Dynabook Portege X40-K reviewed: a nice laptop

Metal laptops tend to be the domain of one specific maker, but that one you’re thinking of isn’t all there is. Dynabook’s Portege X40-K is a mobile metal machine, and it could have your regular day-to-day covered.

Design

A somewhat minimalist design set up the Dynabook Portege, which we keep confusing for a Toshiba because this model was previously one of the Toshiba staples until Dynabook took over the laptop production reigns.

As such, it’s very reminiscent of what Tosh made in the past, just made a little more modern, with a shade of blue Dynabook calls “dark tech blue” on the aluminium exterior, though it’s a different aluminium look to other alloy-based computers.

While the metal is normally used to keep devices looking sleek and smart, and typically fingerprint-less, the Dynabook Portege X40-K picks up on every single fingerprint and smudge, messing up the look some.

Outside of the metal lid, there’s a plastic casing used in the body, as the whole thing isn’t alloy, even if the top of it looks like it.

Features

Inside, the hardware is all new, with an Intel 12th-generation Core processor inside, alongside a decent amount of memory and storage for our Portege X40-K review unit, though these vary quite a bit. There are a lot of variations of the X40-K, so your model may see different specs depending on which one you consider.

They all look the same, with that giggle of a “dark tech blue” exterior, and they seem to all have the same 14 inch Full HD 1080p display, a non-reflective touchscreen you’re probably meant to use the trackpad with and not touch, even though it still supports touch. Fingerprints and all.

In our model, we found a Core i5-1240P chip alongside 16GB RAM and 512GB solid-state storage, which should be plenty for most people.

Connection options for this 14 inch computer are quite varied, catering for both the old school and new school in this design. As such, you’ll find two of the rectangular Type A USB ports, two Type C ports with Thunderbolt 4 in them, both of which can be charged from, though both also only on the left side of the laptop.

There’s also an HDMI port plus an Ethernet (Gigabit) port, a microSD slot, a 3.5mm headset jack, and to our surprise, an old school circular plug port just in case you lose the compact Type C charger the Portege X40-K arrives with.

Our version also arrived with Windows 10, but an upgrade for Windows 11 was waiting out of the box, so you may get your choice with your own model.

Wireless is catered for, as well, offering support for Bluetooth 5.2 and 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6. A webcam also sits above the screen, paired with an infrared camera for logging in via Windows Hello using only your face.

Display

First off the bat, there’s the screen, and surprisingly, we found a matte screen in the Dynabook, which is a bit of a rarity in computer displays. Granted, it wasn’t the brightest screen we’ve found reviewing laptops in the past few years, but a glare-less screen is always appreciated, and that’s what you’ll find in the Portege X40-K.

Aside from the total lack of glare, Dynabook has seen fit to make this a matt screen with touch, something that is also a bit of a rarity, but then locked the resolution at Full HD 1080p.

That makes the screen a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, we love the fact that it lacks glare entirely, and feels super professional since you can use it without having the sun or reflections really get in your way. Yet on the other hand, Full HD 1080p is something laptops have been arriving with for ages, and we just want a little more resolution out of our laptops.

Think 2500 pixels across and higher, and we’ll start being happy. We don’t need 4K on everything, but in a professional laptop, Full HD is beginning to look tired. At least it’s not another 720p laptop screen, but it’s also not a leap ahead of anything else.

In-use

It’s a similar situation in terms of how you’ll use the Portege X40-K.

Yes, you get a touchscreen without glare, but you’ll likely never touch the thing. This laptops feels very much like a laptop, and the matte screen is the sort you won’t want to get your mitts on. It just doesn’t seem like the computer for it.

Unfortunately, you may also want to opt for an external mouse as soon as you can, because the trackpad feels cheap and clicky, eliciting the sort of feeling as a budget laptop. Maybe we’re just picky, but after coming from the premium tech seen in Macs and Surface laptops, the trackpad on the X40-K doesn’t feel up to the standard of where the keyboards are.

Fortunately, the keyboard isn’t bad, offering plenty of travel as you press each key down, and delivering a firm and satisfying sort of keys to use. It can sound a little loud on a desk, but the experience is totally fine.

Performance

And the experience is totally fine in terms of performance, too.

