3D Vision Blog

You may have noticed that I was a bit absent from the blog the last 10 days and the reason for that was a critical hardware failiure of my work laptop, so I’ve had to get a new one install it and recover all the data and backups to it… and it took me some time, but now everything is back to normal. But more importantly, I was again looking for some portable laptops with 3D-capabilities, something that I’ve talked about not too long ago here on the blog. This time my idea was to actually get a portable 12 or 13 inch 3D-capable laptop with a 3D display, not a gaming solution, but something that can be used to preview 3D photos and 3D videos and of course to do some testing of different stereo 3D software on it as well. Unfortunately I still could not find a good solution that fits my requirements, probably they are too specific, or I’m in need of something that is still considered a way too niche product for anyone to make it. So in the end I’ve ended up getting a good 2D laptop, namely the HP EliteBook 2560p – a great portable, yet very powerful and feature rich system that pretty much offers all that I need, minus the stereoscopic 3D support. So again a pair of anaglyph 3D glasses gets packed in my laptop back for use whenever I need to preview something in stereo 3D or test something and I don’t have my stereoscopic 3D-capable desktop test systems available. Maybe I’ll have more luck the next time I’m replacing my laptop… hopefully by then there will be more 3D-capable portable solutions actually available on the market. For now most 3D-capable laptops are intended for gaming or multimedia use and go with a larger display size and powerful discrete graphics, instead of being designed for stereoscopic 3D use on the go… and we actually need a bit more diversity.

Maingear is the next company to announce a high-end 17-inch 3D-capable gaming laptop with support for 3D Vision that you can customize, similar to what Origin PC has recently done with their EON17-X3D 3D Vision Gaming Laptop. And much like the Origin PC’s solution, Maingear also uses the same bulky desktop replacement chassis made by Clevo – the Clevo P270WM, but the new thing here is that you can build the system to use the recently announced GeForce GTX 675M GPU – single or dual cards in SLI. Have in mind though that the GTX 675M is not based on the new Nvidia Kepler architecture and is not produced using the 28nm process, it is just a new revision of the Fermi architecture and the basic specifications are pretty much the same as the ones of GTX 580M. Alternatively you can go for a NVIDIA Quadro 5010M, but that will add quite a lot to the price and it is not an available option for the 3D model. You can of course decide if you want to get the 120Hz 3D-capable Full HD display or stick with a 60Hz model, the 120Hz is required if you plan on being able to play games in stereo 3D mode though and you can add a pair of 3D Vision 2 glasses. The minimum price you’d have to pay for a 3D-capable Maingear Titan 17 system with a pair of 3D vision glasses is $2878 USD with a single GTX 675M and the estimated shipping date is currently set for 4/29/2012 if you order it now.

- For more information about the 3D Vision Ready Maingear Titan 17 gaming laptop…

Toshiba has announced an upcoming 17.3-inch gaming laptop in the form of Qosmio X870 that will be equipped with a 120Hz LCD panel and support Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology. What is interesting about this announcement is the fact that Toshiba does not yet announce what kind of GPU the laptop will have inside, they just say “Next generation NVIDIA GPUs”, neither they say what will be the CPU inside, just “Latest Intel processors”. This information, along with the fact that the Toshiba Qosmio X870 should be available from Q2 2012 means just one thing, this laptop should most likely be getting the much anticipated and rumored a lot mobile Kepler graphics along with Intel’s new Ivy Bridge mobile platform…

Toshiba Qosmio X870 details:

- Latest Intel processors
- Next generation NVIDIA GPUs
- 17.3″ (43.9cm) TruBrite Full HD screen with LED backlighting (1920x1080p, 16:9, 5ms response time)
- Up to 2TB hard drive or hybrid drive SSD option
- Optional Blu-ray ROM or DVD SuperMulti drives
- Resolution+ upscaling technology
- 4x USB 3.0 including 2x Sleep-and-Charge USB
- HDMI, RGB connectivity
- Gigabit Ethernet LAN
- Bluetooth 4.0
- Dedicated headphone port & microphone port with Sleep-and-Music
- Full HD web camera with Face Recognition
- Red backlit tiled keyboard
- Large clickpad with multi-touch control
- Harman Kardon stereo speakers with Slip Stream technology, SRS Premium Sound 3D

And apart from using a 120Hz Full HD LCD panel, bundles with 3D Vision active shutter glasses, the new mobile gaming solution from Toshiba should also come with HDMI 1.4 support for use with 3D HDTVs and 2D to 3D conversion functionality for DVD movies. It has not been yet revealed if the Toshiba Qosmio X870 laptop will feature a second generation of 3D Vision glasses and if the display will be supporting the 3D Lightboost technology. And considering the fact that Toshiba did not actually have a lot to say about the most important specs of the laptop you’d think that they should’ve at least used the opportunity to talk about these features. So we’ll have to wait for the official release of the laptop to get the full details and meanwhile I’m still wondering what did Toshiba tell us all with this announcement, aside from the fact that they plan to release a new 3D Vision-ready gaming laptop… not much actually.