Toshiba's Portege R500 gets cautiously torn apart

Sure, you've seen a plethora of R500 shots already, but this ultrathin Portégé has somehow managed to keep its clothes on -- until now. One curious owner just couldn't resist the urge to operate, and after careful dissection, we're left with a handful of snaps showing off the unit's internals. Don't be shy, check out the whole lot in the gallery below.

[Thanks, Jai]

Gallery: Toshiba's Portege R500 gets cautiously torn apart

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[Richard Lai @ May 25th 2008 10:51AM]

I've only just realised that the R500 doesn't have a webcam.

[Ayman @ May 25th 2008 1:22PM]

With all this dissecting i expected to see more, mmm, blood, oil, or some battery fluid at least
why else dissect it

[dangerballs @ May 25th 2008 10:54AM]

Does every R500 come with Canadian quarters, or is that some custom shit?

[MattyG @ May 25th 2008 12:05PM]

you mean to say they don't come standard in laptops these days?

[404 @ May 25th 2008 10:54AM]

Awesomely small mobo there, not much bigger than the DVD tray.

Also, 9 by ~2MB photos on one page is not fun. Thumbnails are your friend.

[jak0b @ May 25th 2008 10:57AM]

* in before the mac fans *
i would love to have this notebook, not because it is so thin... but because it is so light, if only it had x3100 and turbomemory instead of gma950... yeah and a webcam

[Mark @ May 25th 2008 11:10AM]

Only problem is the cost.

[tekdroid @ May 25th 2008 11:15AM]

silver-painted plastic.... ugh.

Have to second the opinion on the small mainboard. Been a while since I've seen the internals of a laptop but things sure seem to have progressed here.

[john @ May 25th 2008 12:21PM]

silver plastic is actually better than metal for a laptop imo.

i own a portege r200, which is made from almost identical plastic and coloring. It's super strong, doesn't get dented and is a touch lighter.

[tekdroid @ May 25th 2008 10:26PM]

john,
Not a fan of metal in a laptop per se (though it still would be far preferable to this, IMO, despite dents if dropped), but have strong distaste for painted coatings on plastic (which get scratched easily, wear down with enough use, etc). I see the same things on mobile phones with fake metal bling accents, buttons and coatings, etc. Incidentally, one of my recent favourite sites is mobile-review.com's "wear and tear" reviews.
http://www.mobile-review.com/articles/2008/case-t650-prism7900-en.shtml

Great to see this sort of thing online.

It's like they purposely design things so you will want to get rid of it x years down the track as you look at the coating come off - regardless of whether it is useful or not.

Light colours and plastics are fine if they're natively that colour (without thin coatings) and they are great so the unit doesn't burn in the sun, but silver coatings? I dislike when they try to make something look like metal that isn't (see the T650 above for an example of silver-coated buttons with wear coming off the '5' button 6.5 months into its life) .

The manufacturers KNOW this. It's not a surprise to them. The replacement market is also a huge money-earner. To me it's the ultimate tackyness and really these things aren't cheap toys where plastic has to be made to look like metal or have a metallic sheen to make it look real. It's all for bling and window-shopping oohs and ahhs, but so unreliable and in general doesn't hold up well in day-to-day use.

[Andrew @ May 26th 2008 1:10PM]

I have R100 and let me tell you, the parts which are plastic with metal-like coating ARE wearing off in some places. After 4 years, to be fair. However, the outer lid is actually metal (magnesium alloy or something) and while it shows wear, it doesn't look nearly as bad as "plastic metal" parts.

One of the main reasons I didn't buy R500 to replace my aging R100 is that ugly plastic body. I personally find the silver metal like plastic the worst looking material of them all. I could tolerate it on a cheap laptop but not on a 2k+ laptop. If it doesn't look sexy it should at least look presentable - R500 is neither. The other reasons are crappy LCD panel (no better than my 4 year old one), an underpowered CPU and a very slow 1.8" drive.

[Roger @ May 25th 2008 11:46AM]

Hey, here's a complete movie how a Portege R500 get's dissambled:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOACz9pl4rU

[pundit @ May 25th 2008 12:24PM]

It's thicker than an Air... even the optical drive-less version. Shame.

[jak0b @ May 25th 2008 1:25PM]

it maybe thicker than the air but it shure is lighter than the air!
AIR: 1.36 kg
R500: 0,979kg

[Abuzar @ May 25th 2008 1:37PM]

Well considering that this DOES HAVE an optical drive you would expect it to be a bit thicker than a subnotebook WITHOUT an optical drive.

[404 @ May 25th 2008 1:52PM]

Plus, the R500 has a removable battery. I'd say that's worth a few millimetres.

[Reader @ May 25th 2008 12:48PM]

I'm glad there are people in the world to do this because I don't have the cajones to. Now I get to see the pretty insides and keep my products in one piece.

[Daniel @ May 25th 2008 2:25PM]

Thank god he put a quarter in there, because the CD tray alone couldn't give me an idea of the relative size of the components.

[Jai Molloy @ May 25th 2008 6:48PM]

@ tekdroid, the R500 uses magnesium alloy for the whole case. the only part that is plastic is the inner bezel on the display.

@ everyone, I love quarters, but seriously I needed to put something that people would know the size of instinctivly. A ruler doesn't achive this, you would have to look at the hash marks on the ruler to see the sizes.

I will try to get some shots of other things. I don't have anything new yet, but soon.

[tekdroid @ May 25th 2008 10:37PM]

Jai, thanks for this. Definitely preferable to me (not that I'm in the market for one, but anyway).

The thing I have a real distaste for is the matching keys and trackpad buttons, which seem to be silver-painted plastic just like previous Toshiba laptops. It's not something we only get from Toshiba (I am typing on a Lenovo with metallic-ish painted lid that shows scuffs and whatnot in their true gory, ugh), but these internal suerfaces also go through some wear and tear and the paint tends to come off with enough use. I'd much prefer to have the keys and trackpad not match the metal case in this case.

Nice machine regardless. Just not my first choice 'cause of the metallic paint on often-used surfaces.

[anchovy @ Jul 2nd 2008 11:41PM]

Any chance of getting the LCD OEM part number? If I could just peek under the cover in the picture.... I just did this to my Asus with the same screen size with LED backlight and finding a replacement has been impossible. The LCD's made by Toshiba and wondering if it's the same. Thanks.

[Saiful Amin @ Jul 26th 2008 6:34AM]

I use Toshiba Portege R500. Recently it droped from my hand and the chassis got broken near the SD slot (near the left palm rest and Portege mark) just above the DVD drive front panel. It seems that I need to replace the casing around the keyboard (the part visible in Photo 2) of this web site.

Can you tell me where I can find a replacement casing? If you can let me know the part number then it would be much helpful.

[levinethemachine @ Aug 5th 2008 9:41AM]

Two stickers on the front bottom of the LCD. One has two strings:

LTD121EWEK

AA7C7I109173

The other is a bar code and the string:

G33C00047110

[levinethemachine @ Aug 5th 2008 10:36AM]

Hard to find these LCD's. No one seems to have them...