Toshiba's flagship Qosmio media center line suffered a decline over the past couple of years. Although the first three Qosmios were awarded Editors' Choices, my enthusiasm for the line waned for lack of significant advances. As other product lines slimmed down and moved on, the 10-pound, $3,000 Qosmio was left behind. (The demise of the HD DVD format didn't help matters.) Toshiba has seemingly mended its ways with the Toshiba Qosmio G55-Q802 ($1,549.99 list). It has narrowed its audience focus from the general public to video-editing enthusiasts—beginner or professional. With that focus in mind, Toshiba has included its first cell processor, also known as Toshiba's Quad Core HD processor, meant specifically to speed up certain video tasks. The price and unique features are compelling enough to draw in a niche crowd.

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The Qosmio's design is slowly evolving into something worthy of bearing the Qosmio name. The drab-looking G35-AV660 of 2006 gave way to the G45-AV680 of 2007, which looked like a giant black-and-white cookie. This year's model exhibits a design flair similar to that of the Satellite line. It uses a laminate technique (marketed as its "Fusion" finish) in which linear patterns are embedded beneath a glossy coating. The lid is grayish silver, and it's as attractive as the HP HDX18t's metallic finish. The interiors of both the G55 and the HDX18t, however, are as distracting as they are pretty. The G55's black interior is prone to fingerprints and smudges, while the HDX18t's chrome one reflects light like a mirror. Obesity is an issue that has plagued the Qosmio line for years. The G55 tips the scales at 10.5 pounds, almost two pounds heavier than its competitors—the HDX18t is 8.7 pounds, and the Acer Aspire 8920G is 8.8 pounds—and it's bulky as well. At 1.8 inches thick it's about half an inch thicker too.

The HDX18t and the Aspire 8920G are worthy adversaries because of what they have in common with the G55: a monstrous 18.4-inch widescreen. The G55's move from a 17-inch form factor (16:10 aspect ratio) to an 18.4-inch one (16:9) typifies the developing trend of screens losing height and gaining width. The wider screens are more efficient and more cost-effective to make, and they are a natural fit for films and HD content. While bright and pleasant to look at, the G55's 1,680-by-945 resolution isn't as enhanced as the Aspire 8920G's and HDX18t's 1,920-by-1,080 (or 1080p) screens. Toshiba likely made this choice to save costs: The G55 is the most affordable of the trio by several hundred dollars. And at 720p the screen is sharp enough for the average video editor.

The G55's features aren't as over-the-top as the HDX18t's (Blu-ray, 1080p resolution, ATSC TV tuner), but it does have its own innovations to tout. Toshiba isn't ready to adopt the Blu-ray format yet; it's still licking its wounds from the demise of HD DVD. Instead, Toshiba's DVD decoder software lets you upconvert a standard-definition movie into something that's "HD quality." That's not quite the same as 1080p, but a DVD film like No Country for Old Men does look better in enhanced mode. Activating this feature is as simple as clicking on the "upconvert" button on the software DVD player.

Another hip feature is Toshiba's Gesture Controller. With the aid of the 1.3-megapixel webcam, you can navigate and launch applications by using simple hand movements. For instance, forming a fist initiates cursor movement, while raising your thumb substitutes for a left click of a mouse. This is less impressive in reality than it sounds: Half the time I couldn't get these functions to work, so I'd resort to mousing—I'd rather use my fingers, anyway.

What drives these unique functions is the Toshiba Quad Core HD. No, it's not an Intel or AMD quad-core processor, but rather a secondary cell processor that lives on the same motherboard as the main CPU, similar to the one in the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3). (The Quad Core HD processor can also be found in standalone Toshiba-branded DVD players and soon will be in HDTVs.) Its role is limited to processing for the upconvert feature, the Gesture Controller, and Ulead's MovieFactory. You cannot reap its benefits with any other application, such as Adobe Photoshop CS3, games, or MS Office. In fact, its most compelling use is in transcoding an HD video to some other format, using MovieFactory. Toshiba is claiming an impressive transcode speed of up to 11 times that of running this task without a cell processor. (There's even a neat little Microsoft Vista Sidebar application that lets you monitor the activity of the processor and all four of its cores.)

The remaining features aren't as plentiful as in the previous Qosmio—remember, the price is lower—but there should be enough to keep you satisfied. There are four USB ports, with one doubling as an eSATA port (for external hard drives). It doesn't have a built-in ATSC TV tuner, as do the HDX18t and the ASUS M70Sa-X2. It does, however, come with a built-in FM tuner, which is unique among laptops—though the ubiquity of Internet radio stations keeps this from being a game changer. The G55 comes with half a terabyte's worth of storage split between dual 250GB hard drives. The ASUS M70Sa-X2 has a full terabyte of storage. Sound quality is one area where the Qosmio shines. Its Dolby Surround Sound system and Harman Kardon speakers were the most impressive in the group on our tests.

The cell processor is good only for the gesture controller, the upconvert capabilities, and encoding and transcoding with MovieFactory. Every other task is handled by the main CPU, a 2.0-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 that is quite versatile. It's not as speedy as the ones in the HDX18t and the 8920G, but its relatively lower price helps keep the G55's cost down, and has the advantage of being energy efficient. The G55 bundles 4GB of memory, of which Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit can take full advantage. I can't provide SYSmark 2007 Preview (performance) and MobileMark 2007 (battery life) numbers, however, because of the benchmarks' compatibility issues with 64-bit operating systems. (BAPCo, the maker of SYSmark and MobileMark, is preparing a patch to address this problem.) Because the G55 has a larger battery than that of the HDX18t and runs a more energy-efficient processor, I surmise that battery life should go well past the 3-hour mark. Its video encoding score of 1 minute 16 seconds wasn't as fast as the HDX18t's 57 seconds or the ASUS M70Sa-X2's 1:03. (The G55 is optimized for MovieFactory, not Windows Media Encoder, which I use for testing.) Its Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CineBench R10 scores also trailed those of the HDX18t and the ASUS M70Sa-X2.

The Toshiba Qosmio G55-Q802 is essentially a six-core system comprising two different processors. Its performance isn't up to its number of cores, as its Quad Core HD processor kicks in only for certain tasks. Still, Toshiba has resisted driving up prices while still including innovative little features like the Gesture Controller, upconverting, and the FM tuner. Overall it's a good system, one that video editors—tired of waiting hours to transcode their HD movies—will appreciate most.

Check out the Toshiba Qosmio G55-Q802's performance test results.

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