many independent and smaller chains.

The Toshiba Satellite A660-042 is definitely the kind of rig that a gamer can get behind, regardless of the 3D element.  Sharing much of it’s style sensibilities with the Qosimo laptops, the Satellite A660-042 isn’t aiming for the subdued elegance crowd, though it’s not quite so over the top.

Of course, this machine is all about the 3D, so how does it hold up?

Toshiba is using Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology, including an Nvidia GeForce GTS 350M,  to drive it’s displays, and I have to say that this is probably the best 3D I’ve seen in gaming so far.  There are a number of factors that drive how 3D is going to look, and one of them is relative distance to the screen.  When gaming on a laptop, the screen generally fills more of your vision than a big screen TV at recommended viewing distances, so it actually does a decent job of immersing you.

The other factor is resolution.  As I noticed in Sony’s PS3 3D games, if you have to make resolution sacrifices to the game, the 3D looks pretty horrible.  Motorstorm is a good example of that.  The two games on display at the Toshiba event were Blur and Batman: Arkham Asylum, both of which were running at full monitor resolution, from what I can tell.  The 3D quality between Blur and Motorstorm is enormous.  While Motorstorn got on my optic nerve within a minute, running numerous laps in Blur 3D was actually an enjoyable experience.  Batman looked equally as good, and once again, because of the smaller physical size of the screen, watching the characters in 3D didn’t seem to reduce their scale due to the terrarium effect, whereby the physical edges of the screen create the illusion that you’re watching miniatures, even on a 52″ screen.

Beyond gaming in 3D, the Toshiba A660-042 will also handle BluRay 3D, as well as a utility that creates 3D photo galleries.  No idea how either works, since I didn’t get a chance to try them out.  Another interesting feature is that the laptop will output 3D content to any HDTV that supports at least 120MHz refresh, meaning that you don’t have to spend money on a new set, if you’re willing to do the whole laptop-to-TV hook up deal.  You’ll also have to spring for extra glasses if you plan on sharing the 3D experience with others, to the tune of about $200 a pair, and for a laptop setup, that seems pretty steep.

Of course, if you’re spending the MSRP of $1899 on this beast, then an extra pair or two isn’t TOO far out of the equation.  Personally, I’m still not sold on3D, but this was an interesting take on it.

Get more details on the Satellite A660-042 here.