Digital Trends

Toshiba Dynabook SX April 27th, 2004 | by Nabeel Hyatt

Introduction

The Toshiba Dynabook SX is an ultralight notebook aimed at the mobile traveler willing to sacrifice features in order to save every ounce of weight. Unfortunately, some might think those sacrifices are just too much.

At first glance it's impossibly light frame, bright clear screen, and oddly curved top is sure to turn heads. But a closer inspection reveals a sub-par battery life, average keyboard, and little attention to design details.

Captured in Japan for American Eyes

Like most ultralight notebooks, you won't find the Dynabook at your local CompUSA. With the exception of Sony and Fujitsu, laptop manufacturers have long ago decided that the land of SUVs doesn't have much of an appetite for ultralight notebooks. That created a niche market of technophiles and regularly mobile users who craved the easy carrying size of ultralights and were willing to pay a premium. Importers like Dynamism (who provided the unit for review) have filled that niche by providing the latest laptops from Japan with the convenience of North American software and support. If you need exclusivity and are willing to pay a premium for to import a Japanese notebook with high design and mobility, these services just might be perfect for you.

The Toshiba Dynabook SX weighs only 2.19 pounds but features a 12.1" XGA TFT, a 1GHz Intel Centrino processor, and 802.11g/b wireless connectivity. It comes with a standard 256MB of RAM but can be upgraded to 1GB. It is encased in a magnesium alloy housing and includes a shock-mounted hard drive (40GB or 20GB).

The diminutive Toshiba Dynabook SX is light in the hands and light on features.

Featured all over the Web and in print, and covered regularly at Designtechnica, Dynamism has built a reputation on delivering the latest laptops from Japan months before they hit the US market, if they ever do. They take care of all the normal issues that might come up if you happened to buy a notebook from a regular retailer, from an English translated manual and software, to honoring your warranty should anything go wrong.

With that said, the careful attention and nature of the products offered means that there will always be a price to pay — both in cost and in features - for the exclusivity of being one of the proud few in the country to own a Japanese import. For instance, although the Dynabook had English characters on the keyboard, the layout of our review sample was just slightly altered so that tapping the : (colon) key produced a ‘ (single quotes). Changing from an English to Japanese keyboard in Windows fixed the issue, but the location of the colon had been moved to an area that most North American users would not  be used to.

Also, sliding in a Secure Digital card to test for performance found that no SD card driver had been installed. After searching for fifteen minutes, we gave up. However, all those little problems melt away the first time you open up a Japanese import in a coffee house and immediately draw a crowd.