Armed with Windows 11 out of the box and 16GB RAM, our Portege X40-K review unit handled multitasking totally fine, with your typical app usage totally sorted in this lappy.

Benchmark-wise, the system performs about as well as we’d expect a machine with a Core i5 to have. The sheer amount of memory in the model we were reviewing is bound to help, and we found little to no lag as we jumped from app to app, though occasionally Microsoft’s Edge browser could be a little fussy, and we’ll put that down to the joy of working with a Microsoft web browser.

You won’t find it beating what the most recent M2 MacBook Air can do in a benchmark, and it’s also not as fast as what the M1 MacBook Air had before it, but it’s not doing too badly overall.

In short, most of what you’ll do every day should be fine on Dynabook’s Portege, but this is very much a day-to-day machine. The lack of high-end graphical hardware means games and workstation tech is out of the picture, as this is more for work and life and such.

It’s not quite a MacBook Air, but you can definitely see what Dynabook is going for in this model.

Battery

On the other side of things, the battery life is decent, rounding around 7 to 8 hours depending on what you do.

The battery life metric reported by Windows isn't going to be all that helpful, at least not what we found in our time with the laptop, ranging between an hour to ten, but we found 7 to 8 was typically possible.

One point worth noting is the power charge pack, because aside for the fact that the Dynabook X40-K is on the USB Type C charging bandwagon, the charge pack it uses is very compact. We're still not quite at the beautiful level of industrial design positioned by Apple in its laptop power packs, but Dynabook isn't far off, delivering something compact and easy to carry, just in case you need to keep your lappy charged on the go.

Value

Priced around the $2000 mark in Australia, our Core i5-1240P review model with 16GB RAM and 512GB solid-state storage isn't badly spec'd for the price, thanks in part to that massive amount of storage and RAM.

Intel's 12th-gen Core i5 is perfectly adequate for most things, and the specs should be ideal for anyone who needs to get a little more out of their spreadsheets than the average worker.

The metal body is also a nice inclusion, though we have some thoughts, because while it looks premium on paper, the result isn't quite what you get with other metal-bodied machines.

What needs work?

While the aluminium body is definitely more premium than what you might find on a plastic computer, the Dynabook X40-K feels cheaper than it should, and picks up on fingerprints all too easily. It's strange, because we've seen aluminium laptops for ages, and yet this feels very flimsy by comparison.

It could be that the aluminium frame of the X40-K doesn't feel like a solid aluminium chassis, and feels more like a light casing. That no doubt helps to keep the laptop light and luggage friendly, but holding and using the laptop doesn't give off the feeling of premium the way the material should. We've felt better feeling alloy laptops, and we suspect you have, too.

Adding to that cheap feeling is the trackpad, which could just be better, as could the screen. The matte display is nice, but we really want a sharper screen.

We're glad Dynabook includes a Full HD display, but you can find higher resolutions on laptops for this size, and given the price, we just want for a little more. Just a little more resolution for a bit of future proofing, Dynabook.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

Perhaps the biggest issue for the Dynabook X40-K is that as well thought out as it is, the laptop is thoroughly ordinary.

It's well built, offers decent battery life, and a nice selection of ports, but very little stands out in this computer at all. For people living in the Windows camp, the Dynabook X40-K will deliver a perfectly nice experience with some room to move, but it could be a lot better, and feels almost like a marginally evolved Toshiba Portege, which is where the Dynabook gear came from.

Toshiba doesn't make laptops anymore, and so Dynabook is largely working from the theme and template set by that company. And that's totally fine.

If you grew up with the Portege, Satellite, or even the Tecra, and have fond memories of the fantastic laptops Toshiba once produced, Dynabook allows you to continue that history with new gear. The brand would probably berate us for saying this, but it's more or less the evolution of that, and it shows. The new Portege is fine, but it feels just like today's take on the Portege from yesterday.

For many, that will be totally fine, and so will this computer. It is a nice laptop for business in the Windows side of life. You won't find the well designed appeal of a Dell XPS 13 here, or even the beveled aluminium edges of an HP, but the Dynabook Portege finds a middle ground with a laptop made for work and the day to day in a way that doesn't show off.