Dynabook Portégé X40-G-110
A solid and slim machine, but to stand out Dynabook must do more than add an inch to the screen’s diagonal
PRICE £1,299 (£1,559 inc VAT) from uk.dynabook.com
While it seems shallow to admit it, names count. What aspiring executive wouldn’t prefer a sleek and sexy Portégé as opposed to a boxy sounding Tecra?
Not that there was anything too boxy about the Tecra X40-F (see issue 304, p59) that the Portégé X40-G replaces. They share all the same vital stats, from how much they weigh to the size of the chassis; all that’s changed is the name and the internal components.
Both are improvements, especially as this laptop shares so much of the same design DNA as its 13.3in brother opposite. Considering that the X40-G includes a 14in screen, it’s also slim and light at 16.9mm and 1.25kg.
If I could make one request of Dynabook’s designers, it would be to get rid of the shortcut key that sits between AltGr and Ctrl to the right of the spacebar, because this would free up a valuable centimetre of space for the spacebar – with my hands in a “home” touch typing position I always come dangerously close to pressing AltGr rather than space.
Luckily, you should soon get used to it – especially as the rest of the keyboard is a thing of beauty. It’s quiet, the keys have a distinct thunk so you aren’t left wondering if you’ve pressed down fully or not, and there’s backlighting for when you need it.
Dynabook carries on the tradition of inserting a trackpoint in the middle of the keyboard, with left and right mouse click keys above the touchpad. Topped by glass, this is a slick and responsive unit, with its only foible being the fingerprint reader tucked into the top left: Dynabook would do well to integrate this into the power button rather than sacrificing touchpad space.
It’s also disappointing to see a mediocre IPS panel here as opposed to the IGZO unit found in the X30-G. The difference is obvious when you place them side by side, with the X30’s colours being punchi punchier. Thi This was backed up in our te technical tests, with the X40G covering 55% of the sRGB gamut and 39% of D DCI-P3. Compare that to 98% and 72% for the X30G.
I would have lik liked it to shine a little brighter than 268cd/m2, 268c , but does this matter to the X40-G’s X target audience? A Arguably not. You still benefit from fro the phenomenal viewi viewing angles of IPS, pleasant whites white and a matte finish that dampens dampen reflections. There’s also the marginal ma benefit of a 14in screen compared com to 13.3in, even if the resoluti resolution remains the same at 1,920 x 1,080, 1,08 but its real advantage is its support sup for touch. While this will never nev top anyone’s list of must-have fe features on a clamshell laptop, it becomes surprisingly useful after a while.
This is also a lap laptop that should keep plodd plodding along for years – far more than the single year of EMEA cover that comes as standard stand – thanks to a tenth-gen tenth-g Core i7-10510U processor, processo 16GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe N SSD. That propelled the X40X40-G to 92 in our benchmarks. Its integrated in graphics are enough to handle hand lighter games; Metro: Last Light a averaged 41.3ps at High settings at 720 720p.
I suspect this lap laptop’s gaming skills will rarely be pushed, but if you want
“The X40-G should keep plodding along for years, thanks to a tenth-gen Core i7-10510U, i7-10510U 16GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD”
to watch a film or four, our videorundown test result of 8hrs 14mins suggests it should last the distance. Audio quality is okay from the Harman Kardon-branded speakers, but we’d use headphones for anything beyond video calls. Talking of which, there’s a 720p camera built into the bezel – and it’s i’ infrared, i frared, meaning it supports orts Windows Hello – but it produces pixellated results. . While I like the built-in privacy filter, ilter, which you simply slide across, ss, it’s disappointing that Dynabook didn’t dn’t take the opportunity to upgrade pgrade the camera at the same time as the internals. In truth, the X40-G feels like a missed opportunity nity for Dynabook. It has the fundamentals mentals of a fine business laptop, p, with many of the same positives s that I praise the X30-G for opposite posite (from its strong security ty foundations to the excellent t connectivity). And I’m sure that at anyone using a three-year-old -old Tecra will love to upgrade to this sleek, wellbuilt and fast t machine. But if Dynabook is to o lure Dell, HP and Lenovo users, it t will need to get the little things right t too.