When Toshiba released the Portégé R500 in July 2007, the company billed it as the world’s lightest 12-inch notebook with an integrated optical drive. The tricked-out Portégé R500-S5007V is even lighter, and packs some welcome upgrades: a 128GB solid state drive, a transflective LED-backlit indoor/outdoor viewing display, and a Sleep and Charge USB port, for keeping mobile professionals productive on the go. The screen is still a bit dim indoors for our tastes—especially for a system that costs three grand—but you do get more than 5 hours of battery life in a strikingly slim design.
Design
Measuring 11.1 x 8.5 x 0.8 inches and weighing just 2.2 pounds (2 ounces lighter than its predecessor), the R500 remains one of the thinnest, lightest machines in its class—it’s even lighter than a number of mini-notebooks, including the 10-inch MSI Wind. Photographs just don’t do the system justice; when one picks up the featherweight machine, it feels like an empty shell, not a fully-functional notebook.
We liked the responsive, spill-resistant keyboard, but we weren’t enamored by its flex. It did, however, offer plenty of space for comfortable touch-typing. Above the keyboard on the right is the Toshiba Assist button, which launches a window that helps users manage wireless connections, passwords, and other vital PC functions. Next to it is the Toshiba Outdoor Display Switch, which makes it easier to view in sunlight. We had very little problems reading Web sites outdoors.
Below the keyboard is a roomy touchpad and a fingerprint reader that resides between two mushy mouse buttons. The machine offers plenty of connectivity options: three USB 2.0 (one of which uses Sleep and Charge technology to power gadgets when the system is off), VGA, FireWire, Ethernet, headphone, microphone, and a SD Card reader. It should be noted that the R500 features a PC Card slot (not ExpressCard), so if you have an ExpressCard mobile broadband card, you may have to fork over extra cash for an adapter.
Display and Audio
A streaming video of a Heroes episode looked decent on the widescreen 12.1-inch (1280 x 800-pixel resolution) display. However, the viewing angles on the R500 are narrow, especially vertically. The sounds that came from the monaural speaker were adequate for the on-screen action, albeit a bit tinny.
When we popped in our There Will Be Blood DVD while sitting in a park outdoors, we were impressed with the transflective LED display’s ability to minimize glare and keep images viewable in direct sunlight. We could see the special coating used to enhance outdoor viewing, but it’s more than a fair trade-off to be able to work or play without a washed-out screen.
Dell Laptops Starting at $449
