Pros: large screen, blu-ray drive, new AMD APU, and aluminum finish.
Cons: Commonly misadvertised as having dedicated M series Radeon GPU instead of the actual included lowly G-series integrated graphics. Turbo-mode issues.
CPU/APU: AMD A6 3400 APU
Memory: 6gb (4gb+2gb) DDR3 PC-10600 5-5-5-15 Samsung memory modules
HDD: Hitachi Travelstar 640Gb 5400rpm
GPU: AMD 6500M Series Radeon HD 6520M
Optical Drive: Matsushita BD-rom/DVD-RW
Display: 17.3" 1600x900 TFT
Wireless: 802.11b/g/n
Well the notebook arrived yesterday afternoon (Office Depot L775D-S7226). Out of the box I can report that it is cosmetically and functionally identical as the Wal-Mart model counterpart (L775D-S7206) that I purchased and had a defective HDD upon using for the first time (Frankly it acted like Toshiba had not installed any OS at all, and was probably the culprit).
The Brushed dark blue aluminum finish is quite nice cosmetically and thermally cold to the touch. Some people might find the cold aluminum as a minus, but I enjoy it. Overall the finish attracts lots of fingerprints and dust, but that surely varies if you're in a dust-free environment. Also at 6.2lbs, the L775D-S7226 is quite light in weight for a 17" light gaming DTR.
The keyboard is full size, and and the keys are glossy black with white letters. The keyboard is not backlit, which would have been the perfect finishing touch if available.
The 17.3" TFT display has decent colors, but black level needs to be slightly increased to show calibrated shadow detail. The Viewing angles on this panel are unfortunately *poor* at best.
Build Quality - As I said the notebook is quite light, so as expected the chassis can't be that solid. The LCD panel has easy flex, however the keyboard doesn't and feels fairly solid which is a welcome feature on a low-priced notebook model.
Sound: Realtek ALC269 HD Audio. No-name speakers, but they function and do not sound gritty. Volume level is a little lower than I'd like, but most notebook speakers have low output. You could not enjoy a movie without first eliminating white noise from a close-by table fan etc.
CPU Performance - Things just keep going downhill. Under no instance even including stress tests, will the A6 kick up to 2.3Ghz Turbo mode. Seems like it's permanently locked at 1.4Ghz. This is probably a conflicting issue with all the Toshiba bloatware. Even at Quad-core, this machine seems as slow as my mother's netbook. Toshiba intertwines drivers into certain mandatory bloatware software, and I couldn't achieve desired advertised performance no matter how much I uninstalled.
Wireless: The built-n 802.11n wireless adapter performs well, as long as you only download one thing at a time. For some unknown reason, if two applications or even if you just have two active downloads occurring at once, You will be waiting at literally dial up speeds. I have never experienced this before on any notebook/netbook, regardless of being a/b/g or n.
Memory performance - The one bright side, the stock Samsung DDR3 PC3-10600 Samsung modules worked flawlessly, and benched sightly better at both read/write MB/s speeds than recommended QVL Kingston memory.
GPU performance - Absolute FAIL. The GPU is not in fact a 6250M. As a matter of fact, I have come to find no such 6500M model exists (Only 6530, 6550, & 6570). The GPU is just the basic integrated 6520G that all A6 3400s have. I would feel stupid about this, but there are other notebooks out with the A Series AMD APUs with integrated graphics that ALSO have additional dedicated M graphics, so I just believed that Office Depot advertised the product accurately. Not to mention I was also excited to Crossfire the Integrated with the dedicated, which you can in fact do.
There is no dedicated 6500M series GPU in the notebook despite advertised, just the lowly integrated 6520G that can barely come close to running 3 year old games at *almost* 30fps at lowest global and application settings. If you're a gamer, I assume that only light MMOs will play well.
Final summary:
At a discount price of $599, I am simply not pleased with this notebook for obvious reasons. The LCD panel doesn't perform well for modern standards,
the CPU won't run at full Turbo speed, and the physical GPU advertised was a lie and doesn't exist. I'd say this notebook runs like an OLD Dual-Core with a faulty wireless adapter.
The notebook handles 2D video performance for Blu-Ray playback fluidly with no skips or hiccups on a 17" display, and that's the ONLY reason to purchase it.
It's essentially just a stable 17" Blu-ray player at a sub-par 1600x900 native resolution with the added bonus of bad viewing angles.
Conclusion:
Unless you want a bad portable 17" Blu-ray player, Avoid like the plague.
Shame on you, Toshiba. Shame on you.
Memory: 6gb (4gb+2gb) DDR3 PC-10600 5-5-5-15 Samsung memory modules
HDD: Hitachi Travelstar 640Gb 5400rpm
GPU: AMD 6500M Series Radeon HD 6520M
Optical Drive: Matsushita BD-rom/DVD-RW
Display: 17.3" 1600x900 TFT
Wireless: 802.11b/g/n
Well the notebook arrived yesterday afternoon (Office Depot L775D-S7226). Out of the box I can report that it is cosmetically and functionally identical as the Wal-Mart model counterpart (L775D-S7206) that I purchased and had a defective HDD upon using for the first time (Frankly it acted like Toshiba had not installed any OS at all, and was probably the culprit).
