Product Reviews
5 reasons to choose Dynabook Portégé X50-G
For business users who want performance and battery life, the Dynabook Portégé X50-G holds its own. BRYAN TURNER outlines the top five features of the notebook.
In the business notebook landscape, it’s rare to find a computer that sticks to a vanilla design convention. Enter the Dynabook Portégé X50-G: a laptop for those who want a standard, no-nonsense laptop for business.
The design is simple and doesn’t try hard to differentiate itself from what a laptop should look like. Under the hood, however, it packs performance that many business laptops are missing out on, making its unassuming external design stand out.
Dynabook provided us with the 15.6” variant of the X50-G, which comes with a quad-core 10th Gen Intel Core i7 10510U for power users when plugged in and long battery life for out-and-about usage. The screen is a 15.6” 1080p panel that gets bright enough to work in direct sunlight. It’s also lighter than other business laptops in its price range, coming in at 1.4kg. This is thanks to its all plastic-design.
The model that we got came with 8GB of RAM – a single RAM card in a SODIMM slot. Power users can open the device and fit two 16GB cards to get a 32GB dual-channel performance kit if they need to upgrade the laptop down the line. Our configuration came with 512GB of NVMe SSD storage, which can also be upgraded at a later stage. The computer is also compatible with Windows 11, when the operating system upgrade rolls out. Overall, the longevity possibilities of this device are comforting.
We recommend this laptop for five major factors:
1. Built-in 4G for instant fallback
Right in the middle of an important Zoom meeting, we didn’t notice the Wi-Fi connection had dropped thanks to loadshedding. We installed a nano-SIM with preloaded data in the computer’s built-in SIM card slot when we got it, and forgot about it thanks to working from home – until loadshedding returned. For business usage, having an instant fallback from Wi-Fi to mobile data connectivity proved to be extremely helpful.
2. Webcam and mic privacy tools
The laptop comes with two great privacy features: a built-in webcam cover and a dedicated software microphone disconnection button. Although business users should have strong antivirus solutions installed, this helps with zero-day spyware (i.e. viruses that have not yet been discovered by anti-virus providers). When pressing the microphone hot-key, the microphone disappears from the Windows device manager and no program can access the microphone until the key is pressed again.
3. Powerful biometric solutions
Although biometrics is more for convenience in consumer-grade devices, this laptop can use up to three factors to login with Windows Hello. Users can configure login to require a fingerprint scan via the fingerprint reader on the trackpad, a face scan via the IR sensor next to the webcam, and a password. This number of built-in authentication is rare to find in a laptop and make the device that much more secure for business users
4. Long battery life
Even though most of us are working from home lately, we can’t escape imminent load shedding. With heavy usage, this computer clocked in around 9 hours of continuous battery usage with a few web browser tabs, three Excel spreadsheets, a Word document, and Outlook open. With loadshedding lasting around two to four hours at a time, the laptop will easily make it through times when there’s no external power available.
5. All the ports you’d need
With legacy and future ports available, the X50–G is a great option for those who want connectivity. On the left, there are two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports for fast transfers to external hard drives, a nano-SIM slot, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the right, there is a full-sized HDMI port, a microSD card slot, and two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports, which supports DisplayPort for external displays. The ports also double up as a charger for the computer, using a USB Power Delivery standard charger.
6. Bonus: The AccuPoint II pointing stick for business users
For those who like pointing sticks (sometimes called keyboard nibs), this laptop features that as an input method, in addition to the standard multi-touch trackpad. The pointing stick feels accurate and durable enough to last a few years.
Overall, the Dynabook Portégé X50-G is a good choice for business users who need powerful multitasking and strong battery life, with extra privacy and biometric features.
