Around 2004, before "tablets" as we know today showed up in the consumer market, I bought a Toshiba Portege Tablet PC, running the venerable Windows XP Tablet Edition. It was bulky, it was heavy but it was a convertible tablet (not touch but pen-based). Toshiba was back then well known in the portable market thanks to their pioneering work - they had laptops going back to MS-DOS days - and their Portege, Qosmio and Libretto series.
Jump ahead to now and the Toshiba brand divested itself from the laptop business but the Portege line lives thanks to Dynabook, part of the Sharp group (ultimately part of Foxconn).
The Portege series is a high-end line of business-focused laptops and the Portege X30W-J is no different. It's an ultra-light, fully-featured 13" convertible 2-in-1 laptop with lots of features that can make it the perfect device for mobile working.
To start with, when I say ultra-light I mean it. At barely 980 g, the Portege X30W-J is an absolute winner here - lighter than other devices I have been using recently - being 130 g lighter than the Microsoft Surface Go. The reason why this is so is because of its magnesium alloy chassis, which combined with a Corning Gorilla Glass for the matte screen makes it not only light but very strong, passing MIL-STD-810-G tests for drop, dust, humidity, temperature and shock.
But being light doesn't mean offering less. It actually has a lot more to offer. I was very impressed with the number of ports on this laptop. I mean at 980 g and you have two USB-C Gen 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB-A 3.1 port, one HDMI port (4K/2K/1080p output), a micro SD slot, headphone/microphone port and a security slot.
The Portege X30W-J is based on the new Intel Evo platform, which provides an all-in-one package for better integration. In this case, it powered by an 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 Quad Core Processor (2.4GHz up to 4.2GHz, 8M Cache), with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD. The 13.3" Full HD anti-glare display supported resolutions up to 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels and is powered by an Intel Iris Xe Graphics - with promises of up to double 3D performance compared to the previous Intel graphics generation.
Also part of the Intel Evo platform is the Intel Wireless AX201 adapter with support for the new WiFi 6 (802.11ax) standard, giving you access to better WiFi performance in environments with WiFi 6 routers and access points.
This platform provides the laptop with speedy performance, responsive action and good storage benchmarks, ideal for light to medium workloads.
In terms of security, the Portege X30W-J is Microsoft Secure-Core certified PC. Thanks to the integrated hardware - including a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip and infrared camera with face recognition - and software, the Portege X30W-J can take advantage of security features provided by the operating system - such as biometric-based Windows Hello login, Virtualisation-Based Security and Hypervisor Protected Code Integrity - to make this a device for use in industries that require a higher level of security.
The infrared-based camera is particularly fast at login and you can easily enrol your face through the Windows Settings Login options. And for those of you that really worry about it, a built-in physical camera cover is there to make sure that even if the camera is activated nothing can be recorded.
The Portege X30W-J is being distributed with Windows 10 Pro and thanks to having the TPM chip built-in you can enable the Bitlocker disk encryption for even more secure storage.
You can easily convert the laptop by opening the lid all the way around. In that mode the keyboard is disabled and you can use an on-screen keyboard to enter with touch - or you can pair it with a Dynabook Trupen (or Wacon AES pen) for a real pen-on-paper experience. The optional TruPen uses an AAAA battery and provides a great way to interact with the Portege X30W-J - including writing on apps like OneNote and drawing with graphics design apps. The pen has a quick response time, so you actually feel like writing on the screen and you can even apply pressure - with support for up to 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity you can use it to put emphasis on some text or work the brush strokes on a digital image.
Despite having a dual-fan cooling system, the Portege X30W-J is absolutely quiet. And even with the fan going you will find the battery can give you plenty enough power to keep you mobile for a while. In fact the specification says you can have up to 16 hours of battery life - under optimal conditions. On the other hand, the USB-C quick charge technology can give you up to four hours of battery power after a quick 30 minutes charge.
Overall, the Portege X30W-J is an impressive kit for people who need a truly mobile option while having access to a full OS for work.