The Brushed dark blue aluminum finish is quite nice cosmetically and thermally cold to the touch. Some people might find the cold aluminum as a minus, but I enjoy it. Overall the finish attracts lots of fingerprints and dust, but that surely varies if you're in a dust-free environment. Also at 6.2lbs, the L775D-S7226 is quite light in weight for a 17" light gaming DTR.
The keyboard is full size, and and the keys are glossy black with white letters. The keyboard is not backlit, which would have been the perfect finishing touch if available.
The 17.3" TFT display has decent colors, but black level needs to be slightly increased to show calibrated shadow detail. The Viewing angles on this panel are unfortunately *poor* at best.
Build Quality - As I said the notebook is quite light, so as expected the chassis can't be that solid. The LCD panel has easy flex, however the keyboard doesn't and feels fairly solid which is a welcome feature on a low-priced notebook model.
Sound: Realtek ALC269 HD Audio. No-name speakers, but they function and do not sound gritty. Volume level is a little lower than I'd like, but most notebook speakers have low output. You could not enjoy a movie without first eliminating white noise from a close-by table fan etc.
CPU Performance - Things just keep going downhill. Under no instance even including stress tests, will the A6 kick up to 2.3Ghz Turbo mode. Seems like it's permanently locked at 1.4Ghz. This is probably a conflicting issue with all the Toshiba bloatware. Even at Quad-core, this machine seems as slow as my mother's netbook. Toshiba intertwines drivers into certain mandatory bloatware software, and I couldn't achieve desired advertised performance no matter how much I uninstalled.
Wireless: The built-n 802.11n wireless adapter performs well, as long as you only download one thing at a time. For some unknown reason, if two applications or even if you just have two active downloads occurring at once, You will be waiting at literally dial up speeds. I have never experienced this before on any notebook/netbook, regardless of being a/b/g or n.
Memory performance - The one bright side, the stock Samsung DDR3 PC3-10600 Samsung modules worked flawlessly, and benched sightly better at both read/write MB/s speeds than recommended QVL Kingston memory.
GPU performance - Absolute FAIL. The GPU is not in fact a 6250M. As a matter of fact, I have come to find no such 6500M model exists (Only 6530, 6550, & 6570). The GPU is just the basic integrated 6520G that all A6 3400s have. I would feel stupid about this, but there are other notebooks out with the A Series AMD APUs with integrated graphics that ALSO have additional dedicated M graphics, so I just believed that Office Depot advertised the product accurately. Not to mention I was also excited to Crossfire the Integrated with the dedicated, which you can in fact do.
There is no dedicated 6500M series GPU in the notebook despite advertised, just the lowly integrated 6520G that can barely come close to running 3 year old games at *almost* 30fps at lowest global and application settings. If you're a gamer, I assume that only light MMOs will play well.
Final summary:
At a discount price of $599, I am simply not pleased with this notebook for obvious reasons. The LCD panel doesn't perform well for modern standards,
the CPU won't run at full Turbo speed, and the physical GPU advertised was a lie and doesn't exist. I'd say this notebook runs like an OLD Dual-Core with a faulty wireless adapter.
The notebook handles 2D video performance for Blu-Ray playback fluidly with no skips or hiccups on a 17" display, and that's the ONLY reason to purchase it.
It's essentially just a stable 17" Blu-ray player at a sub-par 1600x900 native resolution with the added bonus of bad viewing angles.
Conclusion:
Unless you want a bad portable 17" Blu-ray player, Avoid like the plague.
Shame on you, Toshiba. Shame on you.
I bought the L755d-s7226 to replace an ailing 5 year old Lenovo duo2 core business laptop which I liked very much including a matte surface screen and a touchpad with buttons above and below the pad. Both of those features are missing on the Toshiba and apparently every other value and higher end laptop. I miss them greatly. I am not happy with the hard to push misplaced buttons on the Toshiba, the shiny glaring screen surface, and slower (by 20-30 second) startup of Windows 7 (rather than Windows XP), and the less than robust speaker system. But these problems also exist on similar but highly rated laptops in the value class of laptops. Another area of discussion has been the A6-3400M processor of this model and some ignorance of the architecture of this processor but this has not prevented higher ratings of other brands that have the same processor. This is a processor fast enough for most mainstream tasks and programs with the added boost for higher intensity software. I have successfully used CS5 and Skyrim on this laptop with few problems albeit not at the highest resolutions. Commercial photographers and intense gamers should not be using a laptop anyway - this is a computer for the rest of us. I can also agree that Toshiba (and many others) rarely provide excellent customer care or truly assist the customer improve performance of the product they have purchased. Perhaps rather than rating Toshiba so low, we should lower rating of many of its similarly equipped competitors. I would also appreciate some help from Toshiba about the product I did buy; how about a different CPU to give that little pep I am missing.