reviews TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED
8 MAXIMUMPC HOLIDAY 2007
W
hen we fi rst laid eyes on Toshiba’s
latest ultraportable, we were in
awe of its crazy-thin, crazy-light
profi le. In the past, such notebooks sac-
rifi ced performance to fi t into such tiny
shells. To combat this performance sag,
Toshiba paired its machine with Intel’s new
ultra-low-voltage Core 2 Duo.
We don’t generally go for road warrior
notebooks, but the R500 packs a whole
lot of power into a diminutive body. With a
1.2GHz Core 2 Duo U7600 under the hood,
there’s plenty of power for day-to-day
computing tasks. We wouldn’t run intensive
Photoshop scripts or edit video on this rig,
but for web browsing, word processing,
and spreadsheet use, it’s plenty peppy.
Toshiba fi lled the R500 with loads of fea-
tures. We love its full-size keyboard, 120GB
hard disk (a 64GB solid-state drive is option-
al), and 12.1-inch 1280x800 widescreen
display. But the best feature is the sunlight-
friendly transfl ective nature of the display,
which lets you disable the backlight when
you have another bright source of light.
Most other transfl ective displays we’ve
tested either don’t do well outside or look
terrible when you use them with a back-light—but the R500’s screen looks great
in either scenario. And we’re talking about
a number of outdoor environments, rang-
ing from direct sunlight to indirect sunlight
in the back of a car. You wouldn’t want to
watch a movie outside on a sunny day, but
the screen is perfect if you want to sneak
off to the pool during a “work at home” day.
Battery life, courtesy of the ultra-low-
voltage Intel processor was exemplary.
With the backlight set to medium, the R500
survived for three hours and 17 minutes
during our JFK movie-viewing test. With
the backlight at its lowest setting and Wi-Fi
disabled, we got more than fi ve hours of
actual runtime from this little guy.
Battery life is good, the screen looks
great, and it’s easy on your shoulder—
what’s not to love? While the R500’s perfor-
mance is praiseworthy for an ultraportable,
this notebook PC simply isn’t competitive
against any machine with discrete graph-
ics, even an ancient one. Of course, it’s
not reasonable to expect to replace your
desktop with an ultraportable, but we’d like
to see better 3D performance than what the
integrated Intel 945GM can crank out; the
R500 is as slow as molasses on a January
morning—it’s even too slow to run acceler-
ated casual games like Peggle.
The chassis is also a tad fl imsy. Pick
up the notebook and the entire thing
fl exes. Lift it while a DVD is spinning,
and you’ll hear the lovely sound of the
disc surface hitting the notebook and
scratching the hell out of the disc.But even with a few minor gotchas,
the R500 is one amazing ultraportable
notebook. For anyone who spends more
time on the road than behind a desk, it’s a
perfect traveling companion.
—WILL SMITHToshiba
Portege R500
Two inches thick and a tad over two pounds—
that’s an itsy-bitsy notebook!At just over three pounds (with the power brick) Toshiba’s R500 delivers
a ton of power in a tasty little package.$2,150, http://www.toshiba.comTOSHIBA PORTEGE R500THIN MINTS
So, so tiny. Transflective
screen rocks! Amazing bat-
tery life.
WAFER-THIN MINTS^9
More flexible than we usually
like our notebooks.UNDER THE HOOD
CPU Intel 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo U7600
RAM 1GB DDR2/667 (soldered to
mobo)
LAN 802.11g/Gigabit
HARD DRIVE 120GB Toshiba MK1237GSX
(5400 rpm)
OPTICAL Matsushita DVD-RAM/DVD+/-
RW Dual Layer (UJ-844S)
PORTS VGA, 3 USB, 1 FireWire, SD
card reader, PC card, audio
in/outVIDEOCARD Intel 945GM Express
DISPLAY 12.1-inch transfl ective (1280x800)
SOUNDCARD Realtek HD Audio
LAPTOP 2lbs, 6oz
WEIGHT
CARRY 3lbs, 1oz
WEIGHT
BOOT: 28 sec. DOWN: 3 sec.BRAINSBEAUTYAs we went to press, a new version
of MobileMark 2007 was released.
Unfortunately, due to technical
diffi culties, we were unable to get
reliable MobileMark 2007 results
for this laptop or our zero-point
system in time for this issue. We’ll
publish complete benchmarks
online at http://www.maximumpc.com/
articles/toshiba-r500 by the time you
read this.WHERE ARE THE BENCHMARKS?