Toshiba Portégé R500-10U review

Rory Reid CNET

Published: 18 Oct 2007

The Toshiba Portégé R500 is an ultraportable in the truest sense of the word. Whereas many notebooks are too bulky to be taken on the road, its lightweight chassis, long battery life and transflective screen make it the perfect travel companion.

There are five different R500 models, with the entry-level Portégé R500-106 costing £1,099 (ex. VAT). Our review sample, the top-end R500-10U, is available for £1,599 (ex. VAT).

Design
The first thing you'll notice about the Portégé R500 is how incredibly light it is. Our review sample, the R500-10U, tips the scales at just 779g. That's about as heavy as a mug of coffee, or a loaf of bread. Seriously, when you take this notebook out of its box, you'll think Toshiba sent you a dummy model.

The downside of the Portégé R500's light weight is its distinctly flimsy feel. For example, the wrist rest flexes under the lightest of pressure and makes a worrying cracking sound if you lean on it too hard. The screen is also extremely flexible, bending rather disconcertingly when you open or close it. A rugged notebook this is not.

Although it doesn't push the style envelope, the R500-10U is a good-looking notebook. It's somewhat minimalist, but still has a decent number of extra physical features. There's a fingerprint reader, three USB ports, VGA and FireWire, an SD card reader, a PC Card slot and an analogue volume wheel, which lets you adjust sound levels quickly.

Despite its petite dimensions, the R500-10U manages to incorporate a very comfortable keyboard. We had no problems touch typing with it, and found it easier to use in this respect than the slightly smaller Sony VAIO TZ series .

Features
One of the major reasons for the lightness of the Portégé R500-10U is the fact it uses a 64GB solid-state hard drive (SSD). Comprising a PCB and a few chips, an SSD weighs considerably less than a conventional metal-clad 2.5in. notebook hard drive. It also lacks any moving parts and is therefore less susceptible to physical damage and accidental data loss. The downside is that current implementations are both expensive and limited in capacity. The R500-10U is the only member of the R500 family that comes with an SSD, and you'll pay for it.

The R500-10U also lacks an optical drive, so you can't watch DVDs or make backups to an optical disc. The other four versions of the R500 come with an optical disc drive, which adds around 200g to the weight. If travel weight is all-important, you'll need to go for the top-end model.

At its heart, the R500 uses an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. This is the U7600 ultra-low-voltage model, which runs at a relatively pedestrian 1.2GHz. It's a dual-core chip so it's still quick enough to handle most tasks, but don't be surprised if it suffers the occasional slowdown when multitasking. The R500-10U comes with the maximum complement of 2GB of RAM as standard, which is required to make a decent job of running the installed Windows Vista Business.

One of the biggest issues faced by ultraportable notebook users is trying to see what's on-screen when using the system outdoors, or with a bright light source (such as an office window) to the rear. This is due to the extreme reflectivity of many of today's notebook displays. Toshiba gets around the issue by using a 12.1in. transflective display with a matte anti-glare coating that remains visible even in bright sunlight. There's also a button that lets you switch the LED backlight off when ambient light levels permit.

It's not a perfect solution as there's often insufficient ambient light to see the screen properly, so you end up using the internal backlight anyway. The LEDs also bleed noticeably, leaving a strip of light across the top and bottom edges of the screen. In addition, the vertical and horizontal viewing angles are poor, so the picture isn't clear unless you stand or sit in exactly the right position.

The R500 comes with 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as standard, but because it lacks a 3G SIM card slot, you can't connect to the internet outside of the office and wireless hotspots. Considering that this notebook is firmly aimed at mobile professionals, this is a regrettable omission that should have been added regardless of any extra weight. Of course, you can add a third-party 3G datacard via the system's PC Card slot, but this isn't a very elegant solution.

Given the R500's less than robust build quality, we're glad to see that it comes with a three-year international warranty. The software bundle isn't so generous, though. You get copies of InterVideo WinDVD, Norton Internet Security 2007 (with 90 days of free updates), Ulead DVD MovieWriter and a smattering of Toshiba software. The R500-10U, R500-10J and R500-106 come with Windows Vista Business, while the other two versions run XP Professional.

Performance
The Portégé R500-10U scored 2,756 in PCMark05, making it faster than the Sony VAIO TZ series, which scored 1,049. As a result, it's quick enough to handle most everyday tasks such as Web browsing, desktop publishing and office productivity. The R500's Li-ion battery lasted for 1 hour and 37 minutes in BatteryEater, which isn't bad considering this test basically runs the CPU at full tilt until the batteries die. Our sister site in the US CNET.com reported 3 hours and 48 minutes for a slightly less demanding (but still strenuous) DVD battery drain test. Toshiba claims that the R500 can last for up to 7.5 hours with normal use, although we suspect you may have to switch off the LED backlight and the wireless adapter to get anywhere near that figure.

Conclusion
If you want a notebook that's extremely light with good battery life, it's a toss-up between the Toshiba R500-10U and Sony's VAIO TZ series. The R500 isn't as solidly built as the VAIO TZ, and its battery life isn't as impressive. However, it's slightly faster, has a more comfortable keyboard and is about 400g lighter.

 

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