They say there's no such thing as too thin, but Toshiba's latest ultralight, the Portégé R500, may be taking things to Nicole Richie-esque extremes. The lightest notebook on the market, we thought the scale was broken when weighing the lithe machine. At a mere 2.4 pounds, you might be expecting a stripped-down, featureless laptop. Nope. The R500 includes both a DVD burner and a 12.1-inch screen. Other laptops, like the 2.7-pound Asus U1F, typically drop the optical drive and give you a tiny 11-inch LCD. Venturing outside? Punch a button in the corner to shift the LED-backlit screen into transflective mode, so you can actually read the display, even in direct sunlight. Best of all, Toshiba doesn't gouge you on the price. All this firepower runs just $2,149, making it the cheapest 12.1-inch notebook we've seen all year.
Review: Toshiba Portégé R500 S5002
They say there’s no such thing as too thin, but Toshiba’s latest ultralight, the Portégé R500, may be taking things to Nicole Richie-esque extremes. The lightest notebook on the market, we thought the scale was broken when weighing the lithe machine. At a mere 2.4 pounds, you might be expecting a stripped-down, featureless laptop. Nope. […]
All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
WIRED
Loaded with ports: USB (three!), PC Card, Firewire, and an SD card reader. Not exactly a powerhouse, it at least survived our gaming benchmarks-10.2 fps on Quake 4. Big hard drive (120GB) for a laptop of this size. Respectable battery life: 2 hours, 40 minutes.
TIRED
Ultra-tiny mouse buttons are just way, way too small. Somewhat dim screen. We'd prefer two adjacent USB ports, instead of haphazardly placing them around the sides.
- RAM Size: 1 GB
- Clock Rate: 1.2 GHz
- Hard Drive Size: 120 GB
