New Electronics Reviews

The Toshiba Portege R500 is the world’s thinnest notebook series and the first notebook to include a 7mm optical drive and a 12.1 inch widescreen with trans-reflective backlit LED screen. Toshiba claims that the Portege R500 has the world’s longest battery life amongst all other notebook class with a 12.1 inch widescreen.

The Toshiba Portege R500 is built with a 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 ultra-low voltage processor with a clock speed of 1.20GHz, 2MB L2 cache, and 533MHz FSB. The ultra-portable R500 is based on Mobile Intel 945 GMS Express chipset with integrated 950 Chipset Graphic Media Accelerator to manage the 12.1 inch 1280×800 LED backlight display. The R500 supports up to 2GB of DDR2 system memory and comes with 120GB 5400rpm SATA hard disk drive and an ultra-thin 7mm optical drive as a DVD burner.

Features that make the R500 impressive:

• Intel Wireless (802.11 a/g/n) WiFi Link

• Light and thin 7mm 8x DVD drive

• Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth

• Battery life lasting for around 4 hours

• Incredible start-up time

• Secure Digital and PCMCIA card slot

• VGA output

• IEEE 1394 Firewire Port

• Availability of Driver files and instruction manual for download at Toshiba’s website

• Fingerprint reader

• 3 years standard Warranty

Drawbacks:

• Absence of Mobile Broadband Antenna

• Lacks a 56K Modem

• Absence of Multifunction Card Reader

• While running multiple applications the R500 tends to slow down.

• No Webcam

Specifications:

• Genuine Windows Vista Business (32-bit version)

• Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 1.20GHz, 2MB L2, 533MHz FSB with 64-bit

• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 64MB

• 1024MB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM

• One SD memory slot available

• 120GB (5400 RPM); Serial-ATA hard disk drive

• 7mm, 8x DVD drive supporting 9 formats

• 12.1 inch diagonal widescreen with high-brightness display

• 1280 x 800 (WXGA) Trans-reflective backlit LED

• Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (802.11a/g/n)

• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

Summary:

The performance of Toshiba Portege R500 is very positive, while there are some minor concerns with build quality, absence of mobile broadband yet the R500 is remarkably well built for such a small ultra-portable notebook. There is no doubt that one can expect the R500 to provide solid business performance.

Labels: Computers