When it comes to thin and light laptops, Dynabook, which was a Toshiba brand until it was bought by Sharp, has been a pioneer. The company continued that dynasty this week at CES, when it announced the Portégé X30L-G, a 1.92-pound ultrabook.
Coming in a dark shade of blue, it"s made out of magnesium alloy. In fact, if you"re going for something extraordinarily light like this, magnesium is your only bet. Aluminum is way too heavy for something this light.
Magnesium does tend to feel a bit plasticky, and the screen even feels sort of flexible when you try to bend it. But the Portégé X30L-G is tough, as it"s MIL-STD-810G certified. Above, there"s an image with 100 pounds of weight on top of it.
It"s crazy light though. Dynabook had the PC in a glass case where it was actually floating, using a magnet, as the Portégé X30L-G was simply light enough for that to work.
Fortunately, this PC doesn"t make compromises either. It includes Intel"s Comet Lake U processors, with Dynabook claiming that this is the lightest 13-inch laptop to include Intel"s 10th-gen CPUs. I"d agree, as the only PC I know of that"s actually lighter is another one that was announced at CES from Lenovo and NEC. The LAVIE Pro Mobile is in fact a 13-inch laptop that weighs in at 1.85 pounds, but it"s still using eighth-generation "Whiskey Lake" processors.
Here"s another thing that"s cool though. It has a full-size Ethernet port on there. In fact, Dynabook didn"t skimp on ports at all, packing plenty of USB ports as well. To be fair though, the USB Type-C port is USB 3.1 Gen 1.
The fingerprint sensor is located in the trackpad instead of the power button, and it does feel a bit awkward. If you"re using the trackpad, that might get in the way.
I really have to commend Dynabook here though, as 1.92 pounds is just wildly light, and it doesn"t make any meaningful sacrifices to get there. It uses Comet Lake instead of Ice Lake, and you"re going to continue to see that be the trend in business laptops, since Comet Lake vPro is coming this summer.
The Portégé X30L-G will be available in February starting at $1,599. It"s a business laptop, but if you want one, you can always pick it up from Amazon.