A decade after the Portege laptop exited the consumer market, it’s back — and with a user-replaceable battery, too.
On Friday, Dynabook — which, as Sharp, took over Toshiba’s PC business in 2018 and then renamed itself — announced the Portege Z40L-N, a $1,699 laptop based upon the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processor. The laptops ship immediately, in fixed “EZ-Buy” configurations as well as Built-to-Order models that are configurable.
The Z40L-N is a business laptop, and for the last decade Dynabook has sold its Portege, Tecra, and Satellite Pro laptops exclusively to commercial customers. As of today, that’s changed, and anyone can buy a Dynabook laptop at the company’s website.
The Z40L-N is built inside a magnesium chassis, with a conventional mix of features such as the integrated NPU inside the Core Ultra 5 226V on up to the Core Ultra 7 268V (with vPro). Users have the option of either 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR5 memory and storage up to 2TB, all behind a 14-inch 1920×1200 screen and powered by a 65Wh battery. It’s not clear if users will be able to source a replacement battery from the Dynabook store, but the company is explicitly marketing it as user-replaceable, significantly increasing its lifespan.
Dynabook
The laptop is equipped with two Thunderbolt ports, and Dynabook will sell a variety of docks and other accessories to accompany it.
The laptop will ship with a three-year warranty for the prebuilt EZ-Buy models and a four-year warranty for Built-to-Order devices.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld
Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers' News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.