Toshiba Ships First Laptop with a 512 GB SSD

Ultra portable notebook with a 512 GB SSD. Drool.

When it comes to portable computing, nothing beats a slim and light notebook with long battery life. When it comes to storage solutions, nothing beats a solid state drive. Put those two together and we have the new Toshiba Portégé R600-ST4203.

At CES Asus showed off the world’s first laptop with a 512 GB SSD – but that was just a showing. Toshiba’s beaten the rest of the industry to the punch by actually shipping it.

The Toshiba Portégé R600-ST4203 packs all the usual laptop bits with C2D SU9400, 3 GB RAM, etc., but what we’re really interested in is that 512 GB SSD that it packs inside. The 12.1-inch form, 16:10 display, 2.46 lbs weight, and 7.53 hour battery ratings don’t hurt either. (Curiously, the Japanese counterpart to this laptop lists a 12 hour battery life.)

It’s not cheap at $3,000, but hopefully SSD prices will fall and we’ll see more competition in this space to pave the way for affordability.

We actually had the chance to play with another Portégé R600 but without the SSD. In all honesty, we think it's really flimsy. The screen feels like it's going to break in half at any moment and the body parts don't close together in a very flush manner. Even the screen's joints are poorly done. Overall, the build quality is so bad that even a notebook half this unit's cost can do far better.

SSD or no SSD, the R600 is not worth $3000 even by a stretch.