The Best Ultralight Laptops
We lab-tested 3-pound laptops to find which one gives you the most machine in an ultralight package. Our top pick? Let's just say there's no Air apparent.
Darren Gladstone, PC World
3) Toshiba Portege R500 Laptop -- PC World Rating: 73 (Good)
You can easily twist the Toshiba Portege R500's screen in your bare hands, deflecting it by an inch or so. Pressing the plastic panel on the bottom of the case underneath the hard drive makes it pop inward. The company insists that these unusual design attributes are intentional, and indeed bills both as features ensuring improved durability, but we'd still prefer a rock-hard shell. The Toshiba R500 has a somewhat anemic engine (a 1.2-GHz Core 2 Duo U7500) that slogged through our tests with a score of 49 on WorldBench 6. But what the R500 lacked in the short sprint, it compensated for by staying in for the long haul, lasting a little over 5.5 hours in our battery tests. Toshiba provides all the outputs that one expects from an ultraportable laptop these days. Heck, it even has an old-fashioned analog volume knob. A handy button conjures a special control panel; another one kills the backlight (see detail at bottom). The Portege comes with only one USB port. The R500, however, also has ethernet. A fingerprint reader and status lights accompany the somewhat cramped mouse buttons (see detail at top). Check Latest Prices
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