Latest Toshiba Portégé Carries 128GB SSD

The addition makes the Portégé the first laptop in the world to boast such a drive, but it will also push price up by nearly 50 percent.

Toshiba’s featherweight Portégé R500 notebook already held the record of world’s lightest laptop and world’s thinnest with an optical drive, but the latest version, the R500-S5007V, now holds one more title as well. The addition of a 128GB solid-state drive makes it the world’s first laptop to boast a SSD of that size.

Besides the enormous capacity the drive will give the notebook, Toshiba notes that its SSD qualities will lend the machine an enhanced level of reliability, durability and system responsiveness compared to the last generation, which used a standard 5400RPM drive of either 120GB or 160GB. Though Toshiba claims the solid-state drive should be more efficient and help extend battery life, its actual estimation of run time remains the same as last year’s: “more than eight hours.”

Other specs on the machine remain unchanged for this year, including key features like the low-voltage 1.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, integrated SuperMulti optical drive, and transreflective LED backlit LCD screen.

The Portégé has never been a budget machine by any means, but the addition of the SSD will now account for nearly a third of the system’s cost, as it jumps from the low $2,000 range to $2,995 with the latest model.