What’s new? What do we think? What do you need to know? New devices are being pitched at the education market all the time. INTERFACE Editor Greg Adams checks out a new name from an old player.

Dynabook Portégé X30L-G

Simply lifting this laptop out of the box went quite some way to proving it is indeed the ‘world’s lightest laptop’, as the promotional literature boldly claims. It really doesn’t weight much at all – 870 grams to be exact (compared to around the 1.2kg you’d find for other lightweight devices).

Measuring just 308.8mm wide by 211.6mm deep by 17.9mm thick, it’s modestly proportioned all round but don’t let that fool you into thinking it won’t be robust enough to survive the rough-and-tumble of everyday school life. It feels pretty sturdy, which is backed up with its passing the military-grade MIL-STD 810G certification – covering drops, temperature, dust, etc.

Black or blue?

At first glance, it may look black but is, in fact, blue … or actually Onyx Blue, with a little bit of an attractive sparkly finish.

The Dynabook Portégé X30L-G runs Windows and comes with a Sharp-made, Full High Definition (FHD) – 1920 x 1080P – 13.3-inch display, with touchscreen and HD webcam. Colours are reasonably bright and sharp, perfectly good for normal usage, and there’s a nice non-reflective finish.

Plenty inside and out

Inside is a 10th-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processor. This one came with an i5, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD (it can go up to 16GB and 512GB, respectively).

There are ports aplenty: a USB-C; full-size HDMI; 3.5mm headset jack, MicroSD card slot; two USB 3.0 ports and even a full-size RJ-45 Ethernet port (which was somewhat unexpected considering the size).

Keyboard and sounds

The keyboard’s got a very comfy feel, with backlighting and a responsive track pad, albeit quite small, plus a super-easy-to-use on/off button. Life from the four-cell Li-ion battery seemed solid. It’s rated for up to 9 hours 45 minutes and, judging from how it survived in our office, is perfectly capable of a full day’s work.

The stereo speakers deliver audio through grilles on the underside of the front. Sound was limited but good enough for general listening.

Warranty and price

There’s a 3-year warranty for peace of mind and the RRP is $2,068.50 (ex gst).

Overall, the X30L-G is well worth a look. Its headline selling point might be its weight, or lack of, but it’s a powerful, durable and good all-round device that offers far more than simply portability.

FOR MORE ON THE DYNABOOK PORTÉGÉ X30L-G GO TO ANZ.DYNABOOK.COM

ABOUT DYNABOOK

For Toshiba, now read Dynabook, whose laptop products have all been rebranded following Sharp’s acquisition of 80 per cent of Toshiba Client Solutions (essentially Toshiba’s laptop business) last year. Interestingly, Toshiba’s first notebook computer was the ‘Dynabook J-3100 SS001’, launched in 1989 – which is presumably where the name comes from.

© INTERFACE Magazine, June 2020

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