At the 25th Anniversary Toshiba Press conference in Taipei, we were able to get our hands on the Portégé R700. Toshiba has decked out the Portégé R700 with several options with regular Core i3, Core i5 or Core i7 CPUs. Initially there will be five models offered in the Portégé R700 range and their specifications will vary, the ability to run up to 8GB of DDR3 SDRAM (via two stacked memory modules and using the 64-bit version of Windows 7) and the ability to run a third-generation solid-state drive (SSD) with a storage capacity of up to 256GB. We were able to get our hands on the Core i5 and a regular HDD.

Graphics performance will be handled by the integrated Intel QM57 chipset, which will be powerful enough to drive the 1366×768-resolution screen, as well as Full HD resolution via the HDMI port. You also get two USB 2.0 Sleep-and-Charge ports, VGA, a combination eSATA/USB 2.0 port, headphone and microphone ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, an SD card slot and, depending on the model you choose, you’ll get an ExpressCard slot and a built-in 7mm thick DVD burner. We also have heard that the machine has a decent 6 hours of battery life.

Frequent travelers or anyone else looking for a highly portable but powerful notebook will find a lot to like about the Portege R700.