The good: Facial recognition Webcam; multitouch trackpad; unique chassis design and material; sleep-and-charge eSATA/USB combo port.

The bad: Middling battery life with no extended cell option; heavy for a 13.3-inch laptop.

The bottom line: Though we like the textured chassis and multitouch trackpad of the business-oriented Portege M900, there are more attractive alternatives out there with better battery life and lighter heft for the business crowd.

Read full review of the Toshiba Portege M900 »

By Darius Chang, CNET Asia
Jul 21, 2009

The Portege M900 is the first model in Toshiba's new Signature series. This range (launched concurrently with the Premier series for its Satellite laptops) seeks to bring a touch of class to the design of its business-centric portables. The idea behind this line is that since a significant number of users lug their notebooks between work and home, the Japanese maker hopes to attract this category of customers by incorporating elements of design and features from its consumer machines into the Portege M900.

Design

As part of the new Signature series, the Portege M900 has a textured plastic body available in four colors: Brown, white, pink and red. Instead of the glossy paint job so common in most portables, we were glad the Toshiba uses a matt finish that doesn't pick up fingerprints. However, the flip side is that stains on the patterned design may be a challenge to remove.

There are flaws in the new Signature design. Unless it was Toshiba's intent to leave floating white spots in the vision of its users, the bright white LEDs for the multimedia control panel and touchpad bar can be very distracting. Though you can turn off the touchpad light by disabling the device, you can't do this with the multimedia bar. As such, you shouldn't use this laptop in low-light places such as in planes or in dimly lit presentation rooms (at least not before a liberal application of black tape to the offending LEDs).

In its category, it leans toward the less portable spectrum for thin-and-lights, tipping the scale at a rather hefty 2.23kg with a thickness of 38.2mm. I/O ports are mainly along the flanks for easy access. Though the latchless design has become popular among consumer models, we would have liked to see a physical latch for the business Portege M900 to prevent the lid from opening in the event that the machine is dropped. To its credit, the hinge feels tight enough for daily use.

Tags: Toshiba Portege, Light-emitting Diode, Intel Core 2 Duo, 32-bit, multimedia

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